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How To Set
Up Windows to play SP
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A) Points for all Windows versions Game Guide The Game Guide is the User Manual for your game. You can find this in the \Game Notes folder under the one you installed your game to. For SPMBT it is spmbtguide.htm and for SPWW2 it is spww2guide.htm. The GG is a LARGE HTML file, so it can take a long time for the text to come up in the right side panel - a minute in very slow systems!. Amongst other things, the section on game installation is worth a read - you will see a link to this on the left hand side toolbar. How do I play on Windows 2000? Windows 2000 is not a supported platform, sorry. All other flavours of Windows, DOS and OS/2 can play Steel Panthers. Adjusting the Scroll Speed As mentioned in the Game Guide, in the section on the INI file - the 7th line of the INI file for the game is a divisor to slow down the game scroll speed for those who like it less zippy, or have faster machines. The default value is 0 (zero). Open up the data sub folder of the game. For SPMBT - open up SPMBT.ini, for WW2 the file is Spww2.ini. Use a text editor, such as notepad only!. Go to line 7 - change this value to a new number then save the file. Try say a 4 there - if this is now too slow for your tastes, try a 2 next and so on till you find a value that suits you. Bigger numbers slow the scroll furthest, 0 is no slowing down. (The ini file is discussed in the Game Guide, Section 4 Additional Features, subsection "Customising SPWW2" or "Customising SPMBT", depending on which game you are reading the guide for.) Also - check out the game guide sections on moslo.com utility to slow games down. Another slowdown utility available out there is called myslow and is available at this site. (moslo may have limits beyond a certain processor speed and may not work under XP (?)). USB Mice These cause problems for some applications as they do not produce the required DOS Interrupt 13 (and some Windows software (especially older games written for Windows pre 95) is written to use this interface as well, rather than relying on the WM_ series messages). No int13 messages = no mouse as far as the game is concerned! This may be the case for any mouse not connected via the normal PS/2 connector - e.g. some infrared mice?. If your mouse pointer does not move, or is stuck in a tiny little area of the screen then temporarily remove your mouse and install a proper PS/2 port mouse and see if that makes a difference. SetSound and Soundblasters Supported A note on the SetSound utility. The default puts the second SB (Creative Labs Sound Blaster Pro or 100% compatible) at the top of the page when SetSound starts up and probably next to nobody thinks to scroll UP to find the first one.(Creative Labs Sound Blaster or 100% compatible) which is PROBABLY the one most people should be using. That's the one I use. When I try Creative Labs Sound Blaster Pro or 100% compatible I get a Buzz(click) kind of feedback sound when I press the buttons in the game that isn't there when I use the standard Creative Labs Sound Blaster or 100% compatible setting and Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16 or AWE32 doesn't work for me at all. The full list of selections is:
B) Points for Windows XP users Only A very Useful XP help page can be found here http://www.manyhighways.com/sandbox XP - Sound OFF First! When you install the game in XP for the first time set the sound off as and until you have set up the video side of things. In other words, when presented with Setsound - select "No Digital Audio", then "Done". This simplifies things immensely by removing potential driver crashes or potential interrupt sharing violations. If you have already run Setsound - you can always run it again to switch the sound off. Setsound.exe lives in the root game folder. NB - when switching sound back on after fixing the video, should you have SoundBlaster emulation, be aware that there are 2 SoundBlaster emulations (pro and 16)in the menu of sound drivers - if one does not work, try the other. XP - Graphics Card VESA Support and the Geforce2 MX400 In order to play any MSDOS game on Windows systems of any flavour, your graphics card drivers must be able to handle VESA graphics. Unfortunately one model of graphics card which is widely fitted to new XP computers does not support MSDOS VESA graphics. If you have a Geforce2 MX400 chipset based card fitted to your PC, you will not be likely to play and Steel Panthers game in Windows XP (or other games such as Falcon 4 either). Geforce2 MX400 chipset XP have no VESA support. (NB - the Geforce2 MX400 chipset apparently works fine with SP in Windows versions prior to XP - it is only their newer Windows XP drivers that have no VESA support.) Some 80 to 90%% of the users who complain about being unable to play SPWW2 or SPMBT turn out to have this budget model 3D card installed in their PC. It is a showstopper. Almost all users with a video card based on this chipset when running on XP cannot get DOS games to work at all. The classic complaint with this card (or any other without VESA support) is that the game will lock up solid a few minutes into turn 1, or if using the scenario editor. The test to see if your card has valid VESA drivers is to open up a DOS window (Called a command prompt in XP) - navigate to the game directory with the usual CD command. (CD /? for help!). Run UNIVESA.EXE by typing UNIVESA at the command prompt. Should this come back complaining about lack of VESA - your XP video card does not have DOS VESA support. My solution to the Geforce2 MX card problem was to replace the MX400 chipset based Geforce2 card with an SIS chipset based card from the exact same manufacturer. (I had already tried the supplied video drivers, as well as the latest from the nVidia site with no success). The game then played fine, in fact I used the default SIS driver that Windows XP provided, there was no need to use the drivers CD supplied with the card (A Mercury, same maker as the Geforce2 MX chipset card that I threw away). As a further test, I used an old Mach 64PCI card that I had lying around and it worked fine as well. I also fitted a very old Cirrus Logic PCI card and the game ran happily. NB - it is only the 'budget' Geforcecard that has the problem - we have had reports that e.g. the Geforce4 Ti 4400 card works fine in XP, as does the GeForce 3 Ti200. So - if you have a Geforce2 MX400 chipset based card, you will need to change to a different card. One alternative solution employed by some users is to set the computer up as dual boot - both Windows 98 and Windows XP, as the earlier Windows 98 drivers do have VESA support. XP - Setting up your Shortcut This is as described in the game Guide for Windows 98 - and many have done exactly as described with no more, then run the game quite happily. This section shows the other bits and how I set up my Athlon 1600 system. 1) Navigate to the directory (folder) you installed the game to using explorer. 2) Locate the game executable (either of SPMBT.EXE or SPWW2.EXE) using Windows Explorer. 3) Select the file with the mouse, right click drag (drag with the right mouse button held down) to the desktop, and drop the file on the desktop. Select the Create Shortcuts Here option when you release the file. 4) you now have a shortcut on the desktop. Right click on this and select the Properties tab. Program Tab - as per the Game Guide for Windows 98, Remember that some graphics cards are too dumb to detect full screen requests for DOS VESA and may need Run Maximised selected. Use Change Icon if you do not like the default MSDOS command prompt icon - navigate to the ICO sub-directory of the game for a selection of icons. The Advanced button is worth clicking to see where the AUTOEXEC file is located, should you need to install mousectl.com if your mouse is unresponsive. (%SystemRoot% usually equates to the Windows directory). I left Compatible timer hardware emulation checked. Compatibility - this new for XP tab may have some effect on your system. I did not check any of the boxes Run in 256 Colours, Run in 640 x 480 screen resolution, or Disable visual themes and it all worked fine, but your system may differ. Therefore at least at first, check (tick) them all!. I run the game in Windows 98/Me compatibility mode, though not ticking the compatibility check box seems to have no effect on my system. Some XP systems may only be able to play the game in safe mode so if all else fails, try this as a last resort. XP - Slow MSDOS Mouse Some users complain about a very slow mouse in DOS windows (and games and other applications) under Windows XP. I had this problem with the mouse with the initial set-up of XP as delivered. In this case - the Microsoft IntelliMouse software had not been installed. Simply installing that and setting the mouse speed to maximum gave me a speed increase of 4 or 5 times wheninside the game. Still not very good. (My Windows 98 machine has a Logitech mouse and the mouse control for this has settings for mouse acceleration - but the Microsoft Intellimouse 4 software does not. Unfortunately my copy of the Logitech driver CD was too well hidden to find and install it on the XP box for test <G!>). I therefore proceeded on to installation of mousectrl.com (which can be found at the sandbox site link above). I will assume here that you know how to use Windows explorer, how to set it up to show file extensions, and how to set it up to show hidden or system files - if not, it is explained in your windows help, type "hidden extension" into the help search in XP. 1) download the mousectl.com software from here http://www.manyhighways.com/sandbox and extract from the zip file to say your Windows folder, or c:\ 2) find the file autoexec.nt (usually in your Windows/System32 folder - however check your shortcut that you made in the above section - check the program tab, Advanced button, and check the Autoexec Filename item) and modify it as follows (remember to use a text editor like notepad!) At the very end of the file, add the following lines
The 8 settings govern mouse acceleration 'curve' - you may want to experiment with these values. Start with lower numbers on the left hand side, growing to higher ones. 10 seems to be 100% mouse speed, 50 is half, 15 is 150%. Experiment till you get the mouse moving the way you like it, for example 6,6,6,10,15,20,25,30 would have the mouse move at the same speed for some time, then ramp up rather fast as it passes threshold number 3. 5,6,10,15,15,15,15,15 would ramp up fast, then remain flat. (Note that the naming of the file as autoexec.nt tells you something about the XP operating system's origins - i.e. Windows NT <G!>) XP - SoundBlaster Emulator If your sound card does not have DOS SoundBlaster emulation, see the link to the sandbox at the head of this page, and check out "VDMSound", or do a Google search on that keyword.
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