Steel Panthers

Steel Panthers Hex Specs
------------------------


I was fooling around with Steel Panthers save and
scenario files, trying, without complete success, to
convert a campaign scenario into a normal scenario.

I want to play the other side, to see how I
would do against my 'own' core units, after playing
the battle the normal way.

Has anyone been able to do this?

The one hurdle I can't get passed is allowing
a human to play the 'computer' side. It always
gives me the 'you can't do that in campaigns' error
message on starting a converted save game when I
try to switch between computer and human on the
'side 2' startup screen.

I found that you can just copy any save game over
to the scenario directory, and it becomes a scenario
without any editing! You can bring it up in the scenario
editor and fool with it, save it again, and all appears
to work. (Except that darn 'campaign mode' flag.)

Using the editor, only saving the map and creating a
new scenario with that map allowed me to play either
side, but all units are lost. I really don't feel like
manually writing down both sides units and positions to
rebuild the scenario just to play the reverse.

So I worked on the file at the byte level using
UGE (Universal Game Editor) to compare and fiddle
the binary files. Here's what I'm sure of, after
about 6 hours of work:
(Offset 0 is the first byte of the file)

Offset Certain Meaning
------ ------------------------
37513 Month (1=Jan,2=Feb,...12=Dec)
37514 Year (last two digits, 44=1944)
37515 Weather (0=Desert, 1=Summer, 2=Winter)
37524 Scenario Length (number of turns, 0=Infinite)

37526 Flag 0 X Coordinate (0,0 is top left)
..
37546 Flag 20 X Coord (x is

37547 Flag 0 Y Coord
..
37567 Flag 20 Y Coord

37568 Flag 0 Value (0=no value)
..
37588 Flag 20 Value

37589 Flag 0 Owner (0=Side1?, 1=Side2?)
..
37609 Flag 20 Owner

37626 Scenario Location (city/area name)
..37645

37612 Visibility (range in hexes)



These are wild guesses:

Offset Range Meaning
------------ -------
0:3757 Side 1 Leader Names
3758:7501 Side 2 Leader Names
13510:15009 Side 1 Units
15010:16500 Side 2 Units

37646:53644 Some sort of table(s) that have an unstable sort
such that editing and saving a scenario without
doing a single thing will result in different values!
VERY IRRITATING! 123 changes to 119 then back to 123
on successive saves. (123->122->123 also)

53645:510197 The MAP!


I think the campaign switches are here, but I'll
be darned if I can find the 'off' flag! I've
tryed about 15 combos without success.
(The sample values in parens are from campaign
scenarios, the ones after are from normal scenarios.)
(NOPE, means I switched values from campaign->reg
without success in playing side 2 as human.)

Offset (Campaign)Samples Meaning?
37511 (2,2,1,2),2,2
12 (4,2,4,75),90,9
13 Proven Month
14 Proven Year
15 Proven Weather
16 (1,1,1,1),0,0 NOPE
17 (3,1,3,5),3,3
18 (0,0,0,0),0,0
19 (12,12,10,10),7,7 NOPE
20 (2,2,3,3),2,1
21 (1,1,2,2),0,1
22 (1,1,1,3),1,1
23 (2,2,2,0),2,1
24 Proven Turn Length
25 (0,0,0,0),0,0
(flag 0-20 sections)

37612 Proven Visiblity Range
13 (0,3,2,0),0 NOPE
14 (72,82,114,178),0 NOPE Remaining Core Buy Points?
15 (5,4,3,4),0 NOPE Scenario in Campaign?
16 (0,0,0,0),0
17 (0,0,0,0),0
18 (1,2,2,2),0 NOPE
19 (0,0,0,0),0
20 (0,0,0,254),0
21 (0,0,0,255),0
22 (2,1,2,0),0 NOPE
23 (2,1,2,6),0 NOPE
24 (1,0,1,1),0 NOPE
25 (1,1,2,4),0 NOPE
26.. Proven Location Name

(Some sort of table with number pairs follows).


I've exhausted all ideas and can't see any other
usefull parts of the scen file to fiddle with,
either the numbers aren't consistent between
campaign and non-campaign, or it just seems like
unrelated table data.

Oddly I never got a hard crash after byte fiddling,
but sometimes the unit types/sides got mixed up.

Anyone with any ideas???

-- Paul A. Youkey -- Westerville, Ohio -- pauyou@symix.com --