Mechwarrior 4, updated, released for free.

[Mrbloodworth]

MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries Re-Released As Free Game

Studio MekTek, in association with Smith and Tinker, INC., Virtual World Entertainment, LLC, Catalyst Game Labs, and Microsoft Games, is happy to announce the release of Mechwarrior4 Free.
**Snip**

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.

# 105 different mechs ranging from 20 to 100 tons.
# 9 Battle Armor
# 6 Infantry
# 32 Beam Weapons
# 43 Ballistic Weapons
# 44 Missile Weapons
# 7 Electronic Components
# 3 different types of armor

And, let's not forget the ability to add Heat Sinks to help with Heat Management, upgrading the Engine to increase Speed, and the option to add armor in incremental amounts. The same Mechlab you love has only gotten better over the years.

As if that wasn't enough, the Free Release comes with many improvements over the original Mercs thanks to the Mektek Mekpaks, like added security and a new kind of zone for multiplayer.

That brings us to what many of you have been looking forward to most of all - the new and exciting features and improvements that have been added solely for this special release.

# Clan and IS Mech Pack mechs available in campaign
# Mektek mechs and weapons added to campaigns
# Zonematch has been replaced with MekMatch in all visible text and is the one and only mech-matching service
# 5 new MekMatch servers to host and play on! You can change servers whenever you like. Each server has a dedicated community to cater to:

    * League Server
    * New Players
    * Australia
    * Europe
    * North America

# "Connect" and "Host" default to the last server chosen

For those that will be hosting games:

# New features for dedicated servers like the ability to add a fixed number of bots to a dedicated server upon launch chosen in setup! Bot Levels can also be set. Default game length has been changed to 30 minutes instead of original 10.

Other Improvements:

# Game loads much quicker but still requires CD and deletion of Community Satire Screen (Fafnir vs. Owen)
# Original mechs, Clan and IS Mech Pack, and Mektek mechs arranged alphabetically in Mechlab list (no longer have special symbols in front of the mech name except for Battle Armors and Infantry).
# New Screenshot Folder for in-game screenshots (instead of the main Mercs installation folder where it was difficult to locate them).

Improvements on-screen:

# LTRI (Long Tom Range Indicator) added when a weapon with trajectory is installed on a mech! Torso pitch angle in degrees is also shown! Even height of mech has been calculated and accounted for in range.
# Mission and Computer Clock added as part of the UI. Mission Clock is a semi-transparent pie chart indicating how much time is left on a multiplayer map!
# Additional Chat state. Besides the in-game chat box's normal and large size you have the option of completely turning off chat (disappears). Pressing the "y" or "u" key (general chat and team chat) causes the chat box to reappear!

 

[climbjtree]

This is glorious news! If you need me, I'll be in my Mad Dog for the next oh, I don't know... forever.

[Mrbloodworth]

I figured someone would be interested.   It is however confusing in that article as to if I need a disk or not.

[Vaiti]

This gives me hopes that MechWarrior 5 will be released someday.

Game loads much quicker but still requires CD and deletion of Community Satire Screen (Fafnir vs. Owen)

Is that a court case? Yeah, abit confused here. Is it free or do you need the original CD.

edit: Googled it. Only returns results leading to the article. Turns out Fafnir and Own are both mechs. Which still doesn't really explain much and leaves the setance just as cryptic as it was before, if not more so.

Also, got the download application installed, which is apparantly also their community application. They have a donate button, so I guess they plan to fund future updates and overhead for the servers and whatnot through that.

[Vaiti]

Finished downloading and installing. It asked for disc 2 at application launch and wouldn't start. 

[Sheepherder]

Googled it. Only returns results leading to the article. Turns out Fafnir and Own are both mechs. Which still doesn't really explain much and leaves the setance just as cryptic as it was before, if not more so.

Owens/Jenner is a 35 ton chassis.  Fafnir is a 100 ton chassis.

I have a Wal-Mart jewel case only version that I got for ~$10.  I'd recommend that if you still need the original CD's.  It's actually a pretty cool game.

EDIT: Try again, or apply any patches.  I can't imagine they recompiled the source code just to re-release a game for free.

[NowhereMan]

I'd guess the community satire screen is a pic of a Fafnir fighting an Owen. I think I'm going to try and get this now.

[Lantyssa]

About time.  They made the announcement it was cleared a week or two ago.  This seems to have killed the server though.

[lesion]

This MTX thing is the worst. It's killin' me.

[WindupAtheist]

If they tweaked campaign mode to have continuous randomized missions after you finished the story, so that you didn't have to lose your elite merc unit once the bad acting FMV was over, I'd grab this and play it to infinity. As it is, meh.

[Ironwood]

Ok, I'll say it.  MW 4 was lame.


 

[WindupAtheist]

What, you don't like porn-level acting badly superimposed over lame CGI backgrounds?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W8rSLwCbxQ

[Ironwood]

Heh, mostly I didn't like the new Mech lab.

It sucked.

Hardpoints was a silly way to go.  Dammit, if I want to stuff lasers into every orifice so that I MELTDOWN the minute I even see an enemy mech, that should be my goddamn right !

[Lantyssa]

I hated the system, too.  Lasers are good for someone with poor aim.

[Sheepherder]

Laser mechs were retarded.

[Ironwood]

You're missing the point.

[HaemishM]

What, you don't like porn-level acting badly superimposed over lame CGI backgrounds?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W8rSLwCbxQ

Having never played this game, all I can say is "Holy God, that was awful."

[Sheepherder]

You're missing the point.

The point isn't worth hitting.  The third game was about taking the heaviest chassis you could find and stuffing it full of lasers and heat sinks and hitting alpha strike until you one-shot the other mech.  This wasn't something FASA wanted, so they kludged it in the fourth game to be marginally better.  People who make games aren't beholden to allow you to do munchkin-ish shit.

Haemish: the intro is slightly better.

[Typhon]

People who make games aren't beholden to allow you to do munchkin-ish shit.

If the gameworld designer can't come up with a reason why someone wouldn't load a mech with lasers, and/or the devs can't make the engine do what the gameworld designer comes up with, blaming it on the user is always just a cop out.

Example:
Gamedesigner: "lasers put in close proximity to each other create a resonance effect that generates far more heat then can be dissipated".
GameDev: heatFromLazer = laserHeat^numLazersInHardpoint 

This would let players put four lasers into the same hard point... which causes the hard point explode when the player alpha strikes all four lasers at the same time.

Course, this gives the player the option of putting four lasers in a hard point and only firing two at a time, but fuck that, players don't deserve options.

[Sheepherder]

If the gameworld designer can't come up with a reason why someone wouldn't load a mech with lasers, and/or the devs can't make the engine do what the gameworld designer comes up with, blaming it on the user is always just a cop out.

They did exactly that.  Fuck, it should be intuitively obvious why they don't let you install a high heat, high energy beam weapon in the spot for an autocannon or missile rack.  So... grats on agreeing with me?

[WindupAtheist]

I always thought laser beams coming out of the missile racks on a Mad Cat or something looked ridiculous anyway. I never did MW3 online, but in single-player it was all about using huge clumps of pulse lasers to saw one leg off for an easy kill.

[Kail]

I never did MW3 online, but in single-player it was all about using huge clumps of pulse lasers to saw one leg off for an easy kill.

Multiplayer was kind of similar.  Since ammo concerns were more manageable, projectile weapons were more viable than in single player, and there was a patch early on which doubled leg armor to prevent everyone just going around kneecapping everyone else, as far as I can recall.

But the big problem was the same as in MW2, that they're trying to convert the tabletop rules into a realtime action game.  In the tabletop game, it makes sense (kinda) to have a half dozen different weapons, since you can fire them all at whatever you want without penalty.  In the PC game, you'll never be able to accurately aim all of them at once (say nothing of trying to aim at different targets simultaneously), so building a versatile mech means half your arsenal is sitting unused.

Having something with eight lasers was less about designing cheap ass munchkin mechs (designing powerful mechs kind of the entire point of the mech lab) and more about avoiding these slow, grinding fights where you only use two of your ten weapons rather than try to struggle with aiming and timing half a dozen different weapon types at once.  MW4 didn't fix that, it was still impossible to aim various different weapon systems at once, the only difference was that for some reason the game decided this was the "right" way to play and people who tried other things were fucking it up somehow for the rest of us, so NO MORE OF THAT, and shame on you for trying.

[lesion]

I do think there's merit in mentioSTOMP STOMP STOMP

Goddamn huge-ass robots. With guns. I stomp your tank. Stohhh-omp. I stomp it up!

I wish I could laser-rape everything with a PPC mounted to my mech's face, but hey.

[Sheepherder]

The reason for lasers in multiplayer was the average ping of a dial-up connection, not just the ability to saw off limbs.  Otherwise you would have seen a shitton of mechs mounting ER Large Lasers or ER PPC's for 800+ yard alpha strikes.  Latency aside, aiming problems should be fixed with assisted aiming systems.  FASA dropped the ball in every incarnation of the game by neglecting to have any form of auto-aim except the shitty targeting computer which still doesn't help people with slow reflexes or shitty input devices.

I have no clue what the fuck you are talking about with the slow fights bit.  Long Tom / Thunderbolt / MRM 40 / PPC / LBX AC / Ultra AC / Gauss Rifle to the face is plenty fast considering the game is about 30-100 tons of walking armor in a slugging match.

[Kail]

I have no clue what the fuck you are talking about with the slow fights bit.  Long Tom / Thunderbolt / MRM 40 / PPC / LBX AC / Ultra AC / Gauss Rifle to the face is plenty fast considering the game is about 30-100 tons of walking armor in a slugging match.

I don't consider the fact that the game is about 60 ton mechs to be an excuse to be as slow and boring as you want.  Cutting a 100 ton mech down with AC10s was slow as hell.  You often had to kill five or ten such mechs per mission.

And yes, the game wasn't slow if you were using only the huge damage weapons.  Amputating the AC10s and machineguns so that I could stuff in bigger missile racks with more ammo, or PPCs with heat sinks was how I generally got through MW4, as I recall.  The stupid thing was that adding bigger weapons was fine, but adding more weapons was not.

[Sheepherder]

I actually pulled off a 1v3 there.  It isn't the way they're slotted, some weapons are just shitty.

[Ironwood]

 

[Sheepherder]

The disturbing part is the only configuration I'm better at with a Daishi is stacking Light Gauss.

I still prefer the Madcat Thunderbolt + ER PPC x 2 + Artillery Beacon variant I created to finish the game.  I might try some experimentation with seeking missiles next, but as I recall I stopped using them because they were shitty.

[Khaldun]

Man, been a while since I played this. I liked running with little fast mechs in packs where you'd zip around a big mech trying to take its legs off. Was only fun and workable if you had two or three folks doing the same and one bigger mech around on your side as a distraction.

[Lantyssa]

When MPBT3025 shut down, we switched to a League for a bit.  (Think they kept playing, but MW4 was the least favorite of the series to me.)  I usually ran around in a Thor/Summoner to let our other guys pilot heavier stuff.  They were always amused by how often I would DFA.  Too bad it didn't do much.

[climbjtree]

So wait - I do need the disc? Or no?

[Vaiti]

You don't. You did when they first released this. But when they first released this it was pretty bad. Lots of bugs. The CD check being the biggest. Their server were overloaded, and thousands of people ended up downloading the client at once, and not a one could play due to the bug. Then the server died. Then their torrent/front end software crapped out. They have since updated both the game and the front end to usable levels. Tho I've yet to get multiplayer working. Been having abit of fun with instant play mode tho. Really makes me want MW5 to happen.

The game really shows it's age. The graphics and controls don't seem nearly as good as I remember. But then again I never played MW4, just 2 and 3. So that is just nostalgia on my part.
I remember playing the demo of 2 for hours when it first came outs and learning all the little tricks and controls. Like manually shutting the mech down to hide it from radar, flushing coolant manually, jump jetting to firing positions and cycling through weapons to hit things with just the right weapon for the job.

MW4 seems to lack that dynamic. But again. Nostalgia.

This has suddenly made me want to install the MechCommander games again. Can't remember if 1 or 2 was better, but I recall having a blast with one of them. Maybe I shouldn't install either, just to keep the memory clean.

[Goreschach]

I remember playing the demo of 2 for hours when it first came outs and learning all the little tricks and controls. Like manually shutting the mech down to hide it from radar, flushing coolant manually, jump jetting to firing positions and cycling through weapons to hit things with just the right weapon for the job.

MW4 seems to lack that dynamic. But again. Nostalgia.

Yeah, it probably is nostalgia, seeing as how every single one of those commands are in the game.

[Vaiti]

Wasn't saying they aren't in MW4, in fact some of those commands might NOT be in MW2, namely manually flushing coolant. Not honestly sure that was implemented in MW2 or not. It's been years. No, it's mostly the feeling of control I remember feeling. Which is likely greatly improved in MW4, but it feels clunky to me now. Thus since I haven't played MW 2 and 3 in some years, those memories are untainted still and it feels to me that things were more fluid then. In reality they were likely far clunkier than this.

[Sheepherder]

Remap your keybinds.