New MechWarrior Announced, MechWarrior4 To Be Distributed Free

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.

Comments

Woo-hoo

[RogueyWon]

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.

Re:Woo-hoo

[Shadow of Eternity]

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.

Re:Woo-hoo

[RobotRunAmok]

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.

Re:Woo-hoo

[Bakkster]

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.

Q!

[StickansT]

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

MW4 Mercs, FOSS In spirit

[Useful Wheat]

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).

The emphasis on the xbox 360 scares me.

[oogoliegoogolie]

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.

In related news....

[NerveGas]

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

All of MechWarrior 4 will be free

[Gwarsbane]

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.