MechWarrior 4 Free Release Now Available

Mr. Sketch writes with news that the free release of MechWarrior 4 has finally arrived. We've discussed the game in the past when it was announced, and later when its release was held up by Microsoft. Quoting the announcement: "One of the greatest features of MekPak3.1 and of MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries in general, is the ability to customize. MechWarrior always has been about the Mechlab, especially multiplayer. The Mechlab truly distinguishes MW4 from a long list of shooters that have come out in the past 10 years. The ability to create literally thousands of configurations allows the game to continue in popularity over its lengthy life span. Since the Free Release not only comes with the original mechs and weapons of Mercenaries, but also with the Clan and IS Mech Packs and all the Mektek mechs and weapons, here is what you are getting ... for free."

Comments

Not-so-great game now free not-so-great game

[Skyshadow]

I remember playing MW4 and thinking, "you'd have to pay me to keep playing this game".

Now I have proof that I was right.

Re:Not-so-great game now free not-so-great game

[nschubach]

Wasn't MW4 the one where Microsoft went with the weapon slot types instead of a fully customizable mech? If so, does this mod remove some of those asinine restrictions? I know I practically fell in love with MW2. (The original MW2 (Mechwarrior 2), not this new game Modern Warfare 2)

Re:Not-so-great game now free not-so-great game

[mobets]

"went with the weapon slot types instead of a fully customizable mech?"

You mean required you to put missles in your missle rack instead of lasers or some other weapon? I always wonered why the earlier version didn't do that?

Re:Not-so-great game now free not-so-great game

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if what you said about MW4 being "not so great" is true, I still disagree. I think history has proven that anything released for free is automatically perceived to be much better than the non-free version. I personally hate this double-standard.

So, a correction: "Not-so-great game, now free great game."

Re:Not-so-great game now free not-so-great game

[Anonymous Coward]

The older Mechwarriors used as directly as possible the game system that the universe is based on, Battletech. In this system, you can put machine guns in your feet, and jump jets in your head.

Re:Not-so-great game now free not-so-great game

[Mycroft_VIII]

Actually Jump jets are restricted to torso and leg slots.
Also machine guns are tiny compared to a Mech and mostly anti-personal
in use so putting them on the legs (when the 'ankle' is shoulder to head high
on a human) makes some sense.

Mycroft

Re:Not-so-great game now free not-so-great game

[Jesus_666]

The somewhat dubious use of spending two crits, one of which is explosive, on as many points of damage nonwithstanding.

Not that that matters in MW4; there, machine guns are actually quite powerful if used in masses. Apart from having ammo problems, a Daishi/Dire Wolf with nothing but machine guns works surprisingly well against pretty much anything.

Re:Not-so-great game now free not-so-great game

[X0563511]

This isn't a mod.

It's MW4: Mercenaries with a mechpack installed.

Re:Not-so-great game now free not-so-great game

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, machine guns are indeed not very personal at all.

Re:Not-so-great game now free not-so-great game

[drinkypoo]

Apart from having ammo problems, a Daishi/Dire Wolf with nothing but machine guns works surprisingly well against pretty much anything.

The real problem is range. Against any of the common configurations you're meat. One of the oldest configurations is a Daishi with 6CERLL and full armor, and as slow as hell. But even at a Daishi's full maximum configured speed, one of those will have your MG Daishi half-dead before you can even get into range. Might work as a base defender, though, and it would even be a sort-of logical loadout in that context; MG ammo is cheap.

I'm really looking forward to playing with new mechs; modding didn't work well when I played MW4 regularly.

Re:Not-so-great game now free not-so-great game

[gknoy]

In the board game, it's not so bad. MG-boats were quite powerful in our games, for the same reason massed ER Laser boats were: In 15-20 shots, you have a high chance to hit the head, which triggered a chance for knocking out the pilot. Combine that with MGs generating no heat, and you could load up quite a bit of shots at a time. It got absurd if you allow multiple weapons to use the same ammo stockpile - as we did. 1-2 slots of ammo, and a bloatload of MGs. I'm pretty certain we were reading the rules incorrectly, but then I don't recall them saying you specifically needed separate ammo for each weapon, esp when you could carry multiple types of rounds for missile launchers and could have your AC ammo stored in other limbs than the weapons.

ER medium (and small) laser collections were fairly effective as well, and translated frighteningly to the computer games. I remember MW2 with some medium 'mech that had like 8 or 12 ER medium lasers... and an alpha strike would peel off the leg or arm of nearly anything.

Re:Not-so-great game now free not-so-great game

[Jesus_666]

I occasionally play Battletech with friends via MegaMek, using Solaris Skunk Werks to build custom mechs. (Note: Being Java-based, both of these work beautifully on Linux and OS X and MegaMek even provides an app bundle.)
I know about the power of tons of smallish lasers (although I usually prefer normal Medium Lasers over ER ones for better heat/damage ratio). Both headshots and through-armor crits on ammo stockpiles can be lethal and both occur with frightening frequency.

Of course if you absolutely want to maximize the number of possible headshots, get yourself an LB-X boat. You can fit four LB 10-X ACs and twelve tons of ammunition (translating to 30.5 turns of sustained fire) into a fully armored assault mech with an XL engine. Granted, you can only run five hexes but with cluster ammunition you can inflict up to 40 separate hits per turn on an enemy up to eighteen hexes away.

I just pitted two of those beasts against each other. Both exploded in the third turn because they through-armor-critted each others ammo dumps and one of the pilots already had been hit three times. Nasty. And if you cut down on the ammo a bit you can even put in happy little surprises as an ECM unit or a coupls lasers; with double heat sinks those hulks generate a mere 10 heat a round and sink 20.

The price you pay is a BV of about 1800 but hey, you have an assault crit monster - what do you expect?

Re:Not-so-great game now free not-so-great game

[Mycroft_VIII]

IIRC, ammo bins had to be in the same or adjacent body parts, different ammo (even subtypes) in different bins. But weapons could pull from any valid bin. IE two LRM5 in the left arm could pull from any bin with LRM ammo left arm or left torso section.

Mycroft

Re:Not-so-great game now free not-so-great game

[Eye Gee]

Why don't the 'Mechs portrayed in games like MW4 have stabilised armaments?

Re:Not-so-great game now free not-so-great game

[Guysmiley777]

Back in the day when I played the tabletop version, a 55 ton mech with a big-ass engine, max jump jets and as many MGs as there were crit slots for was great. It was total abuse of the rules but that volume of fire would inevitably lead to knocking the opposing mech's pilot unconscious.

Yes, but

[hellop2]

does it run on Linux?

Re:Yes, but

[Dahamma]

Come now. We all know comments like that are how the Succession Wars started.

Re:Yes, but

[Anonymous Coward]

I was wondering the same thing. Seems to have mixed reviews in the Wine AppDB so I'm guessing it doesn't work very well (usually unless an app is triple-super-duper-platinum+++ rated then it seems to be total crap in Wine; I don't know who does those ratings).

Re:Yes, but

[deniable]

Damn Aramis apologists are everywhere.

Re:Yes, but

[dudpixel]

why is parent modded flamebait instead of the "funny" this line gets in every other thread?

Re:Yes, but

[thynk]

does it run on Linux?

http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=3839 - So... depends on your distro.

Re:Yes, but

[TheRaven64]

Not relevant. All of the issues people report there are due to copy protection in the original, so the question is whether the free version has equivalent copy protection. If it works under WINE, I'd like to try it - someone borrowed my MW3 disk a few years back and never returned it.

Re:Yes, but

[keithjr]

Sounds like a Trial of Grievance is due...

Re:Yes, but

[drinkypoo]

I hope to be able to tell you by later today if it works on Lucid with Wine on a Phenom II X3 720 and nVidia/Gigabyte GTS240. I just upgraded to lucid because installing the new driver with actual support for my video card (which just came out a few days ago, have had the card for months, sigh) is problematic on karmic. So far so good except that freeciv seems to have a problem where if you leave it run a long time it gets slow and eats a lot of CPU. Good thing I have three of them.

enolagay

[Anonymous Coward]

Boom!

Re:enolagay

[Anonymous Coward]

Evidently, some over-eager moderator doesn't know much history.

Parent should be (slightly) Funny, not Troll.

CAPTCHA: "preempt".

Re:enolagay

[Tetsujin]

Evidently, some over-eager moderator doesn't know much history.

Parent should be (slightly) Funny, not Troll.

CAPTCHA: "preempt".

It seems like even you didn't get the reference...

This was a code you could type into Mechwarrior 2. Once you entered the code, a plane would fly overhead and drops a nuclear bomb, destroying everything (including you).

Almost perfect timing

[Dan East]

The timing on this was almost perfect for me. My brother came in from out of state last week, and he's a big fan of MechWarrior 4. So I installed on my laptop from his discs and we did the disc-swapping trick so we could play multiplayer on my lan. Anyway, I searched for the info on the game and saw Microsoft finally approved it for free release last month, but it hadn't been released yet. One week sooner would have been pretty amazing timing for me...

Microsoft missing an opportunity

[cupantae]

What they should be doing is releasing it ONLY for Linux and OS X. That way, they could later mention what shitty games are available for those platforms.
3. Profit

Re:Microsoft missing an opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah good thinking, OS elitism is certainly the way. Just look how successful it did Linux for the exclusive Frozen Bubble and GCompris software!

*groans*

Re:Microsoft missing an opportunity

[CarpetShark]

Linux and OS X. That way, they could later mention what shitty games are available for those platforms.

Oh, I think they play enough shitty games with alternate platforms already.

Re:Microsoft missing an opportunity

[i.r.id10t]

I have the original Loki port of one of the mechwarrior games. It played very well on modest hardware with no issues for me.

Re:Microsoft missing an opportunity

[DrugCheese]

Which game did Loki port?? I bought a ton of those back in the day, but don't recall any Mech Warrior.

Re:Microsoft missing an opportunity

[Drgnkght]

Not sure about Mechwarrior, but I do recall that they did one of the Heavy Gear games.

Wow, really?

[roc97007]

With MW5 in legal hell, this might be the next best reason to go out and buy another joystick.

Re:Wow, really?

[Kreigaffe]

I dug out my old microsoft precision pro. 9 buttons, hat switch, throttle, x/y/z axis.. and it was bought in a *store*.

Mech4's release has really made me realize how far PC gaming has fallen. It's really close to dead compared to where it was 10-15 years ago. So many PC games are just console games ported over..

Re:Wow, really?

[Shadow of Eternity]

I just recently finally buried my old Force Feedback joystick. Yeah, the original one that used a the plugs you see on the back of a computer but never seem to use anymore.

Re:Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a Steel Battalion controller sitting around that would be great to use on this game. Unfortunately no one has made 64-bit drivers yet. Hopefully the release of MW4 will encourage the driver community to make some.

Re:Wow, really?

[roc97007]

Could you use 32 bit drivers in XP compatibility mode?

Re:Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean the ones that MSCEs plug old Macintosh monitors into? Good times!

Re:Wow, really?

[Vectormatic]

oh man, i so wanted steel batallion back in the day, too bad it was way over my piddly budget as a student. They should do a new one for the 360, i imagina a big mech driving game would also be much better sitting behind a HUGE hdtv

Re:Wow, really?

[digitalmonkey2k1]

Any reccomendations? I now have a reason to replace my 11 year old joystick! Saitek's X52 does look neat, but there has got to be better.

Re:Wow, really?

[GameboyRMH]

I'm still waiting for someone to make a Logitech Cordless Rumblepad (original) that won't fail in a matter of months. Until then I'll have to settle for my wireless Dpad-modded Xbox360 controller.

Re:Wow, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that the original was 480P max, it has the potential to be lightyears better on any current gen console, and military sim quality (sans multi-million dollar moving cockpit :D) on any current gen PC.

Re:Wow, really?

[Guysmiley777]

I still tear up a little sometimes when I glance at my Falcon 4.0 binder/manual on the shelf.

BAD SLASHDOT!

[Monkeedude1212]

It was actually available Friday, but over 100,000 guests logged into Mektek's servers and crashed their website.

MTX, the distribution software they created that works kind of like a blizzard patcher, mixed with a matchmaking system, had a flaw in its design that required the web servers to be up in order for the patched Free version to work.

I don't know if they've fixed that yet, but the website just came back up today (after being down all weekend).

And now its been slashdotted, way to go.

Re:BAD SLASHDOT!

[Mr. Sketch]

Yeah, I submitted this Friday, but it's only now making it to the front page.

There's a new version of MTX (1.0.3.5) that doesn't require the web servers to be up:
http://mtxgear.mektek.net/mtx/beta/SetupMTX1.0.3.5.exe

Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with MekTek in any way. I've just been following the free release since I love the Mechwarrior series, namely MW2: Mercs.

Re:BAD SLASHDOT!

[Rockoon]

After having installed this MTX 1.0.3.5, and never having any other MTX thing installed, ever...

The claim that it doesnt require a web server to function is bullshit. Just running it for the first time causes a blocking http request prior to its window having any controls/buttons rendered to it .. since this blocking request isnt responded to in a timely fashion (many minutes!) the blank window goes (Not Responding) because MTX is also apparently single-threaded such that it can never service its message queue. When that request finally gets serviced, well its not done.. it now renders skeletons of the controls it intends to eventually display and then goes on to another blocking request.

It took half an hour to navigate to the area where I can initiate the download of MW4, and its been saying "Contacting MekTek tracker. Please wait 2-3 minutes" for an hour now. It is again in a blocking call, the process and its window is completely hung but using 0% CPU.

The programmer who wrote this MTX thing is a complete moron in terms of writing things that are supposed to do what this MTX thing is supposed to do. There pretty much are no words to describe the level of crap this is, so I instead had to actually describe my observations of its spectacular failure.

Re:BAD SLASHDOT!

[Mascot]

That rhymes pretty well with my experience as well.

Though, for me it started going wrong even earlier. During the installation of MTX itself, you're asked for the default directory to install games to. I changed the default to my games directory and hit save. And hit save. And hit save. It just wouldn't close the window. Eventually I X'ed it out. Then I discover some 15 MTX icons in systray, and an equal amount of processes.

After killing off all of those, and starting MTX fresh, I ended up in the cycle you describe. Though I wasn't as patient. After waiting a minute with a skeleton window "not responding", I killed it, uninstalled, and forgot about MW4 for the time being.

Spectacular failure is a good summary indeed. Hopefully their tweaks to the game itself are of a stratospherically higher quality.

Re:BAD SLASHDOT!

[X0563511]

It's not locking up, it's just poorly programmed. It's hanging on the connection attempts, since the MTX servers exploded.

Disconnect your internet when you start it. You'll then have to grab the game's .mtx files elsewhere and manually install in MTX while it is in offline mode.

See here:
http://www.mektek.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=156383

http://www.mektek.net/mw4free/torrents/files/mechwarrior4mercenaries.all.to.51.03.01.0017.mtx.torrent
http://www.mektek.net/mw4free/torrents/files/mechwarrior4mercenaries.51.03.01.0017.to.51.03.01.0018.mtx.torrent
http://www.mektek.net/mw4free/torrents/files/mechwarrior4mercenaries.51.03.01.0018.to.51.03.01.0020.mtx.torrent

See this (from my other post). It should at least get the game working.

Re:BAD SLASHDOT!

[Securityemo]

I had the exact same experience.

Re:BAD SLASHDOT!

[VendettaMF]

Heh, those torrents are all throwing utorrent into overflow territory. Negative leeches for all three.

Re:BAD SLASHDOT!

[hellop2]

Thank you. First person to post an .exe. I know what to do with those! .mtx files.... not so much.

Re:BAD SLASHDOT!

[X0563511]

Wow...

I just seeded all three to 1000% within 8 hours.

Holy crap.

not impressed

[corbettw]

If I can't paint the 'mechs on the desk in my garage in my own distinctive palette and scheme, then play with them on my custom-built tabletop and with my custom-made terrain, what's the point? I mean sure, either option will embarrass my wife in front of her friends, but my way will embarrass her in front of her friends' husbands. There ain't no computer game out there that'll do that!

Re:not impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

If you just explain it to them, they will understand! Be sure to mention the history and background of each mech model.

Re:not impressed

[arcsimm]

So you've never met the folks who build their own MechWarrior sim-pits, have you? If you think a nice-looking RPG table is embarrassing, you can't imagine what having a giant robot cockpit in your living room will do to your reputation...

Re:not impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

Aaaactually... you can using the included dev tools with this release.

That being said, this game doesn't look nearly as good as I remember it looking back in the day. And - anyone else notice that when it was actually released back on Friday that the site went down for the weekend?

Re:not impressed

[gknoy]

On the other hand, if your garage has FOUR of them, the reaction might be exactly the opposite. It'd go from Uncomfortable Awe to "Can I play too?" for a lot of guys, I imagine.

Re:not impressed

[Shadow of Eternity]

At some point enough switches, buttons, and lights that look military-chic enough can go from creepy and/or pathetic to indescribably awesome.

Re:not impressed

[Hurricane78]

I’m sorry? ...but if he does not like climbing in a large rough machine to rip shit apart with gross motor action, then how does he dare calling himself a REAL MAN ? ^^

These guys might like to have a word with him:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=O_NrTW4lfgk
http://youtube.com/watch?v=cx1XhlPIeEM
http://youtube.com/watch?v=JLO1YIWQuXE

Re:not impressed

[deniable]

Better yet, the guy who built his kids a Madcat tree-house.

Re:not impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean sure, either option will embarrass my wife in front of her friends, but my way will embarrass her in front of her friends' husbands. There ain't no computer game out there that'll do that!

There will be a Sims extension for that.

Re:not impressed

[sexybomber]

I'll bet such a thing wouldn't cost much more than one of those actual-theater-looking home theaters, but I've admittedly never seen one, so I'm not sure. Anyone got a link? My mental conception of it is pretty bitchin', at least.

Re:not impressed

[X0563511]

Mouser/Digikey, here I come! I gots me some toggle switches to order!

Re:not impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

See, there's your problem.

A woman who doesn't love giant killer death robots is a woman unworthy of love.

Re:not impressed

[dunkelfalke]

It is a Timber Wolf, you stravag scum!

Re:not impressed

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.virtualworld.com/

You missed the glory days of the pods being at Dave & Buster's. Buttons, MFD's, and joysticks galore. It was worth the $5/game to just SIT in them.

Cooltown!

[Itninja]

Finally something worthwhile to use my 50Mbps on! It's legal and everything! Feels good be righteous again.

Torrent Link

[Krizdo4]

First download their mtx client.
Then this site: http://www.pedaltothemetal.com/index.php/news_story/mechwarrior4_free_released.html
was nice enough to repost the torrent file which downloads the mtx that you can use the offline mode of the client to install.

The link is labeled: Downloadmechwarrior4mercenaries.all.to.51.03.01.0017.mtx.torrent

1073 Seeders / 2154 Peers
tracker runs on mektek.net

Note: The client runs crazy slow after install. First thing I do is click Offline Mode.

Re:Torrent Link

[Mashiki]

Grab the torrent, get a client that supports DHT and peer finding. You'll find 8-10x the number of people, or goto ISOhunt, or goto usenet(a.b.games, and alt.b.games.old) it's been posted there as well.

MTX client sucks.

[voodoowizard]

For those of you that hate the MTX client. Download the torrents and rename the extension from .mtx to .zip No need to "install", the zip opens up to a functional game. Just unzip to where you want it and then apply the patches manually(kind of like oblivion/fallout3 mods). Here are the torrents if you wish to skip the MTX client hell. (via reddit) Main file: http://www.pwned.com/dz/mechwarrior4mercenaries.all.to.51.03.01.0017.mtx.torrent Patches: http://www.pwned.com/dz/mechwarrior4mercenaries.51.03.01.0018.to.51.03.01.0020.mtx.torrent http://www.pwned.com/dz/mechwarrior4mercenaries.51.03.01.0017.to.51.03.01.0018.mtx.torrent I have not tried this yet but there is a mod for the game Crysis that pretty much turns it into a MW game. http://www.mechlivinglegends.net/ Probably still a bit buggy but I am sure it looks a lot better.

Re:MTX client sucks.

[game kid]

I have to agree on the "sucks". .net apps can be slow (to load the requisite libs and such) but mtx takes a long time to start up and get active, and there are GUI hangs that happen more than half the time, neither with actual processor jump. Both suggest failed connects (or some other background messes) that aren't getting multithreaded right.

Good luck to MekTek, but I'll be trying this method for now.

Re:MTX client sucks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yay! I posted the instructions to turn it into a zip on reddit. This is the second place I've stumbled across it now. You're the only one to reference you found it on reddit though. :)

Re:MTX client sucks.

[hellop2]

I unzipped as you said on XP, and got an error: "The procedure * could not be located in the DLL mtshellmq.dll"

Also, could not figure out how to install the patches as there's no executable and just a bunch of files named 1, 2, 3, 4.. etc...

Will have to try the MTX client thing, I suppose.

Re:MTX client sucks.

[hellop2]

Oh, it's a .NET app? Maybe I have to install .NET first....

Re:MTX client sucks.

[s13g3]

MW:LL (Mechwarrior: Living Legends) isn't all THAT buggy, for a beta. It's still in constant development since the beta release in Dec. 2009 with a very committed and talented dev. team and updates are released fairly regularly. The game is highly playable even as it stands, and will do nothing but get exponentially better as time goes by.

Re:MTX client sucks.

[X0563511]

It's not locking up, it's just poorly programmed. It's hanging on the connection attempts, since the MTX servers exploded.

Disconnect your internet when you start it. You'll then have to grab the game's .mtx files elsewhere and manually install in MTX while it is in offline mode.

See here:
http://www.mektek.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=156383

http://www.mektek.net/mw4free/torrents/files/mechwarrior4mercenaries.all.to.51.03.01.0017.mtx.torrent
http://www.mektek.net/mw4free/torrents/files/mechwarrior4mercenaries.51.03.01.0017.to.51.03.01.0018.mtx.torrent
http://www.mektek.net/mw4free/torrents/files/mechwarrior4mercenaries.51.03.01.0018.to.51.03.01.0020.mtx.torrent

"Official" instructions. Just in case the .torrents on that domain are bad and/or die.

Re:WARNING

[Anonymous Coward]

Details please?

MTX + Privacy Issues

[mmaniaci]

If you are a tinfoiler with a specialization in network privacy, you might want to research the distributors of MW4, MekTek, before you jump in and play. Part of their business is "Geospacial Research Technology," which means this game will probably be doing some phoning home with information about you. I personally don't mind this and think a free game is well worth some targeted advertising (especially when it is in plain view). Hhuzzah for companies that can evolve their business practice!

Re:MTX + Privacy Issues

[Arkem Beta]

It sounds more like they use the MW4 3D engine to visualize GIS data. If they instead talked about IP Geolocation rather than "GIS navigation" I might believe that they're in advertising.

Re:MTX + Privacy Issues

[djdevon3]

Sounds more like they have govt sub-contracts for terrain mapping technology. What if any info would it phone home? Unless you have packetized proof of what it's supposedly doing you're not helping and only speculating (which I can do about Nellie, Big Foot, and other stuff).

Re:MTX + Privacy Issues

[Jehosephat2k]

Nonsense.

Awesome game now free

[gknoy]

I didn't play a lot of multiplayer, but as far as Single Player goes, we must have played a different game. I remember MW4 and MW4:Black Knight as Nearly Perfect renditions of my fantasies of piloting giant robots, and MW4:Mercenaries as only a little worse than the previous MWx:Mercenaries was. (I didn't like that there were fewer non-plot missions to play.) The ONLY thing I disliked about MW4 was that the missions expected (and nearly "forced") you to upgrade 'mechs. Mercenaries was less in this direction, but I really enjoyed the dynamics of the Uziel, when it wasn't outclassed by assault 'mechs. Later on, I tried to stay in my Thor as long as possible, even though on the end missions it was almost certainly more effective to be using something like a Daishi loaded up with heat sinks and large lasers.

I loved the slot restrictions, as they forced each chassis to have a "flavor" -- otherwise, I'd do like I did in MW2, MW2:GhostBear, and MW3 and just load up on dual (triple?) PPCs and heat sinks up to my ears. I liked that a Thor vs a Madcat vs an Uziel vs a Catapult was more than merely a difference in tonnage or jump jets, but made an actual tactical difference.

Re:Awesome game now free

[Moryath]

Also, the slot restrictions were "canon" - they came out of the Solaris VII and Mechwarrior ("roleplaying game") sourcebooks, the same way that the weapon recharge times (otherwise you could fire a gauss rifle every round, period, same as a small laser) did. It was never intended for the tabletop game that a chassis would simply be "here's your tonnage, go nuts"; specific mechs were always supposed to have a flavor and that is important to the game.

Re:Awesome game now free

[stg]

Yes, I didn't play multiplayer either but loved the single-player missions. I think I still played it through 3-4 years ago...

Every other MechWarrior style game I've ever played after felt childish in comparison.

Re:Awesome game now free

[tnnn]

Solaris VII rules were supposed to be used during "arena" games, not normal multi mech engagements. Mechwarrior series was based on the CBT (Classical BattleTech) board game which allows customizing as well as building new mechs from scratch. While it may lead to creation of some... well... monsters, it's fun and adds to gameplay. Besides, if you simply want to customize a bit, nothing holds you back - you don't have to build a multi PPC behemoth and you can stick to "canon flavors". So what is the point of taking this possibility away (if I recall correctly devs were explaining this as "it's weird to see lasers shooting from LRM racks")?

Ah, and as for small laser firing as often as gauss - keep in mind that in CBT board game 1 turn = 10 seconds. Don't try to imagine 1 turn of small laser fire as a single shot (as a matter of fact, multiple war games use "1 turn of shooting != 1 shot" principle) - it simply means that during one turn small laser will do that much damage and produce some heat, regardless of how many times it really did shoot. The same applies to ammo - 1 ammo round means that a weapon can fire during 1 turn - be it one gauss shell or designers-know-how-many machine gun rounds.
Now that I think about it, I wonder if the fast firing weapons in MW aren't more powerful than in a board game - they fire more often and probably deal the "1 turn damage" during a single shot...

Re:Awesome game now free

[L4t3r4lu5]

PPCs were great, but not ultimate.

I raise you 14 medium pulse lasers. Yes, I can change direction and speed to avoid your incoming phased plasma charges until I'm within range, no you don't have enough armour to withstand more than two salvos on any part of your mech. No matter which one it is.

Yes, 4 salvos will cause my mech to expload, no matter how many heat sinks I have installed.

Re:Awesome game now free

[X0563511]

Multiplayer was fun.

Picture this:

CTF map, in city.

Everyone else is using gigantic mechs with cookie-cutter configurations.

I'm in a Raven (one of the smallest, and fastest) with Jump Jets.

hehe, the bastards couldn't ever hit me! I would grab the flag and just tease them.

Re:Awesome game now free

[X0563511]

I'll take my Diashi loaded up with the PBX (? the shotgun things)

I knocked an Atlas on it's ass with that. Short range, but one or two salvos to take anyone but a few heavy's out.

Re:Awesome game now free

[L4t3r4lu5]

Diashi? Last MW game I played was MW2: Mercs. Now get off my arid planetscape!

Re:Awesome game now free

[Anonymous Coward]

It's official: you're all nerds.

Now GTFO and get some sunlight!

Re:Awesome game now free

[ShakaUVM]

I didn't play a lot of multiplayer, but as far as Single Player goes, we must have played a different game. I remember MW4 and MW4:Black Knight as Nearly Perfect renditions of my fantasies of piloting giant robots, and MW4:Mercenaries as only a little worse than the previous MWx:Mercenaries was. (I didn't like that there were fewer non-plot missions to play.) The ONLY thing I disliked about MW4 was that the missions expected (and nearly "forced") you to upgrade 'mechs. Mercenaries was less in this direction, but I really enjoyed the dynamics of the Uziel, when it wasn't outclassed by assault 'mechs. Later on, I tried to stay in my Thor as long as possible, even though on the end missions it was almost certainly more effective to be using something like a Daishi loaded up with heat sinks and large lasers.

I loved the slot restrictions, as they forced each chassis to have a "flavor" -- otherwise, I'd do like I did in MW2, MW2:GhostBear, and MW3 and just load up on dual (triple?) PPCs and heat sinks up to my ears. I liked that a Thor vs a Madcat vs an Uziel vs a Catapult was more than merely a difference in tonnage or jump jets, but made an actual tactical difference.

When I wrote CustomTF, the mod for the original Team Fortress that let you build your own class, I used Battletech as a main inspiration. The leg upgrades corresponded roughly to engines, armor to, well, armor, and so forth. Instead of tonnage limits, I used dollars, which allowed faster PCs to be roughly balanced against heavier ones. The way it worked out was that if you were loaded to the gills with armor and weapons, you were slower moving.

The metaphor in CustomTF moved on since the original conception, of course, but I think the core design strategy of Battletech is still pretty damn solid to this day.

Re:Awesome game now free

[drinkypoo]

What I remember from olden days hanging around Game*A*Lot in Santa Cruz is that if you wanted to run a wacky variant, it was considered tacky not to make a custom miniature. Other than that, I think you're way off-base. Bringing up Mechwarrior is silly anyway, because it's Battletech that defined 'mech construction and combat rules. I still have some of my old (second gen?) sourcebooks around here someplace, and if I really need to go look up the rules of the era from which Mechwarrior IV came, I will, but I think you're wrong.

Re:Awesome game now free

[gknoy]

Interestingly, my friends and I really liked optimizing (read: Scratch-building ;)) custom mechs for every game. The stock ones _sucked_ in many ways:
- Alpha strikes would shut you down
- No close-range ability if you mounted too many LRMs
- etc.

It was so much more _effective_ to load up your 75, 80, or 100 ton 'mech with PPCs, medium lasers, or large lasers, and enough heat sinks that you could fire them all every turn, rain or shine, with perhaps some excess heat generation which might reward standing in water sometimes. (A risky proposition, though.) You lost out on potential alpha strike damage, but it played well as a mobile skirmisher who could harass continuously with heavy hitting weapons.

Similarly, often their choices of armor allocations, or engine size/speed, were suboptimal. If you're not maxing your armor, what's the point? :D Same goes for smaller 'mechs that didn't optimize their mobility well, since the to-hit penalties for target movement didn't scale terribly well (but were excellent if you could move fast enough to get to cover).

As a result, we tended to treat mech chassis as "big bags of tonnage and weapon slots", and didn't really care about canonical chassis. It was fun. Our lunchtime games (on a 12x20 hex sheet, or something similarly small) tended to be ruled by the 2x UAC20 lugging monsters, but the PPC-bearing mechs that I preferred seemed to do much better once I could have room to run away. I used the same tactics in MW2 and MW3 -- max armor, pick a good engine, and stock up on lasers and heat sinks. MW4 forced me to NOT do that, which somehow was still fun. Less boring, at least ... but I found that I still really enjoyed the 'mechs that I *could* load up with energy weapons and heat sinks. (I also found that lasers were really hard for me to control in the computer games, whereas a mass of pulse lasers could be very powerful in the board game.)

Re:Awesome game now free

[Anonymous Coward]

Having spent about 8 hours last night playing MW4 Mercs I agree, both on the usage of energy weapons, as well as the trouble using lasers (Although I personally hold it as a MW4 only issue, since MW1-3 I had no problems with it. Although using FF on my joystick in Mercs4 certainly didn't help things....)

One thing I noticed about MW4: Mercs though is that the stupid 'flashes' from the laser hitting DON'T ACTUALLY ALIGN WITH WHERE THEY HIT. In the old activitision games (And probably MW3, but I can't verify ATM) there was often little or no 'hit effect' with lasers so nothing would obscure your vision when a shot hit your opponent. However in MW4 they appear to have decided to use bitmap images for all hit effects, and either didn't sync them to the targeted mechs movement, or offset them forward from it in order to avoid having the images 'cut through' the model when it appears. The effect of this is 'ghosting' where the image of the blast hitting is either in front of or behind the mech, usually at least a half second offset from when you actually hit, and not actually providing a visual indication of the section you're shown as hitting on the target damage display.

Re:Awesome game now free

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes for IS mechs this is true. However, remember that the whole point of an OmniMech was that it had no such restrictions. Yet Micro$oft in their wisdom decided that these restrictions should also be applied to the Clanners as well. The reason was that they had too many people wanking on about "laser-boats" and "missile-boats"....well sorry but that's the way the game is supposed to be. People who played the board games tend to be better designers IMO and would simply give the non-board gamers a tough time I guess *shrug*

Re:WARNING

[Anonymous Coward]

URLs connecting to your PC. Sure.

Add-ons

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it come with the Free Lunch add-on pack? -- anon cow herd

Earthsiege 2Another Oldie but Goodie

[Game_Ender]

I always liked Earthsiege 2 because I felt it was even more focused on building your mech, and piloting it. Much less like a shooters with robot, and more like a "Mech Sim". Also as the campaign progressed you assembled you built new stronger mechs from the scrap captured, it was sweet.

Re:Earthsiege 2Another Oldie but Goodie

[Anonymous Coward]

I always liked Earthsiege 2 because I felt it was even more focused on building your mech, and piloting it. Much less like a shooters with robot, and more like a "Mech Sim". Also as the campaign progressed you assembled you built new stronger mechs from the scrap captured, it was sweet.

To this day I've yet to find a game that immersed me like Starsiege aka Earthsiege 3. Between the mini-novel manual, the between firefight news updates and communications and the ability to then see all those events from the other side made an experience that left me cold to MW4.

Re:Earthsiege 2Another Oldie but Goodie

[Lehk228]

mechwarrior 3 had you scrounging parts from fallen enemies, and what parts dropped depended on how you killed them, so the best way to kill was to blow off the legs since you probably already have enough heat sinks and jump jets anyways, the weapons and electronics kits were more valuable.

Re:Earthsiege 2Another Oldie but Goodie

[Jedi Alec]

Ahhhh, Earthsiege 2.

Where because in mission 44 you blew up something, you'd get an instant game over in mission 47 no matter how many times you tried to restart.

Flying the Razor was fun though, really made those plasma's shine...

Re:Earthsiege 2Another Oldie but Goodie

[Jesus_666]

Legging mechs is usually the best approach anyway as destroying both legs is an instant death sentence and the leg armor isn't nearly as thick as the one on the torso.

Also, utterly insane loadouts with twin Long Toms will blow up every target's legs first by default - if you can deal with absurd amounts of heat, a glacial ROF and little ammo.

Re:First

[Anonymous Coward]

It needs a fuckload of work. MTX doesn't even boot up correctly for me, Win7 4gb ram. Shitty programming.

Re:First

[QuantumLeaper]

MTX locks up on XP sp3 also.

Part of the delay might have been the MechPacks...

[UnknownSoldier]

Cyberlore Studios did the "original" Mercenaries and MechPacks for FASA / Microsoft. Since Cyberlore is no longer around maybe there was difficulty in tracking down who owned the licenses...

Can someone fix the bug where you put _no_ heatsinks on a mech, and your mech self-suicides from a heat over-flow bug. :-)

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Mechwarrior, sharks hot grits Zune!

No "games available" in MTX

[JSBiff]

So, I downloaded MTX, installed, launched it. It seemed to take 5 minutes for MTX just to launch, but then the "Available Games" list is just empty (I'm guessing their server is so submarine right now, it can't even send me the list of available games for download)? Any suggestions as to how I can get the file list for MTX(or if someone else is 'mirroring' the .torrent files)?

Re:No "games available" in MTX

[Ihmhi]

Same for me, it just crashed and then ran slow as shit.

Re:No "games available" in MTX

[hviniciusg]

just download from this torrent and install in ofline mode

http://www.mektek.net/mw4free/torrents/files/mechwarrior4mercenaries.all.to.51.03.01.0017.mtx.torrent

MTX is a P2P Torrent Program

[djdevon3]

OK so why install this MTX program if it's just a P2P torrent app that works god awfully slow. I'd rather just have a torrent link and download with my own client. This is some SERIOUS BS. This is exactly what torrent programs are for, WTF over?

Official Torrent Download HERE

[djdevon3]

Torrents:
http://www.mektek.net/mw4free/torrents/fil...017.mtx.torrent
http://www.mektek.net/mw4free/torrents/fil...018.mtx.torrent
http://www.mektek.net/mw4free/torrents/fil...20.mtx.torrrent

Here are the official files from mektek. You can skip the bullshit MTX program to download them. Get the torrents using your fav p2p program (bitcomet, utorrent, etc..) Then launch MTX and choose Open File (*.mtx)

"Core" file fix link: http://mtxgear.mektek.net/mtx/fixes/mw4/0020/core.zip

Missing .dll files? Try these: http://www.mektek.net/forums/index.php?act...st&id=57250
Put them in your Mercs root directory.

In order to play you will have to setup Port Forwarding rules if you have a router.
For TCP both inbound and outbound: 47624
For TCP and UDP both inbound and outbound: 2300-2400
Try both UPnP Enabled and UPnP Disabled on your router.

Re:Official Torrent Download HERE

[djdevon3]

http://www.mektek.net/mw4free/torrents/files/mechwarrior4mercenaries.all.to.51.03.01.0017.mtx.torrent

http://www.mektek.net/mw4free/torrents/files/mechwarrior4mercenaries.51.03.01.0017.to.51.03.01.0018.mtx.torrent

http://www.mektek.net/mw4free/torrents/files/mechwarrior4mercenaries.51.03.01.0018.to.51.03.01.0020.mtx.torrent

Re:Official Torrent Download HERE

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.mektek.net/forums/index.php?act...st&id=57250 - This link seems to be broken. Yes, both the link and the description.

Re:Official Torrent Download HERE

[Anonymous Coward]

your links are all wrong. can you fix them?

Re:Official Torrent Download HERE

[hellop2]

Every single list of instructions lists a crucial unintelligible step: "Now launch MTX". What the fuck does that mean?

Scuse me, but, "MTX" is not a standard part of Windows. There is obviously a precursor step you/we are missing.

Re:Official Torrent Download HERE

[drinkypoo]

http://mtxgear.mektek.net/mtx/beta/SetupMTX1.0.3.5.exe (per www.mektek.net)

Where to put mtx file

[djdevon3]

Once you've downloaded the 017 mtx file (other two are patches):
Move the mtx files here: C:\Program Files\mektek.net\MTX\temp\games

Then open up the MTX program and do the Open File command.
That will FINALLY install the game.

In my opinion this whole freebie deal has too many steps to go through. The MTX program is a hunk of shit to begin with. Avoid using it as much as possible by downloading the torrents separately.

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Mechwarrior, sharks hot grits Zune!

I am SO going right out to get that printed on a T-shirt.

CAPTCHA: "functors" -- WTF? That's not even a word.

This gives my coding some perspective...

[volcan0]

Wow. If I ever hear again that my code looks like crap, I am just gonna have the other person install and try the MTX thingy. It really put "bad code" into perspective....

Re:This gives my coding some perspective...

[Buzz_Litebeer]

I was on the beta team, and with the handful of beta testers none of this stuff came up.

That may not seem to be much of an excuse, but they had developed this for a specific volume of people and bought server space for that expected flow of individuals.

Instead it has been considerably more popular. Even some of the weird bugs about saving file paths were found months ago but had been fixed, and then re-introduced? Anyway, the feedback is being reviewed.

Re:This gives my coding some perspective...

[drinkypoo]

Anyway, the feedback is being reviewed.

Wow, you should work in government. Seriously, not just putting the torrent up on all the trackers was a massive fail.

Re:This gives my coding some perspective...

[Buzz_Litebeer]

I think your applying an idea of incompetence due to irrationality of the individuals who code the site.

When this is not the case, it was simply a matter of unexpected enthusiasm from the internet.

The individuals who made the mech packs and released them have an incredible coding competence, just not at the specific goal trying to be achieved here. The first "test" (the release of MTX with 3.1) actually worked out quite well.

The full "Free Release" that is being done now far exceeded that test release, and is what caused the issue.

It is a matter of not having had the opportunity to code for the specific scale involved.

Take slashdot for example, in its past it had issues scaling as well based on increased periods of demand (such as 9/11). the scale is different, certainly, but the idea is the same. Sometimes you build for one scale, and then another scale jumps right at you.

Having faced this myself when programming, say for an 11 million record database and then coding for a 200 million record database, I am quite willing to give these guys slack.

I was on the beta team for the mektek software, and it worked fine when we went through all of the tickets and hammered on it with our less than 50 people or so in the beta team.

Re:This gives my coding some perspective...

[drinkypoo]

It is a matter of not having had the opportunity to code for the specific scale involved.

I'm not talking about code, I'm talking about the distribution of the code. We're talking about shoveling files, and about the way the torrents were managed. I'm entirely grateful for all the code work, and understand that there is no such thing as bug-free software.

MWLL sucks as well

[Anonymous Coward]

I was really looking fwd to the mechwarrior living legends pack for cyrsis. Until it came out.

Holy hell thats a pile of crap. And the people running the thing seem to be a bunch of choads.. "oh YOU cant get it to run perfectly? you must be fucking stupid!"

Their support and documentation is epic fail. They seem to blame any problem at all on crysis itself and not the mod. I mean hell. They don't even have an installer package. You're copying files around manually... ^^

It took quite a while to get it to run. And it does LOOK nice. But theres so much mising. And the servers are all pretty much empty. Prolly due to them being choads.

As for this pack. Thanks for the torrent links. Why in the hell would they do anything but a torrent release right off the top? Anything else is just silly. Bit torrent is made for stuff just like this.

Re:First

[Anonymous Coward]

you have to wait...oh AND MAYBE you have to uncheck the "enable pnp" in the configuration.worked for me.

Re:First

[X0563511]

It's not locking up, it's just poorly programmed. It's hanging on the connection attempts, since the MTX servers exploded.

Disconnect your internet when you start it. You'll then have to grab the game's .mtx files elsewhere and manually install in MTX while it is in offline mode.

See here:
http://www.mektek.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=156383

http://www.mektek.net/mw4free/torrents/files/mechwarrior4mercenaries.all.to.51.03.01.0017.mtx.torrent
http://www.mektek.net/mw4free/torrents/files/mechwarrior4mercenaries.51.03.01.0017.to.51.03.01.0018.mtx.torrent
http://www.mektek.net/mw4free/torrents/files/mechwarrior4mercenaries.51.03.01.0018.to.51.03.01.0020.mtx.torrent

Happy to see it, release horribly mismanaged

[drinkypoo]

FTFS, We are very aware that some of you are having problems using MTX to download and install the free release of Mechwarrior4: Mercenaries. We are currently preparing a self extracting executable to install the game without using MTX.

This new release will require a new download, but should alleviate any of the issues of installing via MTX. WTF? I've been downloading this fucking torrent for two days now. I'm grateful for this release, but this is just abusive.

By all accounts the new launcher is total shit, too. As in, "how could they think this was acceptable". And they didn't bother to upload the torrent anywhere, so I had to get the file from some other user via the forums.

The server exploding was just the icing on the cake. Using one of the many large download services for this release would have been a no-brainer. Hosting the torrent file through a cache like coral, likewise. Yet, apparently no brain was involved... Again, I'm grateful for all the time and effort spent on the game, and I only wish some brainpower had been spent on the release.

Re:Happy to see it, release horribly mismanaged

[Rockoon]

How the hell id it ever got to a version "1.x" state is beyond me. No rational person would even call that thing an alpha.

Flat installer to be released

[Jehosephat2k]

We are going with a flat installer. The MTX thing was a total disaster. We should have this ready for downlaod via bittorrent in a few days. This will be a complete install up to version 21 (which has numerous issues fixed). Hopefully this will get everyone the game installed, and playing. Will also give us some breathing room to get this MTX thing redesigned to do what it needs to do. We never expect this many people.

Re:Flat installer to be released

[Chas]

We never expect this many people

SURPRISE!

At least you didn't pull your host down with you.

I was one of the offical mirrors for the MechCommander game way back when.
What's more, I was the first one on the list.

My host had a severe case of NOT pleased when we ate their entire pipe.

Re:Flat installer to be released

[Reapman]

Appreciate hearing from one of MekTek guys, thanks for the info. Frankly, yes, MTX is complete crap. However I'm still grateful for the work you guys have done in getting this out! Much appreciated.

Re:Flat installer to be released

[drinkypoo]

will there be a patch install for those of us who are downloading torrents and core patch manually?

Re:Flat installer to be released

[Jehosephat2k]

Yes. 1) Full installer. InstallShield, installs the entire game to version 21 (which is being validated by betas tonight and tomorrow). No patching. Done. We'll deal with future updates once the smoke clears. 1.8GB utorrent or whatever you like. No MTX involved. 2) Incremental patches for people that already installed. Once again a simple patching. I think he will make a program to do the patching to get everyone up to version 21 and then we can all take a breather and figure out how to proceed. 3) Sorry about this. We didn't expect this many people (we thought may a few thousand people tops, not the numbers we are getting). 4) Probably will put the fire under the asses of the powers that be to make an MW5. Obviously there is an interest :) 5) Sorry for any inconveniece. We do this on our own time and dime.

Re:Flat installer to be released

[spire3661]

Thanks for the updates. Hopefully the Black Mesa:Source guys are paying attention for when they launch

Re:Flat installer to be released

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope that you consider your load problems to be a good thing. It means that interest in MW is still very, very high!

Thank you for your hard work. I'm happy to see this release finally come to fruition.

Re:Flat installer to be released

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, they already have a proven distribution model at their disposal: Steam.

sparkly

[Tetsujin]

It's official: you're all nerds.

Now GTFO and get some sunlight!

I can't go out in the sunlight; I would be recognized.

The distinguishing feature...?

[Tetsujin]

You know, when I think of action games with customizable battle robots, there's one title that leaps straight to mind...

Armored Core

For sure, another game with that kind of customizability is a good thing, and it sets the game apart from many other games... But MW is certainly not the only case of this...

Re:Part of the delay might have been the MechPacks

[MaerD]

...If you can take ALL the heatsinks out of a mech, that's more of a mechlab bug. When you place the engine you're supposed to place a number of heatsinks automatically. Take those away and walking would quickly overheat you.

Ah the good ole days...

[KriticKill]

I remember the days of loading up a tricked out Daishi with ERPPCs and large lasers to one shot guys in some Atlas/Uriel/whatever bumfuck mech configuration and listen to them scream OMG!!!HAXX!!!!!1!! while I laughed. Only downside was the end result of my tinkering with the mech was so slow it couldn't dodge anything, and the whole thing would overheat with 1 or two shots, so I would wind up getting taken out by someone loaded up with LRM's, while not being able to shoot back. Also, for whoever was saying it back there, MW4 had no ground personnel for a machinegun to shoot at.

Re:Ah the good ole days...

[drinkypoo]

The classic laser boat is a Daishi with 6CERLL, full armor, and a boatload of heat sinks. MW4 had no ground personnel but it did have light vehicles...

Update to latest version: .21

[Anonymous Coward]

For any others who may be in need of the latest version's torrent, you can find it here: http://www.mektek.net/mw4free/torrents/files/mechwarrior4mercenaries.51.03.01.0020.to.51.03.01.0021.mtx.torrent