Copyright: Brass Polish Help ©1995 Peter Donnelly


Contents
BRASS POLISH v. 3

by Peter Donnelly and Stuart Gillespie

Copyright © 1995, 1996 Peter Donnelly

CONTENTS

You can browse through this file by using the << and >> buttons on the Help toolbar.

Benefits of Registration

Overview

Preferences

Opening a Saved Game

Editing

Renaming units

Switching between BP and AG

Locating Equipment Data

Equipment Pool

To Change Equipment

Equipment Specifications

Printing Equipment Specs

Printing a Game

Keyboard Shortcuts

Disclaimer


BENEFITS OF REGISTRATION

BRASS POLISH is being distributed as shareware. If you like the program, and intend to continue using it beyond a reasonable evaluation period, you are expected to pay for it.

In return for your registration fee of $12, you will receive a full-featured version of the program that:

1  Displays full specifications of any equipment type

2  Prints tables of specs for equipment types as they are selected and sorted in the equipment list

3  Prints the complete list of units in a game

4  Shows icons for all Allied General and Panzer General (Windows version) units and equipment types.

You can see samples of the specs window, the specs printout, and the game printout in the shareware version of the program.

Here's How

If you have a CompuServe account:

GO SWREG and search for registration ID 7839. As soon as we receive notice of your registration, we will e-mail the enhanced version to you. This generally happens within a day. The price will be billed to your CIS account.

If you don't:

Send a check on a U.S. bank for $12, or an equivalent postal money order or bank draft in U.S. funds, to the address below. Canadian customers may pay by a check for $16 in Canadian funds.

Be sure to specify that your order is for BRASS POLISH, and please allow two to four weeks for delivery of the diskette.

Skookum Software

1301 Ryan Street

Victoria BC

Canada V8T 4Y8

For more information about Skookum products, please visit our Web site:

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/skookum


OVERVIEW

BRASS POLISH is an unofficial, unauthorized saved-game viewer and editor for Strategic Simulations, Inc.'s superb wargames Panzer General (DOS and Windows 95 versions) and Allied General. It also contains a handy data browser with (for registered users) full specifications of all equipment types.

Among other things, the program lets you boost your own prestige and lower your enemy's. You can change the date of Poland to make better equipment available -- or just turn your Pz1As into Tigers. You can recruit Bulgarian Infantry, pump them up with steroids, load them onto Me262s, and call them the Flying Borises. You can give an extra ration of gasoline to your favorite heavy bomber, mount your infantry on tanks, or, if you have a mind for it, defend the Gustav Line with entrenched Bismarcks. But sorry, we draw the line at editing PBEM files.

Only limited range-checking is performed, and there is no guarantee that the numbers you put in won't blow up the game or worse. Please, back up at least your save files before experimenting, and read the disclaimer.


PREFERENCES

If View: Hints is checked, when you put the mouse cursor over an edit box you will get a hint about the range of values allowed in that box.


OPENING A SAVED GAME

You must load a saved-game file as the correct type by selecting from the submenu that appears when you select File: Open Game....In particular, be careful not to load a Win95 PG game as an AG game, or vice versa. BRASS POLISH cannot tell the difference between these two kinds of files and will get very confused about scenario names, unit art, etc. if you load one as the wrong type.

The program automatically loads the last file you worked on (if it still exists) and remembers what type of file it was.


EDITING

Once you have opened a saved-game file, the main program window is filled with a two-page tabbed notebook. On the Game page you edit details of the game environment, while on the Units page you can change the characteristics of all units in the game.

Game Page

To change the length of time remaining in a game, edit Turns left on the Game page. Last turn affects only the numbering of the turns within the game: The game decides what turn it is by subtracting "Turns left" from "Last turn". To retain the correct numbering of turns you should therefore adjust both fields by the same amount.

In the Weather section, Turns till front determines how long it will be before the weather turns from fair to poor, or vice versa. Wetness refers to the condition of the ground: zero is dry, and 5 is very muddy or frozen.

Units Page

The Units page contains two tabbed unit lists, Axis and Allied. You can select a unit from a list by clicking on it, or scroll through the list with the arrow keys or by clicking on the red arrows. Each time a unit is selected, its particulars are displayed in the edit boxes.

Dead or inactive units are shown in red in the list. You can put such a unit into the game by giving it strength. Be sure to place it on an empty hexagon. In an AG campaign scenario, you can't revive a unit before deployment.

The Equipment section of the Units page shows what equipment is assigned to the unit, including transport. You can't edit these fields directly; you must select new equipment from the Equipment Pool. You can, however, eliminate a unit's transport by selecting the appropriate edit box and pressing the Delete key. You can't remove a basic unit from the list -- to remove it from the game, set its strength to zero.

The radio buttons in the Mounted box allow you to select the unit's current mode of transport. Note that if you delete the transport of a mounted unit, the unit's mounted status is automatically set to "No." The program doesn't prevent you from mounting a unit on non-existent transport if you want to see how the game deals with this situation, but the radio-button captions will turn red as a warning.

Sometimes when you revive a unit or change its location it is not visible on the game map when you load the edited file. Such invisible units are, however, selectable and moveable, and will reappear on the next turn.

Tip: In PG-DOS, when you want to bolster your army at the beginning of a campaign scenario, first deploy and then save. Auxiliary troops are not assigned until you enter the deployment phase, so you won't be able to edit them in the save file from the end of the last scenario. And of course you won't yet have access to the new enemy forces.

See also Renaming units.


RENAMING UNITS

A unit is automatically renamed when you change its basic equipment, provided you have not created a custom name either in the game or by using the Name edit box on the Units page.

Once you make any manual change in the Name edit box, neither BRASS POLISH nor the game will change the name when equipment is upgraded.

Allied General v. 1.0 allows up to 19 characters in user-defined unit names, but if you use more than 18 you will see garbage after the name when it appears on screen. This is because the 20th byte, normally a zero indicating the end of a string, is set to non-zero as a flag to indicate that the name is user-defined. To avoid the problem, BRASS POLISH allows only 18 characters in user-defined names for AG.


SWITCHING BETWEEN BP AND A GAME

You can keep BRASS POLISH and AG or PG-Win95 open in Windows at the same time and switch between them. (PG-DOS version 1.x when run under Windows does not let you switch to another application.)

Whenever you switch back to BP, it checks to see if the active saved-game file is current. If it is not (i.e. you have saved from within the game), it rereads the file.

Of course, if you make changes in a file with BP, you have to save in BP and then load the save file into the game before those changes become effective.


LOCATING EQUIPMENT DATA

The first time you load a saved game for either Allied General, Panzer General (DOS), or Panzer General (Win95), the program prompts you to locate the main directory for the game. This is so BRASS POLISH can find data it needs.

If you're using the CD version of Panzer General (DOS), locate the root directory of the CD. If youre using the hard-disk version, locate the game directory, e.g. C:\PANZER.

For Panzer General (Win95) and Allied General, locate the root directory of the CD.

Note: Future versions of the games may use a different directory structure. In particular, in any future bundle of AG and PG on the same disc, AG will probably look for its data files in the SHARED directory. If for any reason you cannot get BP to find the data it needs, edit or add the appropriate lines in BRASS.INI so that they contain the full path of the data files for the game you are having trouble with. Here is a sample of the relevant sections in BRASS.INI:

[Equipment]

Panzer95=d:\shared\data\panzequp.eqp

Allied=d:\ag\data\panzequp.eqp

Panzer=c:\games\panzer\dat\panzequp.eqp

[Art]

Panzer95=d:\shared\art\tileart.dat

Allied=d:\ag\art\tileart.dat

You may also want to edit these lines if you have done a full installation of any of the CD games and want to be able to use BRASS POLISH even when the CD is not mounted. In this case you would edit the paths to point to the appropriate files on the hard drive.


EQUIPMENT POOL

You can open the Equipment Pool in three ways:

1. From the main menu, or with the Ctrl-E shortcut. You have to load a saved-game file first, so BRASS POLISH knows which equipment table to use. Equipment types of all classes are listed, sorted alphabetically.

2. From the Units page, by double-clicking on one of the three equipment types shown for the unit being edited. If there is equipment in that box, it is highlighted in the list, and only equipment of the same class is shown.

3. From the Units page, with the Pool button. This has the same effect as double-clicking on the Basic Unit edit box. If you're using shortcut keys, Alt-P always gets a list of the types in the basic class, and Ctrl-E gets the full list containing all classes.

Once in the Equipment Pool, you can change the classes displayed, and the sort order, with the Options button. Ctrl-E always resets the list to all classes, sorted by name.


TO CHANGE EQUIPMENT

In the list box on the Units page, highlight the unit that is to receive new equipment. Open or switch to the Equipment Pool. Note that the name of the selected unit appears in the Assign to box. Highlight the desired item in the equipment list, then click on the Basic, Organic, or Air/Sea button, according to how you want to assign the equipment. The name of the new type immediately appears in the appropriate box on the Units page.

You can also assign equipment by dragging the selected item from the Equipment Pool to one of the edit boxes in the Equipment section of the Units page. Or you can drag the item to a unit in the unit list. If you use the last method, trucks and air or sea transport are automatically assigned to the appropriate transport category, while any other type is assigned to the basic unit.

If you want to change equipment for several units or just keep the equipment list handy for reference, click the Stay on top checkbox in the Equipment Pool window.

A unit is automatically renamed when you change its basic equipment, provided it does not have a user-defined name. See Renaming units.


EQUIPMENT SPECIFICATIONS

In the Equipment Pool, click the Specs button to get the specifications of the highlighted equipment type, or double-click on any item in the list.

You can leave the Specifications window open and return to the Equipment Pool to select other types for viewing, or remain in the Specifications window and flip pages with either the PageUp and PageDown keys or the buttons.

The Specifications window is "stay on top" by default so that it will always pop up in front of the Equipment Pool. If you have checked the Stay on top checkbox in the Equipment Pool, you can bring that window to the front again by clicking on it; but if you need to bring the main program window to the front, you will have to close the Specifications window.


PRINTING EQUIPMENT SPECS

The Print button in the Equipment Pool window lets you print out the specs for whatever equipment types are listed, and in the same order.

If you have any problems printing in the standard format, or simply want to lay out the information differently, check Print to file in the Print dialog and import the resulting file into a text editor or word processor for formatting and printing. Use a fixed-width font like Courier to keep the columns lined up.

Abbreviations

Date	available from
Val	reinforcement cost (1/12 purchase cost)
Mvt	movement
Spt	spotting range
MxFl	maximum fuel
MxAm	maximum ammo
Int	initiative
Rng	attack range
SA	soft attack
HA	hard attack
AA	air attack
NA	naval attack
GD	ground defense
AD	air defense
CD	close defense (anti-sub [ASW] for ships)
TT	target type (Air, Naval, Soft, Hard)
MT	movement type


PRINTING A GAME

The File: Print... menu choice lets you print out information on the game currently being edited, including variables for all the units. Any changes you have made are reflected in the printout, even if you haven't yet saved the file.

If you have any problems printing in the standard format, or simply want to lay out the information differently, check Print to file in the Print dialog and import the resulting file into a text editor or word processor for formatting and printing. Use a fixed-width font like Courier to keep the columns lined up.

Abbreviations

Cl	map column
Rw	map row
St	strength
Ex	experience
Su	suppression
En	entrenchment
Fu	fuel
Am	ammo
Mv	movement left
Ks	kills
An asterisk after an equipment name indicates that the basic unit is currently mounted on that equipment.


KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS

In addition to the usual Alt key combinations signified by underlined characters, and other standard Windows keystrokes, the following can be used:

Ctrl-E	Show Equipment Pool, or reset to it to the full alphabetical list
Ctrl-O	Open file
Ctrl-P	Print details of game
Ctrl-S	Save file
Ctrl-Tab	Switch between Axis and Allied on the Units page
PgUp/PgDn	Get previous/next record in Specifications window
Up/Down	The arrows scroll the highlight in the unit list even when the focus is in an edit box. This enables you to change all strengths, for example, without constantly switching between the list box and the edit box.


DISCLAIMER

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PRODUCT IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PRODUCT PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.

IN NO EVENT WILL PETER DONNELLY, STUART GILLESPIE, OR SKOOKUM SOFTWARE BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PRODUCT (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PRODUCT TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.