Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

New MechWarrior Announced, MechWarrior4 To Be Distributed Free

Posted by Soulskill on from the as-in-beer dept.

Vamman writes "In light of the recent announcement of the new MechWarrior game, Smith and Tinker has granted our online dev team MekTek.net (which has been supporting MechWarrior for almost a decade now) permission to release MechWarrior 4 entirely for free using the same type of distribution model that id Games used for Quake3's free release.

37 of 229 comments (clear)

  1. Woo-hoo by RogueyWon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Excellent news about Mechwarrior 4. I wonder if the stand-alone Mercenaries spin-off (which I preferred) is also included (I note the expansions are)?

    Also good news that if the screenshots/concept art are anything to go by, they plan on doing this properly. It doesn't look to me like some arcade-ified MechAssault type of game. I used to love the Mechwarrior games, partially because the complexity made it feel like you really were in command of a huge lump of metal. I don't expect they'll use half the keyboard on controls again, but if they can get something with even a vaguely sim-like feel, I'll be delighted.

    I'm also very pleased that they're jumping back in the time-line. The Clans are great, and it would be neat if this game could feature the Clan invasion as its finale (like Battletech 2 and Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries), but I always felt that the narrative just meandered after that. Plus it's actually a lot of fun trying to survive in relatively primative mechs like the Jenner.

    1. Re:Woo-hoo by bigstrat2003 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The main thing I'm concerned about them getting down is the tweaking. By far the best part, for me, was always building your own mechs, coming up with new combinations. It was especially great if you had a regular opponent: my roommate and I were always looking to one-up or counter the other's newest mech design. That's the key part of the game to get right, in my opinion. If they get that, the rest isn't too hard to have fall into place.

      --
      "16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
    2. Re:Woo-hoo by RogueyWon · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yes, that was great as well. I quite liked the balance they reached in MW4 with that, where you had room to tweak, but had to keep the categories of weapons etc vaguely in line with the original ethos of the chassis. So a laser-heavy mech might only be able to use energy weapons in a lot of its slots. It struck me as a good way of finding a balance between allowing for customisation, without turning it into a game of pure min/maxing.

    3. Re:Woo-hoo by Altus · · Score: 2

      ahhh medium pulse lasers.

      --

      "In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson

    4. Re:Woo-hoo by Shadow+of+Eternity · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Sorry but that just doesn't fly when you actually play a PC game. I think it's cute that people are that obsessed with how it was originally configured in a tabletop game but there's no logical reason to start forcing me to use lasers instead of autocannons just because that's whan someone else did.

      Gameplaywise I think MW2 really had it set. You could do pretty much anything you wanted, including strapping nothing but machineguns and PPCs to a mech that'd been stripped down to a leafblower for the engine and 3 sandwich wrappers for a heatsink. You'd explode if you tried to fire and never get anywhere but you COULD do it. It was up to you to find effective loadouts, you weren't shoehorned into it by some consoleized list of restrictions.

      --
      A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
    5. Re:Woo-hoo by RobotRunAmok · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's not a matter of being cute, it was a matter of improving on the logic of the game. There you were in a Madcat, the most iconic of all the mechs, with what were clearly two shoulders filled with missiles (or something that looked pretty close to them) and you were --- what? saying "Pay no attention to those things that look like missiles, they're REALLY a mix of lasers and machine guns" ?

      Video games are a visual medium. Function should follow form, especially in a giant robot. Especially in Multiplayer. Imagine playing Halo online and what looks like a pistol in your opponent's hand is really a BFG.

      I think it's cute that people are that obsessed with how it was originally configured in a tabletop game
      Seems to me you're the guy who should be playing the pen and paper game. Maybe upgrade yourself to a spreadsheet, and you can tweak your mathematical "what ifs" to your heart's content.

    6. Re:Woo-hoo by RogueyWon · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yes, I was going to repond to the grandparent, but you've said it all better than I would have done. For me, the biggest defect of MW2, particularly Mercenaries, was the way that all of the mechs felt so generic once you got into the tweaking. They were basically all just slightly differently shaped shells with a set amount of capacity for weapons.

      As you say, in Mechwarrior 4, your mech's function actually had to match its form to some degree. There were actually mechs that had a lot of versatile slots for their weapons, making them completely customisable, but these mechs tended to have glaring defects elsewhere.

      It also meant that when I picked out my lance for the mission, I actually ended up arranging it so that the lance looked and felt plausible within the context of the fiction. If I wanted a long range support mech, I'd be using a Catapult or a Vulture, not a Zeus stuffed with invisible missile racks.

      It's funny, really, how excited I am that they've gone back to an early time-line setting. I mean, I do hope the Clans show up at some point, even if only in the multiplayer, but my defining memories of Battletech and Mechwarrior games basically revolve around frantically scuttling about in a lance of Locust and Jenner type mechs, with a couple of SRMs and lasers, frantically trying to come up with a way to take down a Dragon.

    7. Re:Woo-hoo by CAIMLAS · · Score: 2, Informative

      Yep, MW2 had it set. I was pretty disappointed with MW3 and MW3 loadout ability. It was really restrictive compared to MW2. I couldn't use my favorite combinations.

      I had a friend who loved the Jenner and, god forbid, the Uller for multiplayer. He'd strip the armor down to nothing, give it a handful of heatsinks and a jumpjet or two, boost up the engines to the max, and outfit it just a handful of small lasers. He was devistating against anything but other similarly equipped mechs: he'd avoid all incoming fire with finesse, get in close, and either get up underneath you and shoot the cockpit out (quickly) or follow you (if you were in a medium or other light mech) and shoot the backside middle of the chassis out. It was a really good technique, and he could do it while avoiding another mech as well.

      In 3 and 4, a lot of the more esoteric combinations didn't really work. For that matter, it was largely a moot point; they'd changed the chassis on most mechs enough, as well as the general aiming and gameplay, that it didn't matter much. Pretty frustrating.

      The other thing about 3 and 4 I didn't like was that LRMs weren't as effective for actual long-range use, it seemed.

      --
      ~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
    8. Re:Woo-hoo by Bakkster · · Score: 4, Informative

      So the developers laziness or technological limitations are just cause for forcing players to choose specific loadouts?

      No, it's the game canon. Most Mechs are not intensely customizable. They have some hardpoints for mounting, and it makes sense that some hardpoints might not have the hardware to accept any old weapon. Energy weapon hardpoints will have large power and coolant conduits. ACs and Missiles will have smaller energy/coolant conduits, and ammo feed mechanisms. Additional modifications would not be within the realm of possiblity for a mercenary lance or other small combat group.

      It seems a fair assumption that the MadCat designers (in canon) would not find the need to place ammo feeds into the arms (where the PPCs were located) or high-power conduits to the missile pods.

      --
      Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
    9. Re:Woo-hoo by Khyber · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Welcome to Slashdot.

      Now start taking the time to use proper spelling and grammar. You're not in high school any longer, so act and speak like an adult or shut the fuck up and go play with the children.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    10. Re:Woo-hoo by SuiteSisterMary · · Score: 3, Informative

      Exactly. Classic CLASSIC BattleTech, where a 'mech was often a family heirloom, battles were as much ritual combat as anything else, and MechWarriors were akin to pilots in WW1.

      All got farked up when the GDL found that damn Star League memory core and New Avalon Academy of Science started unlocking lostech....

      (hope I remembered all that fluff properly - been a while, but dammit, I'm going to reread the Warrior trilogy tonight. Justin Allard for the win!)

      --
      Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
    11. Re:Woo-hoo by Shadow+of+Eternity · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Take a look at how many other mechs you destroy in the average mechwarrior game and at how readily we can retrofit things here on earth. If they can make a giant walking robot (which is already physically impossible by it's design) then it isn't much more of a leap to think they could just take the missiles out of what is essentially a giant empty rack and put something else in there and plug it in.

      The mech universe is inherently self-contradicting if you go by what you've put forth. Mechs are a rare commodity and yet you destroy hordes of them, mechs are specifically designed and yet their designs are ineffective and tend towards being self-destructive, you can keep maintained these massive and supremely complicated machines but you can't move some weapons around the chassis.

      The logic just doesn't work in it's own context.

      --
      A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
    12. Re:Woo-hoo by X0563511 · · Score: 2, Informative

      You don't know what you are talking about.

      The event in question is the Eternal September, and that happened before Diablo. It also had nothing to do with instant messaging.

      --
      For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
    13. Re:Woo-hoo by slaker · · Score: 2, Informative

      Based on my recollection of the original Mechwarrior RPG, the Inner Sphere states controlled between them somewhere between 300 and 400 regiments, each consisting of roughly 100 battlemechs. Add in all the mercenaries, pirates and periphery powers and figure that maybe there might be a total of 50,000 mechs.

      That's for the whole of human space in the Battletech Universe of 3025 (the fiction also suggests that Comstar had its Com Guards, which had some vast and uncounted number of mechs).

      Going by the game fiction the largest planetary conflicts (Twycross) might have involved 4000 - 5000 Mechs, while a heavily guarded single planet like Tharkad might have 8 regiments acting in defense. Huge hellish battles certainly could happen.

      At the same time, a multiple-planet Bandit Kingdom might have been formed by somebody with four mechs and a dropship, outside the general area of organized civilization. If you have giant war machines and the only means of providing things like water and food, you are in charge.

      The game also makes clear that some worlds would have no mechs and for that matter only a 19th century technology base, either because of the size of the state vs. the importance of that planet, or because of the feudalist attitudes of that planet's ruler. Or both.

      Battletech has really awesome source material.

      --
      -- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
    14. Re:Woo-hoo by Fireye · · Score: 2, Informative

      Up until (as a previous poster mentioned) LosTech (Old Star League technology) was rediscovered, what I said was true. All MechWarrior games after the first were set post-clan invasion, which is after the Inner Sphere began to recover methods and technology on the creation of BattleMechs. The Clans never lost that tech, so building mechs wasn't as large an issue for them. ... also, pretty much all of the MechWarrior games so far have been pretty Action/Arcadey. It's nescessary to have a multitude of enemies, so the limitations of the fictional universe weren't applied nearly as strictly.

      Regarding adaptation, I think you're partially correct, within the confines of the fictional universe. Yes, weapons can be adapted to fit mechs that weren't designed for them, but I'd guess it's extremely unlikely that you could do it effectively in the field. It'd be like taking an afternoon to put a 600hp rotary engine in a Corolla. Also, the weapons may not have been so compartmentalized back in 3015. Sure, you could probably weld on a weapon to a part of the Chassis, but did you plan for the added weight in that area? Did you make sure that enough power was routed there? Do you have localized heatsinks ready to dissipate the heat involved with firing that weapon?

      This game seems to be based upon the defense of a fairly backwater planet from a Kurita invasion. Based on that subject, I think it's unlikely that there would be too much customization of weapons possible, if it sticks true(er) to the fictional universe.

    15. Re:Woo-hoo by dunkelfalke · · Score: 2, Informative

      Sure. Start with the Gray Death Legion trilogy, then continue with the Warrior trilogy and after that the Kurita books:

      Gray Death Legion trilogy:
      Decision at Thunder Rift 0451451848
      Mercenary's Star 0451451945
      The Price of Glory 0451452178

      Warrior trilogy:
      En Garde 0451456831
      Riposte 0451457188
      Coupe 0451457226

      Wolves on the Border 0451453883
      Heir to the Dragon 0451455274

      --
      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    16. Re:Woo-hoo by sapphire+wyvern · · Score: 2, Informative

      So the developers laziness or technological limitations are just cause for forcing players to choose specific loadouts?

      No, it's the game canon. Most Mechs are not intensely customizable. They have some hardpoints for mounting, and it makes sense that some hardpoints might not have the hardware to accept any old weapon. Energy weapon hardpoints will have large power and coolant conduits. ACs and Missiles will have smaller energy/coolant conduits, and ammo feed mechanisms. Additional modifications would not be within the realm of possiblity for a mercenary lance or other small combat group.

      It seems a fair assumption that the MadCat designers (in canon) would not find the need to place ammo feeds into the arms (where the PPCs were located) or high-power conduits to the missile pods.

      Actually, you're very close to exactly right but not quite. Traditional 'Mech designs were like real world armoured vehicles in that their weapons & equipment loadout was pretty non-modular. Like the real world, however, there were also many revisions of most of the basic designs. In the tabletop game, altering the loadout of one of these 'Mechs was a significant engineering effort that required skilled engineers, technicians, and weeks of work.

      However, the Mad Cat is a slightly different beast. One of the primary features of the Mad Cat and its sister Clan mechs was that they were "OmniMechs", which had a completely modular design with respect to weaponry. (In the tabletop game, you have more or less free reign: You can't remove the built-in armour or heatsinks, although you can add more, and you can't change the engine. Other than that, go nuts). Canonically, these could be completely refitted in a matter of hours, and each OmniMech chassis came with 4 or 5 different "standard loadouts". They typically tend to follow the same general theme as the standard loadout, (eg tweaking the size and type of missile racks, or changing one "large barrel" type weapon for a different one such as swapping autocannons for lasers). However there are counter examples - I'm pretty sure there is at least one canonical Mad Cat loadout that doesn't include any missiles at all.

      Lower-class warriors were required to use a standard loadout, if they could get an OmniMech at all, while higher-class warriors were allowed custom loadouts. I believe there are actually some miniatures available to represent some of the popular alternate loadouts.

    17. Re:Woo-hoo by Sibko · · Score: 2, Informative
      Just wanted to point out a few things here:

      The "Mad Cat" is the inner sphere designation for the clan Timber Wolf. It was named such because it looks like a cross between a Marauder and a Catapult.

      Further, the Timber Wolf is an Omni-mech, it was specifically designed for alternative weapon loadouts. Which is to say, it doesn't have any problems with ammo or missiles going in specific locations, because the whole thing is modular. A Timber Wolf Prime carries the iconic LRM 20's, while the Timber Wolf A only carries a single SSRM 6 in the right torso.

      So essentially your statement that

      the MadCat designers (in canon) would not find the need to place ammo feeds into the arms (where the PPCs were located) or high-power conduits to the missile pods.

      Is entirely wrong. In fact, the clans liked the ability to change and customize loadouts so much that they've relegated all non-omni mechs to second-line status.

  2. Q! by StickansT · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What was the same type of distribution model that id Games used for Quake3's free release?

    1. Re:Q! by mewsenews · · Score: 2, Informative

      Quake 3's source code was released under the GPL, but the game assets remained commercial property of id Software.

      They did the same thing with Quake 2, Quake 1, and Doom. Hopefully Doom 3's code will be released soon.

      I don't know why the story submitter couldn't have said "source code released under GPL", like Slashdotters won't know what "source code" means?

  3. Excellent! by Khan · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Aside from the original X-Wing trilogy, the MechWarrior series of games have always been my favorites! I can't even begin to account for all of the time I lost playing those online.

    --

    "Klaatu, verada, necktie!" -Ash

  4. MW4 Mercs, FOSS In spirit by Useful+Wheat · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't know how many of you ever played Mechwarrior 4, but at its very heart it was an open source game. In Mechwarrior 4 mercenaries, you were allowed to model and add your own vehicles, weapons, and maps to the game. The Mw4 community added no less than 30 incredible mechs to the game, as well as a wide variety of vehicles and weapons that were throughly tested and balanced through extensive player testing.

    It was this community effort that brought mechwarrior in line with its true battletech roots, and Microsoft gained a lot of my respect because not only did they allow it? They encouraged it, by making these extensions easy to build and distribute.

    The only complaint I have is that the open source expansions broke Microsoft's expansion, and I couldn't use my WarHawk anymore. (Masakari, to you Inner Sphere Trash).

    1. Re:MW4 Mercs, FOSS In spirit by Sagara+Sozou · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "Masakari, to you freebirth scum."

      There, fixed it for you.

      --
      Those poor bastards, they have us surrounded. Now we can fire at them in all directions!
    2. Re:MW4 Mercs, FOSS In spirit by arcsimm · · Score: 2, Interesting

      As someone who was intimately involved with that process (A couple of the 'Mechs in the NBT-Hardcore mod were modeled and textured by yours truly, and I beta-tested a couple of the MekTek packs), the Mech4 community expansions were neither easy or terribly open. The first team to reverse-engineer the game's file formats was very territorial about their work and in several cases attempted to publicly e-crucify "traitors" who leaked screenshots of stuff in beta, or passed along information on the modding tools. I recall one of their devs stalling development and threatening to remove one 'Mech from the pack every day until somebody confessed to leaking the mod tools to a third party. The drama got so bad that the guy who first cracked the game's files left that team and took his tools to one of the online leagues. You should have seen the fireworks when that happened...

  5. Open the MW3 and MW4 game engine! by werfu · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I really hope they'll open up the game engine for MW4 and MW3. I never been able to finish MW3 do to a nasty bug in the game :@ Anyhow, I hope they'll stick to the classic MW gameplay and it'll be a success for sure :D Well, I'll be buying!

  6. The emphasis on the xbox 360 scares me. by oogoliegoogolie · · Score: 4, Insightful

    My gods, please don't take yet another PC game that works so fantastically with the keyboard-mouse combination and 'dumb it down for the masses' that use console controls. Note, I'm not saying console gamers are dumb, just the controls are in many types of games.

  7. Re:Unseen 'Mechs? by you-nix-boy · · Score: 2, Informative

    Nope, Catalyst Games Labs (who now have the rights for the Battletech game) have secured the rights for the Unseen again. The classic "Robotech" mechs are all available again in Battletech. http://catalystgamelabs.com/2009/06/24/catalyst-game-labs-brings-back-unseen/

    --
    --- Pork is not a verb.
  8. In related news.... by NerveGas · · Score: 5, Funny

    Joystick manufacturers expect, once again, to be able to make a profit!

    --
    Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
  9. All of MechWarrior 4 will be free by Gwarsbane · · Score: 5, Informative

    Everything, will be free. Vengence, Blackknight, the packs and Mercs. It will also include a whole bunch of maps and MekTek's own MekPaks. It will all be one download more then likely via bit torrent, the ISO image maybe as large as 3 or 4 gigs.

  10. Re:Zone of the Enders 2 MechWarrior by Yosho · · Score: 3, Insightful

    MechWarrior is great and all but its often frustratingly slow controls makes it a snore fest.

    I hope they improve on this major flaw. Its the one aspect of MechWarrior that hurt it.

    No, that's exactly why many people loved the MechWarrior games so much. They (the good ones, at least), are not arcadey action games, they are giant robot combat simulators. Hundred-ton hunks of metal covered in weapons are not quick, agile acrobats; they are tanks with legs. The more realistic behavior of the mechs makes combat more about strategy and tactics than twitch reflexes.

    If that's the kind of mech game you want, there are other ones out there that cater to you (ZoE). Please don't try to change MechWarrior into something it's not.

    --
    Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
  11. That actually *is* a good question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    To a question like that my first reaction was "RTFA! I am sure it is explained there.". Then I RTFA and... It wasn't. Then I followed the link to Battletech and didn't quickly find it there either. Then I googled for "Quake 3 free release", got to wikipedia and... Still found no mention of what this magical distribution method is.

  12. Wait wait wait... by mewsenews · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'm looking at these announcements and they're saying the game is going to be released "for free". I do not see what this has to do with Quake 3 at all, or even how the two releases are similar. Quake 3 the game was never released "for free" unless you are counting Quake Live.

    I think the submitter may have fucked up.

  13. a few features by roc97007 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I stopped playing video games after Mechwarrior 4. Partly because I had other things to do (like raise a child) but partly because I haven't been able to get interested in computer games since.

    With a new Mechwarrior out, I will probably go out and get a modern joystick and give it a shot. I'm especially glad they went back to the Clans, as they had the more interesting mechs and backstory.

    I'm hoping that we see some new abilities in the new game. I always thought it was odd that in the 31st century you fired weapons by manually lining up a hood ornament on your enemy, when 20th century technology has object recognition and automatic targeting. Or, at least, some kind of helmet tracking. What, did computer technology get lost in the intervening years?

    In a slightly different vein, it seems like in all that time someone would have thought to weld on a few weapons backwards on the chassis. (With associated hardpoint and weight penalties, of course.) A lot of knife fights depended solely on how fast you could turn your chassis to bring weapons to bear. This doesn't seem reasonable in the 31st century. I want to be able to glance in my rearview mirror and squeeze off a few rounds or missiles at that mech sneaking up behind me. Or -- this would be cool -- have the arms be articulate enough to temporarily point backwards.

    It should be possible in this day and age to have the mechs be as fully articulate as the backstory led us to believe.

    --
    Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    1. Re:a few features by Yosho · · Score: 3, Informative

      I'm especially glad they went back to the Clans, as they had the more interesting mechs and backstory.

      That's not quite right -- the game is being set in 3015, which is before the Clan invasion, and so it's unlikely you'll see any Clan technology in the game.

      What, did computer technology get lost in the intervening years?

      Actually, yes; in the BattleTech universe, centuries of warfare have caused the loss of quite a bit of scientific knowledge and technology. That's why Clan technology was so much more advanced than the Inner Sphere stuff.

      --
      Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
  14. Re:I saw the trailer by stei7766 · · Score: 2, Funny

    emerge gaussrifle; emerge heatsinks

    Insufficient disk space for mech-utils/heatsinks

    Dammit!

  15. Best game I got for $1.24 by lordofthechia · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Back when Office Depot still had their 155% price guarantee, Best Buy threw Mechwarrior on sale for something like $14.99 while Office Depot still showed it at 39.99. Armed with about $20 in cash each, maps with all the Office Depots in town, and a Best Buy ad we set out, cleaning out all the copies of Mechwarrior 4 for just $1.24 each after the absurdly high price guarantee.

    Also that same week CompUSA had put Riven on sale for 9.99 vs $29.99 at Office Depot (so it was free after the 155% price guarantee). They got rid of that 155% price guarantee after that. EVERYBODY got a copy of Riven and Mechwarrior for Christmas. It was great (and confusing for some)!

    --
    Georgia Tech, the leader in Chia(tm) technology.
  16. Your emphasis on keyboard mouse scares me. by t0qer · · Score: 2, Insightful

    One of the primary reasons I disliked doom/quake was I knew it meant the death to other forms of input for video games for a long time to come. Ever since Thresh kicked everyone's butt at doom and later quake, I knew the keyboard mouse was here to stay.

    The problem for me was I liked games that were 6FOA(6 Freedom of Axis)Descent being the most notable. At the time of Doom/Descent there was a lot of innovation for PC gaming. The Voodoo1 3d card came out, there was the spaceorb3d, the logitech mouseman, and various other input devices made for 6FOA type gameplay. Microsoft's Sidewinder joystick was wildly popular with the descent crowd (although I always preferred my thrustmaster)

    I always felt like the only reason the kb/mouse was so popular was because it was what came with a PC by default. Linear plane FPS games only need a kb/mouse to give the player the maximum control they needed without having to spend extra on fancy controllers.

    Linear FPS games stifled controller innovation for a long time. Up until the Wii there wasn't really anything new or innovative for 3d control.

    Most innovative controller of all time? Steel Battalion controller.
    http://www.steelbattalion.org/controller.php

    Pure awesome.