The WinSPMBT V1.0 installer is 100mb

1. The v2.0 Upgrade is 13mb
2. The v2.5 Upgrade is 3.5mb
3. The v3.0 Upgrade is 27mb
4. The v3.5 Upgrade is 30mb
5. The v4.0 Upgrade is 20mb

What is WinSPMBT?

WinSPMBT ( Windows, Steel Panthers, Main Battle Tank ) is a Post World War II combined arms tactical level wargame. Its time frame covers 1946 to 2020 AD. WinSPMBT has 92 nation's forces available for historical or "what-if" experimental battles.

It is hexagon based, and the game is an alternating turn based (I go you go or IGOUGO) design. One unit playing piece represents one vehicle or gun, or an infantry section or squad of up to 13 men or a section of 1 to 4 support weapons.

One game hexagon represents 50 metres of terrain. One game move (player 1 turn plus player 2 turn) represents roughly 3 minutes of 'real time'.

The code was based on SSI's Steel Panthers but the game is a long way from SP2.

Game Requirements

Windows 95,98, ME, Windows2000 or XP. DirectX 5 or higher installed.

Recommended CPU would be a Pentium 2 of 500 MHz or better, DirectX 8.1 or better, and a video card (3D DirectX features are not used) with 32MB of on board video RAM. A basic Windows sound card will suffice for the MP3 sound .

The minimum specification system tested was a Pentium I 233MHz Running Windows 95, DirectX 5, 48MB RAM, STB Nitro 3D graphics card (Circa 1997 according to the video drivers, video RAM size not known). This played the game Ok at 640 pixels wide full screen mode, however response was unacceptable at 1024 pixels game resolution.

The main development machine is a Windows 98 Pentium 2 450 MHz Dell of 1998 vintage with DirectX 8.1 installed. Ram is 128MB, video card is an NVIDIA RIVA TNT 2 Model 64 with 32MB of video RAM. This system will play the game fine at 1152 windowed or full screen, and will play it at up to 1600 mode full screen though performance gets a bit "choppy" there especially with larger battles

The other development machines were a Windows XP machine with an AMD Athlon 1900, 256MB RAM, fitted with a 128MB RADEON 19200 with 128MB of VRAM installed and DirectX 9 and a Dell Dimension 4100 WinME machine with a Pentium III 800 and 128 MB RAM using a ATI Rage 128 Pro video card and DirectX 9. The game runs fine in 1600x1200 windowed mode on both these systems.

Game Options Programme

The Game Options programme allows you to preset some of the more common game preferences and access to our utility programs. This is what you will first see when you start up the game

Game Options, Tab 1 ( Main )

Show Introduction- Turns the start up splash screen on or off.

Game Mode- Sets up the game to start in as a Window or Full screen and to use Direct X or GDI. GDI may be useful in some windows emulators e.g. on Linux. Normally DirectX is recommended.

Screen/Window Size- Set to 640x480 or 800x600. If you own the CD with the game enhancements you can additionally set the screen resolution to 1024x768, 1152x864, 1280x1024 and 1600x1280. The maximum game resolution is determined by your systems display resolution. If you have your monitor set to 1152x864 then that is the maximum size for the game as well.

Default battle pairing- Choose your standard battle opponents here for when setting up a battle once the game starts.

Battle Date- Presets the default battle date that appears for generated battles. Note that if the chosen date is out of range for the pair of nations selected then the game will choose a suitable default battle date which is in range for both.

Play WinSPMBT- Starts the game, closing the Options Programme, with the options as you have set up here.

Exit- Exits Game Options, saves the game settings you chose, but does not play the game.

Game Options, Tab 2 ( Misc )

Map Scroll Sensitivity Zone- Sets how close to the edge of the map window the auto-scrolling starts to move the map. Set this to 0 if you do not like mouse map-edge scrolling. (NB - Mouse scrolling is not checked for in the edge portions of the map covered by the mini-map display).

Scroll speed- Sets how fast the scrolling works. Different machines and players will need different settings for optimal useage. 0 is scroll as fast as possible.

Show ID Numbers- Sets the game to show the unit and formation numbers in the game. Generally this is for OOB designers use, but it is very useful for reporting bugs to the design team, as you can then say "Unit 123 - Leo 1" which will point us to the exact unit in question, especially if there are several Leo 1's in that OOB.

Show most ranges in- Set the game to report ranges in Hexes, Yards or Metres.

Shotgun V-Hex%- Set's how often you will get the The Camo Workshop individual Victory hexes routine and how often the tradition 3 x 7 V hex clusters will appear

Interface Mouse click- Turns ON or OFF the mouse sound F/X that are used when clicking on the various buttons etc in the game

Graphics Delay- This adjusts the minimum wait between screen frames in Milliseconds ( zero is fastest ). Use larger numbers to slow down fast CPU's

Unit Move Delay- This adjusts how long a unit "waits" on a hex in a multi hex move. If you feel the movement is too slow turn this number down. If you have a fast CPU and the units are moving too fast for your taste adjust this number higher

Reset Default settings- Resets all settings to "factory spec"

GameOptions, Tab 3 ( Utilities )

PBEM Games - Clicking on this opens the \WinSPMBT\PBEM Games folder with Windows Explorer and allows PBEM players easy access to their PBEM files for zipping and sending to their opponents.

Tournament Games - Allows Tournament organizers easy access to the Tournament folder when sending out their games. This is only operational in the extend features CD version

Manage OOB Sets - This is a wonderful new feature for WinSPMBT that allows players to store an infinite number of custom OOB sets and load them into the game anytime they want and be able to restore the default OOB's just as easily. It is no longer necessary to juggle custom OOB's that may come with a PBEM or Tournament game or even a special OOB for a scenario. The procedure is fast and simple. First click on "Manage OOB Sets and this screen will appear

Next, click on the "Pick Custom OOB set" button and this screen will appear...

The game is issued with one folder as an example. The custom OOB's would be inside this or any other folder found under \Game Data\OOBs\Custom OOBS There are NO custom OOB's in there when you first open the game now but this is where you would create the folders to hold them.

You do NOT need to make a complete set of OOBs. It can be as little as one OOB. This example below has four custom OOB's

To load a custom set all you need to do is click on ONE of the OOBs then press the OPEN button. When you do this screen appears

Now press the INSTALL button and this screen will appear

Click on Yes and this screen will appear

Your custom OOB's will now load when you start the game!

When you want to restore the default OOB's ( always a good idea when playing a scenario or campaign!) the procedure is quite simple.

Start up the OOB manager. When the screen loads click on the

button , answer Yes when the confirmation screen appears and all the default game OOB's will be reloaded.

You can add as many custom OOB folders as you can keep track of and name the folders whatever you like so you could have something like this after playing the game for awhile

There is no limit to the number of sets you can have on hand to load into the game and restoring the as-issued set is a button click away. You can edit the OOB's with MoBHack and save them with the SAVE AS button into the custom OOB folders. You can also run the cost calculator from the custom folders on individual OOB's. You CANNOT run batch calc on custom sets unless you do it from the main OOB folder. You can always restore the as-issued set afterwards as they are stored in another folder. NEVER MoBHack the set of OOB's in the DEFAULT OOB's folder. ALWAYS use the games set in the regular OOB folder as a starting point. Even if you feel the need to alter most or all of the OOB's for one reason of the other you should store them in a custom folder and load them into your game from there.

MoBHack OOB editor - Allows you access to our OOB editor. For more information on MoBHack please return to the GameOptions screen and click on the HELP tab then "MoBHack Help"

OOB Cost Calculator - Allows you to run the OOB cost calculator program . For more information on The OOB Cost Calculator please return to the GameOptions screen and click on the HELP tab then "MoBHack Help". When that help file appears click on "Running the Cost Calculator"

Extended map editor - Allows access to the new extended map editor with cut and paste capability only available as an extra feature on the CD.

For more information on the new Map Editor click HERE

ScenHack scenario Utility - for V3 -bonus feature for for CD holders A utility for scenario maintenance that allows players to delete, move scenarios to another scenario slot (i.e. renumber), or to copy an existing scenario to another slot as well as providing extensive repair and editing functions for existing scenarios as an extra feature on the CD.

For more information about ScenHack click HERE

CampaignHack Campaign Utility - for V3- bonus feature for CD holders Allows the conversion of existing DOS based campaigns to work with WinSPMBT and allows the extraction of a campaigns scenarios into the scenario menu for alteration. Previous to this it was impossible to alter existing scenarios in a campaign without having the original scenarios in their original slots as an extra feature on the CD.

For more information about CampaignHack click HERE

GameOptions, Tab 4 ( Help)

Game Documentation: Game Manual- Start up the Game Guide from here

Links to Websites- Links to WinSPMBT Websites

Introduction screen

Game Main Screen

Unit Information Screen

Preferences Screen

A Sample 1600x1200 screen shot

Click on the image to see the full sized 1600x1200 screen shot

( You will need your monitor set to 1600x1200 to see the entire screen shot without having to scroll )

Additional scenarios for winSPMBT can be found at

Return to the Main SP Camo Page