Jump to content

MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries


23 replies to this topic

#1 Cole Christensen

    Member

  • PipPipPipPipPip
  • Legendary Founder
  • Legendary Founder
  • 126 posts
  • LocationOsan AB

Posted 01 July 2012 - 05:25 PM

I tried to play MW4:M today and was so disappointed that my modern "gaming rig" couldn't handle the old title. I realize that game engines do not age well and age-old optimizations do not translate to new-fangled hardware (it didn't help I was running it at 1920x1080).

I did realize one thing, and not to pat myself on the back, but I must have been pretty sharp in my youth. I was only 12 or so when I first played MW4 and even today I was blown-away by the intricacies and complexity of the system. From ensuring optimal load-outs in the Mechbay, to managing your weekly budget...how did I ever figure that out as a kid? Haha.

Has anyone been able to get MW4:M running? I was using Mekpack. Whatever that is, I guess it's a freeware version.

Edited by Cole Christensen, 01 July 2012 - 05:25 PM.


#2 Vandul

    Member

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Legendary Founder
  • Legendary Founder
  • 1,342 posts
  • LocationYork, New

Posted 01 July 2012 - 05:36 PM

I play it too on a pretty amped up system. Not real sure how to get better performance. It does get pretty laggy when there are a lot of things going on.

#3 Syro

    Member

  • PipPipPip
  • Bridesmaid
  • Bridesmaid
  • 60 posts
  • LocationOverland Park, KS

Posted 01 July 2012 - 05:37 PM

I got the mektek mw4 mercs build running on my i7 witout any difficulty [redacted].

I started playing around in instant action the other day, and I have to say, if targeting works the same in MWO, i'm gong ot have to give up on my catapult and go with something that offers direct support. It may be that I'm rusty, or it may be that I'm not using a joystick, but i'm finding it very difficult to target with LRMs. More practice is needed. But yeah, right now, i have no idea how i ever managed to beat it on the most difficult setting

Edited by Egomane, 03 April 2014 - 12:59 AM.
removed link


#4 Bobfrombobtown

    Member

  • PipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Bad Company
  • Bad Company
  • 344 posts

Posted 01 July 2012 - 05:55 PM

Using the mektek version of MW4 here, it installed quite easily, I just had to get the MTX client first.

Back in the day I used to take a Raven and hit people with NARC beacons. However, this was was a double-edged sword. In MW4 the NARC would override your lancemates' current target and cause their missiles to go streaking to the target you tagged with the NARC. If you were playing with people you knew and planned for these kinds of tactics it worked out great since fire support 'mechs like Catapults could just let loose with LRMs and wouldn't have to even target the tagged enemy. However if you were with a bunch of random people, you could really irritate some people.

#5 Sgt Bones

    Member

  • PipPip
  • Legendary Founder
  • Legendary Founder
  • 39 posts
  • LocationFulda Germany

Posted 01 July 2012 - 05:55 PM

What surprised me the most was how....dated.... it looked after all these years...damn, I have become a graphics ***** in my old age!

But the same happened with all the old mechwarrior titles after a few years had passed, ahhh, how cool they were when they came out, and how awful they became after playing newer versions ( 16colors in the first mechwarrior game, woah, what a blast it was THEN!)

But, somehow it still hasn't lost its fun-factor....yet. Once this game goes live, I doubt I will ever start MW4 again. Except maybe to show my grand kids what I played a long time ago.... ^_^

#6 sumdumfu

    Member

  • PipPipPip
  • 79 posts

Posted 01 July 2012 - 11:07 PM

an older game like mw4:m is not going to be multithreaded like today's games, where you can get away with lowish Ghz as long as you have lots of cores. to play this game well i'd suspect you'll need lots of raw Ghz. when it was new i'm pretty sure the top end CPUs were single core chips in the low-mid 3 Ghz range. that speed would still be close to a top end chip today, just with 3 or more cores.

#7 Aegic

    Member

  • PipPipPipPipPipPip
  • 476 posts
  • LocationHouston

Posted 02 July 2012 - 12:27 AM

I was able to play it just fine using the MTX utilities. Nothing I had to change.

Windows 7 64-bit
i7-960@3.3ghz
8GB DDR3
GTX 560

#8 BigJim

    Member

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • 1,458 posts
  • LocationChesterfield, England

Posted 02 July 2012 - 01:36 AM

As above, no messing around needed either with the retail CD version or the MTX version.
However I am running 32-bit XP sp3 on a P4 prescott core machine.. ;) [/the future]

#9 Syrusbrian

    Member

  • PipPipPip
  • Legendary Founder
  • Legendary Founder
  • 52 posts
  • LocationDenmark

Posted 02 July 2012 - 01:46 AM

well ill say lets go play some old MW4:Mercs again til we can play MW:O ;)

EDIT: might setup an smooth running server for people to join with propperly the max player settings

Edited by Syrusbrian, 02 July 2012 - 01:49 AM.


#10 EmyLightsaber

    Member

  • PipPipPipPipPip
  • 121 posts
  • LocationValhalla, Outworlds Alliance

Posted 02 July 2012 - 04:21 AM

Additionally try this:

Mechstorm High Definition Patch for the latest version of the Free Release of MW4: Mercenaries.

http://www.mechstorm...c.php?f=5&t=801

Also, GameRanger:
http://www.gameranger.com/

Getting Mercs working with GameRanger:

If you downloaded through MekTek's MTX program follow all of the following steps.

First off, Download and Install GameRanger.

Next, go into the folder structure that starts with mektek.net/mechwarrior mercenaries - mektek mekpak.

Start by renaming the folder named:

mektek.net

Rename this folder to:

mektek

Next, rename the following folder:

Mechwarrior Mercenaries - MekTek MekPak

Rename this folder to:

MechwarriorMercenaries

It is helpful to note that there are no spaces in-between the two words.


Following this, start up GameRanger, or if you have it running, go to Edit - Options from the dropdown menu.

Go to the "Games" tab and find Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries and point it to the

MW4Mercs.exe

You should now be set for playing Mercs over GameRanger.

Hopefully, anyone should be able to host using this method.

#11 Roguewolf

    Member

  • PipPipPipPipPip
  • Elite Founder
  • Elite Founder
  • 137 posts

Posted 02 July 2012 - 04:31 AM

As was said above, I used the MTX utility and it loaded and ran just fine one my machine. Intel Q6700 quadcore, (OC'd to 3.4Ghz) , 16 GB ram, Gforce GTX 550Ti , 240GB Corsair SSD, Windows 7-64bit.

Now if that utility can manage to run perfectly smooth on my whacked machine, pretty sure it will run on anyone's. Just remember to run the MTX utility with ADMIN rights.

#12 OmegaMale92

    Member

  • PipPip
  • 38 posts
  • LocationIllinois

Posted 02 July 2012 - 04:37 AM

i installed MW4: Mercs from the actual disks and it ran fine under win7_32 on an i3 laptop.
also installed it on my core2quad win7_64 desktop, but haven't actually played yet.
disk based only supports up to 1600x1200

Edited by OmegaMale92, 02 July 2012 - 04:37 AM.


#13 Variis

    Rookie

  • Legendary Founder
  • Legendary Founder
  • 9 posts

Posted 02 July 2012 - 04:55 AM

Be sure to specify your videocard in the setup menu. It really helps the game and prevents it from lagging.

Another thing is that the Elite difficulty of today IS NOT the same Elite difficulty of 10 years ago. Someone tweaked it.

Obvious examples are that in the general campaign a lot the mechs are loaded up with the new gear made by the players and reflect their own balance changes. This totally throws the difficulty level off from being even remotely playable in a traditional sense. Having to face mechs and loadouts the game never intended for you to fight can be killer. One particular example would having to fight double catapults armed with Artemis LRMs near the end of the mission where you escort the dignitaries for free off the planet. They get near instant lock-on and the missiles center-torso you almost without fail.

Infact, the Elite difficulty is just out-and-out unreasonable in how it plays as well. You will eventually notice that mechs NEVER stop tracking you, save all their heavy guns just for you, and its damn near 95% all hits will hit your center torso. What do I mean by this? I mean that if you're in an urban setting and have all 9 of your lancemates attacking a single lone 75 ton Thanatos, it will ignore them (yeah, ignore a pair of 100 ton Diashis/Dire Wolfs, awesome plan), peak around the corner of a building, alphastrike you in the torso, and then duck back behind the building to continue getting wrecked by your lance. Sure, it's gonna obviously lose, but if it kills you the mission ends, right? So that's what it does. And its not like you can just send your lance mates ahead. The AI is terrible (except when it wants to kill you) and its laughable watching your entire lance get shredded by center torso shots while they turn the entire enemy mech yellow.

It may as well be cheating. When I played the game 10 years ago, it was nothing like this. It would attack lance mates with nearly equal priority to you, and it played with the default weapons and loadouts.

Playing the game on Veteran is a DRASTIC drop in difficulty. You go from barely being able to make ends meet, provided you survived the mission at all in Elite, to having so much money you don't know what to do with it in Veteran. Its honestly a waste of time to play on Elite because of it. Its not that you can't do it, but the sheer stupidity, and the obsurd things you have to do to win, make it absolutely negative fun. Hiding behind every hill and rock, while in a Fafnir, because you're afraid of what that Bushwhacker will do to your center torso before it dies and thus set you up to be killed by the next guy you fight, is a crappy game. Veteran, however, is very fun and plays quite reasonably.

#14 skamage

    Member

  • PipPipPipPipPipPip
  • 271 posts

Posted 02 July 2012 - 05:22 AM

Been playing this as well quite a bit. Gets me somewhat ready to step back into a mech.

#15 Oliver West

    Rookie

  • 1 posts

Posted 09 February 2013 - 07:30 AM

I loved M.WM 4 it was great fun can't wait to down load the new Mechwarrior. ;)

#16 Natasha Kerensky

    Member

  • PipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Legendary Founder
  • Legendary Founder
  • 244 posts

Posted 09 February 2013 - 09:27 AM

View PostCole Christensen, on 01 July 2012 - 05:25 PM, said:

I tried to play MW4:M today and was so disappointed that my modern "gaming rig" couldn't handle the old title. I realize that game engines do not age well and age-old optimizations do not translate to new-fangled hardware (it didn't help I was running it at 1920x1080).

I did realize one thing, and not to pat myself on the back, but I must have been pretty sharp in my youth. I was only 12 or so when I first played MW4 and even today I was blown-away by the intricacies and complexity of the system. From ensuring optimal load-outs in the Mechbay, to managing your weekly budget...how did I ever figure that out as a kid? Haha.

Has anyone been able to get MW4:M running? I was using Mekpack. Whatever that is, I guess it's a freeware version.



MW4 works fine on my Win 7 x64 system.

#17 kiltymonroe

    Member

  • PipPipPipPipPip
  • 153 posts

Posted 11 February 2013 - 01:20 PM

If the MW4 Mercs configuration utility doesn't seem to be saving your settings, you may have to manually tell the game to use your graphics card by opening the options.ini file and setting videodriverindex=1. Otherwise it may try to run the game with your CPU only, resulting in terribad performance.

#18 Bob752

    Rookie

  • 4 posts

Posted 28 June 2013 - 05:27 AM

Well I haven't really played MW4:M because MTX is down. I have managed though, is to get MW3 in its plain self working, no patches or anything! :D Apart from a few crashes it runs very well on my computer with barely any lag and multiplayer works on local (I guess it was before for a long time but, eh.)

So here is how I did it:
Windows has compatibility packages that allow older games to run on the latest computers without much problems. To get at these packages, simply right click your shortcut or application itself and click the Compatibility tab. It should say on the tab: Run this program in compatibility mode for *compatibility package.* If its not ticked, tick it. Then click on the bar where it shows a package and choose: Windows XP service pack 2 (Or something similar depending on game). if you want to get the graphics looking a bit better, look around the bottom and tick off 640x480 resolution and run in 256 colors. Be sure to run the program as an administrator just in case something decides to blow up violently and you don't have the power to stop it. Then click apply and then Ok.

But you are not done yet. If your computer has more than one graphics card and just has one in general, you want to go to nVidia Control panel (If you don't have this I guess your screwed, sorry.) Now click on Managed 3D settings. Then be sure you are on the program tab and click and the tab that shows a program path. Then you look for an old game of your choice. If the tab does not have the game. Click "Add" and navigate to the folder where the application is located. Then ensure that you have the program selected. Almost done! If you have more than one graphics card a tab will be saying: global settings. Change that to something different. Now if you don't, edit each of the options to the lowest setting.

After all this you click apply and run your classic game! Hopefully I didn't mess up (or you) and your game should run fine. If you are willing to try higher graphic settings go ahead! Just be sure to set them back if something looks wrong in the game.

Have fun gaming! :wacko:

#19 Razorb0iz

    Rookie

  • 4 posts
  • LocationSingapore

Posted 16 April 2014 - 02:43 AM

How did you guys get Mech 4 Mercs to run on your Win 7 64-bit? Nothing seems to work for me.

Tried running MekTek in admin mode, then tried running the game through it.

A window opens up that's titled Mech 4 Mercs, but it just shows a black screen, then after awhile it just closes and nothing happens. 0.o

#20 lars1701c

    Rookie

  • 1 posts

Posted 15 May 2014 - 02:51 PM

i downloaded MW4 but can't get it to run, does anyone know how to get it working?





1 user(s) are reading this topic

0 members, 1 guests, 0 anonymous users