The Church of Alvis

http://www.mektek.net/projects/mw4/

So a long time ago in 2003 I bought a game called Mechwarrior 4: Mercanaries. It was my birthday and I was slowly working my way through it, but never finished because Eric called me to play SWG. Anyway, bored with WoW I installed MW4:M to my new PC last night and remembered how fun it was to shoot missiles and lasers at stuff and watching it blow up. I googled to see what I might be forgetting (I've long since lost the instruction manual) and low and behold it is free to download now. I don't know all the details, but if anyone is interested in Multiplayer or something we can make mechs and blow each other/others up.

I has that game and never finished it either. Not sure I'll have time this weekend but maybe sometime next week I can turn you into slag

Furiel wrote:I has that game and never finished it either. Not sure I'll have time this weekend but maybe sometime next week I can turn you into slag

My missiles shall blot out the sun!

Blackferne wrote:

Furiel wrote:I has that game and never finished it either. Not sure I'll have time this weekend but maybe sometime next week I can turn you into slag

My missiles shall blot out the sun!

Then I shall slag you in the shade!!

I have that game too. Word is they're going to be making a new one with the guy who actually started it all. There is also a Crysis mod called Mechwarrior Living Legends that has everything in the universe, rather than just mechs which is actually pretty good.

I 'm totally in on this! I use to run it with a joystick and mouse combo, those were the days.

Downloading it now. I'll give any game a go, just to pass time.

So let's say...download the stuff, patch up etc from the link. Wednesday night we load up a map say 9pm cst (10 est, 8 mst, 7pst) and we just blow each other up for a while. If we want after getting people up to speed (including myself) we can break into teams.

I'll jump in on this on a future date if it all works out. Wednesday is bad. But next time.


Sent from my JesusPhone using TapaTeamEdward

Been playing around, trying to get it run...keep getting a blank black screen when the game loads.

Root cause it probably that I'm running this on Vista...in surfing several forums it seems that Vista is known to cause a lot of problems. Hopefully I'll find a way to get this running before Wed.

The stupid downloader won't even start for me. Was anyone able to get it to load in firefox?

Arrican wrote:The stupid downloader won't even start for me. Was anyone able to get it to load in firefox?

http://www.mektek.net/forums/topic/1669 ... -mw4mercs/

I'm running MW4 on Vista without much problem.

Happyclam wrote:I'm running MW4 on Vista without much problem.

Showoff.

In unrelated news, thanks for the vid card it arrived this week.

Heh - turns out it was an issue with teh video codecs. Working now.

I should be ok to try logging on for an hour or so on Wed...we'll keep you posted.

Np. You owe me lots of sex in return. Just as an FYI. That or maybe living quarters if I'm ever down Austin way.

Just as an aside, you live right up the street where I used to live. I used to live in the Scofield Farms apartments there on Metric.

I'd suggest that anyone who want to play on Wednesday should spend a hour or so going through the mechs and getting a setup that you like (and also messing with the controls. The defaults a pretty bad).

How do we want to play? 100ton mechs? 50tons? a mix?

Let's say no assault mechs, so an 80ton cap?

Bulwark wrote:I'd suggest that anyone who want to play on Wednesday should spend a hour or so going through the mechs and getting a setup that you like (and also messing with the controls. The defaults a pretty bad).

Any recommendations on control setup? I was thinking WASD, and maybe a few other tweaks here and there. I played campaign mode on default controls yesterday and was teh suck.

I might need some help on building mechs for Wed, seeing as I am a bit of a noob. Any chance someone with some more experience and ventrilo might be able to jump on a bit early on Wed to lend some assistance?

The graphics are pure awesomesauce...

I use the default controls, but enable the mouse. If there are better key bindings I'd love to find out.

Dodd Formeianna wrote:

Bulwark wrote:I'd suggest that anyone who want to play on Wednesday should spend a hour or so going through the mechs and getting a setup that you like (and also messing with the controls. The defaults a pretty bad).

Any recommendations on control setup? I was thinking WASD, and maybe a few other tweaks here and there. I played campaign mode on default controls yesterday and was teh suck.

I might need some help on building mechs for Wed, seeing as I am a bit of a noob. Any chance someone with some more experience and ventrilo might be able to jump on a bit early on Wed to lend some assistance?

The graphics are pure awesomesauce...

I haven't played in awhile, but have played and beaten the MW 1-4 campaigns, it's just been awhile.

My personal preference has always been beam weapons because they are easier to aim at moving mechs. However beam weapons can also have heat issues.
PPCs are good.
Gauss Rifles are good as well.
Autocannons suck.
SRMs are a waste.
LRMs in small packs are a waste, 15 or 20 packs, yes please.

I use WASD for control (W and S being speed) and then use mouse to torso. I also set the mouse wheel to scroll through the weapon groups.
I set Q to next enemy and E to be closest enemy. R is set to toggle the radar zoom.

I didn't get more advanced than that.

As far as Building Mechs, there are a few things to know.

Each Mech has a weight limit (in tons) from 20 to 100 tons.
There are 3 tabs in the mechlab. The first is your chasis, next is weapons and 3rd is armor.
Chasis defines how heavy your mech is. You also use this screen to add non-weapons (improved Gyros, jump jets, etc). THis screen also lets you add more heat sinks (discussed later) and improve your engine.
Weapons is where you will spend most of your time. There are 3 main weapon classes, Beam, Missile and Gun. ON this screen you will see different colored boxes. The colors tel you what type of weapon can go there and the locations tell you where it is on your mech. (arm, leg, head, etc).
Beam weapons have good range and damage, but produce a LOT of heat. if your mech overheats, it shuts down for a few seconds to cool off. Heat sinks help offset this, but take up weight.
MIssile weapons are either direct fire or guided. They don't have the heat issues like beam, but they do require ammo.
Guns do a good bit of damage and are more likely to do criticals, but they are usually very heavy and require ammo (BTW, don't forget to buy extra ammo. It sucks being in the middle of battle and having no shots left).
Armor is pretty self explanitory. Just make sure you set it to Ferro-Fibrous type (unless you will be fighting only guns).

So, it is always a balancing act between Weight, Damage, Heat, Ammo and Weapon-Slots to find the best fit. Try lots of play styles to see what you like. If you are on a team, have one player include a target beacon and another player use lots of LRM20s. The missiles will lock onto the beacon's target super fast and do tons of damage. Or, go with a rifleman with a bunch of cannons and have fun knocking other mechs over when your huge guns hit them.
Personally, I like beam weapons the best because I hate running out of shots.

So thanks guys...I've now lost several hours of my life playing this game in campaign mode...Even though I still suck, it's completely awesome and addictive. I mapped the WASD controls, then enabled mouse to rotate/aim the upper torso of the mech. Used the TAB/Shift TAB to flip targets, since that's what was used in SWG/JTL, and it seems to work well.

Basically I've taken the regular factory default mechs, tweaked some of the weapons, and maxed out tonnage on armor. I do like lasers, but sometimes the long range missiles are fun too. Pew pew!

How will we be able to log in to play as a group tomorrow? Will someone host via IP address, or will we group up on one of the public servers? I'm still not 100% clear how this works.

I figured we'd log onto vent and sort it out.

I messed around with this a little last night. It works kind of like BattleNet. Basically, click on multiplayer and click 'Connect'. One person will create a server (ex: Alvis) and everyone else can then find the Alvis server and log in.
They also allow bots at various skill levels, so we can backfill with those as needed.
In the old days, I remember there being multiplayer Capture the Flag maps, but I didn't see any on the list.
I'll probably log in a bit early tomorrow and get a server set up to work out any of the bugs before everyone logs in.