mech2

[Cik]

i believe i heard tell of a specialized dosbox to run mech2, can someone link it here? i'm a youngfag and i'd like to give it a try, because fapp good graphics.

[Cik]

and also, does anyone have a tested method of getting mech3 working. very ... strange things happen pretty much regardless of whether or not what graphics settings i choose.

[thEClaw]

Mechwarrior 2: MechVM

Mechwarrior 3: I tried it for about a week. It just continues to crash.

I would suggest sticking to MWLL. I played Mechwarrior 2:Mercenaries about two weeks ago (finally finished it), and before that I tried to play MW3 for several days. Both games plain suck from a modern point of view. Really, really bad AI, no balancing at all (Mechlab lets a light 'Mech own everything in sight with 14 MBLs), MW2:Mercenaries had the worst hit-detection I have ever seen, MW3 kept crashing and only let me finish three missions.
It's not worth the time. After having played MWLL you can breeze through MW2 in a light 'Mech on hardest difficulty without ever being in danger of death. It's no fun anymore.

[Bill]

There is a patch for MW3, it mostly works but can be pretty buggy.

[(TLL)CapperDeluxe]

I never had much luck with MechVM

for my DosBox needs I used D-Fend Reloaded as a frontend to easily setup configurations for the Mech 2 series, and other graphics intensive DOS games like Crusader No Remorse.

[Eximo]

I had no problems taking DosBox .73 and firing up Mech2. I did have to find a CD cracked version as I couldn't get the disc properly mounted.

The Crusader series can be booted up in Pentagram, the rebuild/reverse engineering of Ultima 8 that uses the same engine as Crusader. I haven't tried it in a while and it worked okay except for the text scrolling by too fast. One of these days I'll muddle my way through Ultima 8.

[=KoS= Saber15]

and also, does anyone have a tested method of getting mech3 working. very ... strange things happen pretty much regardless of whether or not what graphics settings i choose.

What OS? Mech3 runs perfectly fine on my WinXP laptop, though I haven't bothered installing it on my Win7 64b computer.

[Cik]

and also, does anyone have a tested method of getting mech3 working. very ... strange things happen pretty much regardless of whether or not what graphics settings i choose.

What OS? Mech3 runs perfectly fine on my WinXP laptop, though I haven't bothered installing it on my Win7 64b computer.

win7. the problem seems to be attached to my very new ATI 6950. which apparently REALLY fapps with mech3. i get incredible physics weirdness, game 'rewinding' bad graphical tearing, the works. apparently there is a fix on some mech3 community site, but they haven't approved my account yet so i can't download it ;/

[thEClaw]

I think I came across that fix, too. But I wasn't willing to register for a game that I expected to disappoint me. If you ever get that patch...maybe...you know.

I tried to play MW3 under Windows XP. And as I said, it did not work out well. No strange bugs, just crashes. Mostly when I wanted to target an enemy close to myself.

Maybe a virtual machine would be a solution to play MW3.

[Mitchpate]

But I wasn't willing to register for a game that I expected to disappoint me.

In its prime MW3 was a pretty solid game.  I can count on one hand the number of times it crashed for me and back then that was pretty rare.

If you're having issues and using an AMD card you might try several different driver revisions.  Often bugs like that come and go as AMD tinkers with things.

[CHHš Aethon]

I can run MW3 on my box, and I have only one issue: the APCs bounce about 2km into the air whenever they hit a bump, lol.  When I had my 5870s, I could not get the game to run.  Once I switched to a pair of GTX580s, I had zero problems from then on.  I am on Windows 7 64-bit.

[thEClaw]

In its prime MW3 was a pretty solid game.

Well, it seemed to be ok - as far as I got. Nothing can be worse than MW2:Mercs, anyway. Except for maybe the original Mechwarrior, but I only played that for a couple of hours and don't remember it very well. (The first Battletech game, however, was extremely well done in my opinion. So it doesn't always get worse when you go back in time.)

Playing these games really makes you appreciate MWLL. The only game I would still consider able to compete is MW4 (including the various mektek-patches). Except for graphics and balancing (respectively the 'Mechlab) it might surpass MWLL in some aspects and lose a lot of ground in other ones.

Concerning MW3, I read something about the target indicator being drawn outside of the video-memory (something like that, I am not into that kind of stuff). And supposedly, that is what causes the crashes. So it is quite possible that a different driver (or a switch from NVIDIA to ATI) may help. I only had a Geforce 4200Ti available, and hence was restricted to a very old driver anyway (93, I think). Maybe I will try a virtual machine next time, on my "real" PC. MW3 ist the only Mechwarrior game I never actually played - aside from that try a couple of weeks ago.

[Spooky]

 

MW2:Mercs is maybe the best MechWarrior game, after MechWarrior 3. How in the World can you like MechWarrior 1 and MechWarrior 4 better, sheesh .


Anyway, regarding MechWarrior 3: be sure to patch it to the latest version and if you have an ATi card, use this fix (attached for your pleasure).

[thEClaw]

I patched MW3. What else would I have done for several days? 

And seriously: Go back and play all of the games. MW2:Mercs has no chance at all against any newer incarnation of Mechwarrior. The few things I remember at the moment: Bugs, a good amount of them. Shots are delayed by half a second, it feels terrible. The AI is as stupid as possible - it doesn't shoot much, it can't maneuver. The worst thing, however, are the messed up hit-boxes: In the whole game I was able to kill about five enemies without shooting both of their arms off first - if shots even got registered. These arms had the strangest hit-boxes ever. Once I did an alphastrike right towards the head of a non-moving Atlas and both of its arms fell off (using a mixture of SRM6 and MBL on my medium 'Mech). Placing weapons in these arms was a complete waste, since they were about the only places ever hit by enemy fire*. The last thing that comes to my mind is the 'Mechlab. Maybe it is faithful to Battletech (I don't know), but it certainly breaks the game. 14 MBL? No problem. A UAC20 with only 5 rapidly firing shots? Check.

Don't get me wrong: The game probably was great for its time. I really liked the "Mercenaries"-aspect, like I did with MW4:Mercs. I really liked the story, it actually was understandable - completely unlike the MW2-story. Also, I played MW2 back then. And I loved it, although it suffers from mostly the same problems.
The games after MW2 were built upon gained experience, at least that is what it feels like. MW3 seems to get better and MW4:Mercs definitely is by far the best of all of them (I first played it three years ago). I know a couple of games I played as a child, games I still play every now and then - despite some of them being awful. But after an unbiased look...MW2s glory must have worn off about a decade ago.
It is still a fun(ny) experience, though.

*Maybe the strange hit-detection was caused by MechVM? I wouldn't know.

Ah, one more thing: How can MW2:Mercs be the best Mechwarrior game? How the heck? If I was admin here, I would immediately kick you. Ban you from the Internet, actually! Maybe a little bit of torture would be appropriate, too.

[Spooky]

I'd rather play MW2(Vanilla,Mercs,GBL) than MW4...