81 replies to this topic

[KuroNyra]

It's... IT'S.... IT'S WORKING!

Edited by KuroNyra, 01 December 2014 - 12:16 PM.

[KuroNyra]

Hehe. My old computer is a Window 7. He can run that game.

Already become Solaris Champion, trying in recruit difficulty. Mostly playing with the mechs... That game is awesome. Urbanmech AND Crab!

[kosmos1214]

heres some thing that may help you guys trying to get mw 1 or 2 runing on a newer pc hope it helps he give the settings he finds work so you might still need to play with them a little

mw1 http://www.pixelship...adg/ep0032.html

mw2 http://www.pixelship...adg/ep0055.html

[LordKnightFandragon]

Marack Drock, on 20 October 2014 - 09:14 AM, said:

I played MW3 right there (that exact disc) when I was 3 years old on a SideWinder Joystick. It was awesome. Thumbs up if you still play these games.

Lol, id love to play MW3, but it doesnt work.....pretty much no tricks ive tried make it function at all...

[Malakie]

I started reading through this thread and realized I was laughing in a good way... Why? Because what many of you are saying about playing those "old" Battletech games on computer... and the comments that you were kids playing these was a common phrase.. I am 50 now but I don't act nor feel like it at all... and was playing Battletech on computers YEARS before ANY of the titles in this thread were even dreamed up..

I am going to have to put some pictures on here for all of you if anyone is interested..... If, for those of you that actually read this, any of you have interest, I will see what I can dig up and post... just let me know..

My comments will be a little different.. This is a bit of a long comment.. well ok a real long comment... so if you do not like to read or do not like long posts.. sorry.. This post talks about the MISSING history of Battletech and some information I thought you all might find interesting... it has some history to it regarding Battletech and the very first computer Battletech games every created of which I was there and a part of ... If you are a Battletech person and would like to know a bit of history that most are unaware of, read on albeit it is a long winded post...so bear with me..

Many years ago apparently... gads I hate saying that... Ok Many years ago I had a small software development company I started and that ended up having a small part and tie to FASA and the original Battletech world. This small company was started because of a software program and idea I came up with while on medical hold from military service and while recovering from surgeries due to injuries I had in the line of duty in the Navy.

What started my whole adventure back then was that I wrote what became a best selling software program from an idea I had while sitting in the military hospital trying to watch other Veterans who had lost arms and hands trying to use computer keyboards back then. That program was on the Amiga originally (later coded over to PC's) called 'WMS' The Workbench Management System for the Amiga (later on we released WMS for the PC too, The Windows Management System which ran on Windows V3.0 OR on Dos V3.0). The whole premise was to make using a computer for those other disabled Veterans I saw easier than holding a pencil in their mouths to poke at single keys...

That software program I wrote gave me the ability to start a small development company on the side, hire a few programmers and do some other things... Suffice it to say had I chosen or been a more savvy business type, I would be worth some money.. I learned the second huge lesson of my life then (first being that I should not have married the woman I did) all about how companies take someones hard work and steal it for their own and that two of the largest computer companies today are what they are because of that practice especially back then.. Let's just say both Windows and Apple OS even today use almost exactly that software idea and functionality as major aspects of their OS's even today... funny thing.. I still have my original date stamped copyrighted code from back then backed up on some old 5 1/4" and 3.5 inch floppies still here with me today - which I stupidly sent them copies of back then thinking I could 'bundle' copies of my software with theirs to 'enhance' their functionality and make a little money for both - was I an idiot or what?..... but that is another story....

Anyway, One of those that joined me and my new little company was a great guy named Ralph Reed. Ralph had been working on a program based on the Battletech world on the Commodore Amiga computer system in his spare time. We hit it off to start probably because of our mutual military affiliation.. he was at Eglin AFB in Florida while I was Navy although during this time period on medical hold, I was not active and was back home in Wisconsin recovering from another major surgery on injuries I had sustained.

At first Ralph and I wanted FASA to allow us to really dig in and develop the game and then sell it commercially (well actually a bigger better enhanced version we intended to do to actually sell) even though it was available to download from our BBS (bulletin board system and via something called B.I.X.) back then for free, we thought with FASA support we could really do the full on thing using ALL of the Battletech universe. FASA did not think it was a worthwhile endeavor and that it would not sell so although FASA let us keep on coding it and allowing it for free download we just could not sell it and for some reason FASA would not budge on this one... To be honest, Jordan's father was still involved quite a bit in the operations of FASA then and I often thought that was the major hurdle to the idea. I bet today, they kind of wish we had been allowed to proceed... the amount of money now brought in today by the series pretty much proves that what we wanted to do would have been a major money making path. Just the version we released as freeware/shareware back then was a hit on its own having thousands and thousands of downloads off our BBS and players all over the world.... but even that would not get them to let us run with it..

At that time to avoid any hassles, Ralph and I also decided to rename it to Mechforce. I remember him telling me that if we could not get a full blessing from FASA for the project than he did not want to keep using the name so they could not do or stop us from continuing what we did have. Regardless of all that, ironically it was also the start and beginning of a relationship between Ralph and me and our small company and FASA that lasted a couple years until I went back to my first calling which also coincided with my medical clearance, Commodore ceasing Amiga sales and development and changes taking place at FASA including the Battletech centers becoming more of their focus then.

Anyhow, we had a part to play in the design/building of the very first operational Battletech Center in Chicago, IL. First we ended up helping FASA with the use of the Amiga computer (A500 model) which was the heart of every cockpit. We actually supplied all the Amiga 500 mainboards to them directly as an Amiga developer. As things became functional and software was written we had another part that became instrumental when there was a wall hit in terms of speed and fps that was able to be reached when more than 4 or 5 cockpits were on the network at once. Two things happened though that finally broke that barrier.. First was that one day I noticed the coders (not mine) who were working on the server code were not compiling the software correctly for the 68000 series processors for the Amiga. Additionally I noticed they were also trying to process on base 68000 while trying to run on a 68020 enhanced unit. There was actually two problems though.. first was NONE of the big name expansion 68020 boards were stable enough to run the precise code that was needed and would lock up. And the second was the code itself was not compiled FOR 68020 boards.

We had actually developed a little 68020 board for the Amiga ourselves called the 'Sapphire 020' that sold ok in the Amiga market but was kind of the poor mans card and so never made our company into a big name company back then. All of the big name companies boards sold for $1000 or more where ours was a mere $299. They had big names and out sold us all over the place... But I knew name and price did not mean better.. and the customers that did buy our board loved the thing.

When it came to the cockpits and even though FASA had tried just about every name brand board out there, somehow I knew our board would work. Having heard from customers that had tried others as well only to get one of ours and it worked when those did not and knowing my own products, I just knew it would work for FASA too. It took a bit of convincing, ok well I gave them the first two for free :-), and even showed them that even NASA used one of them in the Atlantis space shuttle program..

I gave FASA our Sapphire 020 board to try out and had them plug one into each Amiga board. The attempt was then made again to try and bring more than 4 or 5 cockpits online at once and retain enough FPS to be playable... And was told it did not work either... I knew that could not be right so we drove down to the FASA studio and joined in working on the problem. The Sapphire DID work however.. Unlike every other board they tried, the Sapphire 020 did not lock up as all of the other 020 boards tried had done. First problem solved. But even though it did not lock up, there was no change in the FPS speed... which is why they at first said it did not work... Once it was clarified that it did work just was not speeding things up, I knew something was not right above and beyond the hardware.

I watched as their coders went through the code and compiling again and again, I noticed they were not compiling correctly for the Sapphire and 68020 processor nor were they setting the switches to insure the code was specific to the 68020 processor. I suggested that they make some changes in the compilation settings for that and the board. Of course no coder likes to be told what to do and so we watched as yet again as things would not work because they just kept compiling the same code as before and not making changes to allow for the more powerful processing.

Finally, after I persisted and probably to humor me, they made the change.. and wallah! Off it took! Not only did we achieve a first ever run of 14 frames per second with more than 4 cockpits online at once, the board ran stable without a single lockup for the very first time... and from there the rest is history! I do not remember what they finally achieved for FPS after updating the code for the 68020 processing. I also I do not know how long they continued to use the Amiga and the Sapphire 020 boards in the cockpits after that or whether they were even used in later Battletech centers built in other cities but at least for that time in the very first one in Chicago in those first original cockpits, a small moment in the Battletech universe, I can say I had helped and had done good and it was my small company and my people that helped bring that alive! And it was a blast because we spent the rest of our time there hopping into cockpits blasting away at each other.. I can tell you this, Jordan (Jordan Weisman) and Ross (L. Ross Babcock III), who were the inventors of Battletech, could shoot the pants off everyone... but Ross.. he was by far THE man when it came to controlling a battlemech. I don't think I ever saw him lose a game no matter if all of us in other cockpits ganged up on him..

Those cockpits had two controller joysticks one in each armrest, buttons all over the cockpit (*something like 80+ individual FUNCTIONING controls and buttons if I remember right) and around the multiple screens (main viewer and lower status screens) plus the foot pedals to boot. Ross was by far the best driver I have ever seen myself in one of those cockpits.. He had the ability to have the mech moving one direction WHILE turning in a run with the torso twisted the opposite direction, one arm pointed that way and the other arm pointed this way while hitting multiple targets all at the same time.. The cockpits used full on surround sound and were something to behold.. Here is another tidbit that I don't think FASA gets credit for in the computer world but they actually should.. That is the very FIRST ever computer 3D game ever commercially produced. Many say that ID software and the game Doom is the first from what I understand. Not true. Battletech is the first game to ever draw a 3 dimensional figure using the methods we see today in a computer game. ID software did the first commercial HOME computer game.. but the first ever was in fact the Battletech cockpits which were going before Doom ever came out.

It was shortly after this when I was medically cleared to return to duty (which btw no one, not even my mother who worked for me knew) I was still a part of and had always intended on returning to. I went back to military service full active. About six months after all this, I had helped those I hired find other work even giving them the rights to any other software we designed so they could keep and do their own thing, sold all the assets and closed the doors to my little software company and I moved to my next base and military adventure.

Before that end though, Ralph gave me a copy of the very last version of Battletech/Mechforce code and running game engine ever made... of which right now today I have AND still use and play! I still have both my Amiga 500 and my Amiga 3000 computers from back then and I play the game on those as well as on a PC laptop I have setup that boots into Amiga OS using the WinUae/AmiKit/Amiga Forever emulation. I basically use this laptop as a modern day Amiga which can run everything software wise just like a full blown Amiga .

This version I am sitting on actually contains functional bits for Aerotech, lostech, static weapon emplacements, some other things that were never released to the public. All of the CLAN functionality in this version is working though, something never released by us. We did release a version that has some clan stuff working but not all of it.

This last version I have is not rock solid in some of those aerotech, lostech and other things.. i.e. little visual glitches here and there plus some features not finished completely.. i.e. not all Aerotech functionality is there. I wish we could have finished all that as well.

But the version we released in the end IS the very first computer Battletech game and is the ONLY one that was ever made that contained all rules, weapons, mechs and so forth from Battletech through the Invasion 3050 rules and clan invasion changes... and was free the entire time. Even today you can download the final released version we did and using either a real Amiga or the WinUae/AmiKit/Amiga Forever emulation. And the one thing that keeps me playing it? The A.I. Even today I get beat routinely by the A.I. I have one unit that I started back in 1991 that has 12 mechwarriors and a bunch of mechs... and the unit I still play to this date all these years later.

To date, I have not seen ANY, not one single Battletech game that has come out that is directly created to exact Battletech specs, rules etc other than the one Ralph Reed coded so many years ago on the Amiga. And sadly I also notice that NO ONE, no sources on the internet, wiki, nothing gives him (or FASA) any credit what so ever for any of this. When you look or ask who created the first computer version Battletech game, they all say Interplay with their game Battletech: Crescent Hawk's Inception. While that is the first COMMERCIALLY released Battletech game, it is not even the game Battletech in reality. It is an 'arcade' computer game based around the Battletech universe using graphics and ideas and based very simply on the basic premise and rules of Battletech.

What I mean is Mechforce from Ralph Reed is the ONLY true board and book game based and RELEASED Battletech game that not only was released first before any other Battletech game, but still is today the only one ever released based ON the actual game rules, regulations, stats, numbers and so on! And not a single mention in any historical facts can I find relating that truth anywhere.

So after I closed the doors and we moved on from our work with FASA, It was only a year or so that Interplay finally got FASA to agree to allow the release of the very first commercial computer game, Battletech: Crescent Hawk's Inception.. they did a sequel and then Dynamics came out with the first '3D' version called 'Mechwarrior'. These games were not tried and true Battletech games based and coded on the rules and actual board game itself like Mechforce but they all were the first home computer commercial battletech games. Eventually Microsoft bought the rights and years later came out with the series of games you all were mentioning in this thread.

I still have copies of every game released.. Just before my time involved with FASA and my company came to and end I was also given three (3) original one of a kind actual paintings of Battlemechs from the artwork of the artists back then who did their book covers and illustrations in various scenes. My favorite was of a Marauder firing off its weapons. Another was of a Battlemaster and the third was of a Jenner and Locust in the foreground and an Atlas and some other mechs more in the background on a battlefield....

Sadly, other than photographs I took individually of those paintings back then when I was getting home insurance one day, they were lost forever when that same house burned down in December of 1996. If I could say today what my greatest loss has been of material things I have owned, it would be those three absolutely beautiful paintings. Heck, I never even got any insurance money for them when that happened since they were not something even listed as having any value back then... Now that I talk about it.. I wonder if they would have had some value today... who knows. But more so for me the value of having them is a bigger loss than anything else because it is tied to something I had a small part in - and the artwork was beautiful.. I may be mistaken but if I remember correctly, one of them was painted by Dave Allsop. The other two I know were done by Keith Parkinson. Sadly because they were one of a kind, not even a copy can be found on the internet.. since it did not exist back then.. :-(

So there you have it.. this thread brought back some memories... While this post is long, I hope some of you at least enjoyed learning about some history in the Battletech world. As I said to start, if there is an interest, I can post some pictures of what I do still have from those days and so forth...

[kosmos1214]

malakie wow jest wow this story of yours made me tear up a bit im 20 so yes this is an age gap and i dont 100% under stand the specs on the amiga although i do like old computers can i ask if you happen to know where i could see some pictures on video of mekforce it would be nice to see such an old piece of battletech history even if i my self lack the tech knowledge to run and play it my self i would adore seeing it
and to any of you who skipped over his long post go back and read it you really are missing out if you skip this

[mad kat]

Malakie, on 11 December 2014 - 01:32 AM, said:

I started reading through this thread and realized I was laughing in a good way... Why? Because what many of you are saying about playing those "old" Battletech games on computer... and the comments that you were kids playing these was a common phrase.. I am 50 now but I don't act nor feel like it at all... and was playing Battletech on computers YEARS before ANY of the titles in this thread were even dreamed up..

**clipped post to save space**

This is one thing i like about the battletech universe...the community, every now and then little gems like this come up. A slice of history before my time i'm 20 years behind you so to think this game has been idealized and conceptualized as long as i've been on this earth is amazing!


Makes me feel better justifying to the wife why i love mechwarrior so much and why so much of my time is 'antisocial' time. : )

Edited by mad kat, 26 December 2014 - 01:28 AM.

[Malakie]

kosmos1214, on 11 December 2014 - 03:17 PM, said:

malakie wow jest wow this story of yours made me tear up a bit im 20 so yes this is an age gap and i dont 100% under stand the specs on the amiga although i do like old computers can i ask if you happen to know where i could see some pictures on video of mekforce it would be nice to see such an old piece of battletech history even if i my self lack the tech knowledge to run and play it my self i would adore seeing it
and to any of you who skipped over his long post go back and read it you really are missing out if you skip this

The Commodore Amiga is still probably the most revolutionary home computer ever designed or built. This INCLUDES anything by PC makers OR Apple. In fact, today most mainstream PC's and Apple's are still pretty much the identical design and infrastructure of the computers of the 1980's... most people do not know that. While processors have gotten MUCH faster and graphics and so forth have gotten even better, what many younger computer users do not realize is that today's 3-D, surround sound, millions of colors video we had in 1984 with the very first Commodore Amiga 1000!

And even today it is STILL the only home computer hardware built that has true hardware based multi-tasking.

Let me give you an example. I have my original Amiga 500 sitting here. The CLOCK speed of the processor is 7.16 mhz.. Yep I typed that right... AND I do not need an expansion card or anything else to do that nor have some really nice graphics in game to play.

Yet I can run software in many cases more powerful than software found on PC's today FASTER and smoother on that still right now. I still use my Amiga for many things for that very reason. As people started learning how to program for the Amiga, software started needed more processing... And so even with the Amiga's built in capabilities (it used 5 different processors each geared toward a specific function of the processing.. i.e CPU, Graphics, Sound, etc.), many major upgrade cards became available that enhanced even that capability into things we are JUST seeing today in PC's. Things like REAL live broadcast quality graphics and sound.. In fact Amiga became extensively used in Hollywood for that very reason and MANY movies special effects, from Star Trek The Next Generation to many, many others used Amiga Computers to do so.

I could go on.. But suffice it to say nothing yet has come close to getting the computer industry back on that kind of path.. and because of that, nothing will change until they do. Sadly the CEO and board of Commodore drove the company into the ground thus eventually ceasing Amiga production... but someday, perhaps we will see another similar rise of a computer system designed the way they should be. For the consumer... Even with all those capabilities, Amiga was one of the easiest computers to ever use... AND for power users, one of the most complex.. all at the same time.

PC's, Apple's etc basically cause users to go through hoops to do anything or even upgrade things.. Back then, for example, it was a nightmare to try and not only add some memory to your computer but then you had to know programming almost just to get a game to run, let alone use that extra memory.

With Amiga, you plugged in the memory sim and were done! Same with hard drives. You know how today we have all these 16 gig limits, and 128 gig limits and HD size limits without formatting it in a certain way? Well Imagine ALL of that without ANY limit what so ever.. just plug and go whatever you want... would that not be cool?

Guess what.. The Commodore Amiga had it then and STILL does it today! I can just plug in and add more memory or HD space or whatever.. This Plug and Play stuff they call it today, pales in comparison to real plug and play as the Amiga had from day one...

Anyhow, will get some things posted for you this weekend...

[Malakie]

mad kat, on 12 December 2014 - 01:46 AM, said:

This is one thing i like about the battletech universe...the community, every now and then little gems like this come up. A slice of history before my time i'm 20 years behind you so to think this game has been idealized and conceptualized as long as i've been on this earth is amazing!

I have no reason to doubt your story so here's a salute for you 07.

Makes me feel better justifying to the wife why i love mechwarrior so much and why so much of my time is 'antisocial' time. : )

I will post some items this weekend for you all to see ... Pretty sad that we all have to be careful about people we meet online and what they say.. Today as a disabled Veteran, it is a battle we fight against all those out there claiming to be Veterans and so forth.. we call it Stolen Valor.

Anyhow, I will get some things posted this weekend for you all to see.. If you really want to do a little digging from the Amiga days, the company name back then was TTR Development... Battletech was not the only thing we were part of...

I can tell you this... Had I been a business type or had any brains in how to really manage business AND had Commodore not ended up going the way of history, I would have made a few different choices back then even though I went back to military service. Instead of just suddenly shutting down things, I would have hired a business person to run things instead and let them take the reins allowing me to still keep the company but also do my thing.. The one thing I do wish is that had known more about copyright and all that...

Today it does anger me sometimes to know that something I did ended up making some people very very rich... While the money thing is there and of course would be nice now to fall back on, it is more about the fact I did create something that someone else took for their own. And THAT pisses me off... Oh well.. I am happy, I am home and now I have all sorts of time available I probably would not have had if things had gone differently! So enough of all that.. time to get back up to speed here in the Battletech world!

Should be late Saturday or sometime Sunday once I get things here.. depends on my visit to the V/A...

[Creag]

Ouch thanks for the fly back in history I remember using the Amiga 500

[mad kat]

Malakie, on 13 December 2014 - 12:40 AM, said:

I will post some items this weekend for you all to see ... Pretty sad that we all have to be careful about people we meet online and what they say..

Sorry probaly shouldn't of said salute in hindsight, hope that wasn't offensive.

But either way thats a great slice of battletech history. Will be great to see any pictures in due course. :-)

Edited by mad kat, 13 December 2014 - 02:39 AM.

[kosmos1214]

ok thank you malakie and yes ever thing iv ever heard the amiga was a very very well made and designed
and yes it is sad how some peaple choose to try and pass them selves off as some thing they are not

[knight-of-ni]

Merry Christmas, Marack.

While you were three years old, playing MW3, I was in grad school, playing MW3.

Edited by knnniggett, 25 December 2014 - 07:44 AM.

[Malakie]

Sorry it took so long to get some of the files up... Here you all go! The first Original Battletech game (renamed to Mechforce back then as I explained in the first post)

Original game discs..



The files on disc #1, disc #2 contains the units and actual mechs



Your character and unit manager


Configuration


Map editor.. Numerous options from manual design all the way to seeded automatic design..


Mission/Campaign editor


Unit and Mech editor and design


In game!



This is one of the original Battletech Center Pods!



Sideview of an original Battletech Pod


This is ME! Probably getting my ass kicked again.. I only played them at the FASA main office in Chicago a few times but what a blast it was once we got them working!


Couple shots inside the pod


Later on designs ended up looking like this!

[Malakie]

Marack Drock, on 26 December 2014 - 09:33 PM, said:

Do you still play with it for fun?

Sure do! These days it is about the only way to play the Battletech game from the board game style perspective.. I use my Amiga(s) often for different things.. many of which they still do better than any PC or Apple can do...

[DarkExar]

Malakie, on 26 December 2014 - 09:09 PM, said:

(...)
This is one of the original Battletech Center Pods!

What the hell is that, BT mech simulator cockpit?!? I never knew such things existed. I want one @home...
Now I have a reason to visit US lol ))

EDIT:
The feeling inside must be incredible even with not-so-hot GFX, as I saw on the net. Did I say it seems amazing?

Edited by DarkExar, 27 December 2014 - 04:09 AM.

[Malakie]

DarkExar, on 27 December 2014 - 04:02 AM, said:

What the hell is that, BT mech simulator cockpit?!? I never knew such things existed. I want one @home...
Now I have a reason to visit US lol ))

EDIT:
The feeling inside must be incredible even with not-so-hot GFX, as I saw on the net. Did I say it seems amazing?

They were.. And the graphics were not too bad even for that time... They only got better as did the pods from the beginning.. I never saw or got to play in the last generation pods, wish I had though. I know there are collectors out there that scooped up pods when the centers closed... At least I think they are all closed.. not sure on that though..

Marack Drock, on 27 December 2014 - 08:14 AM, said:

I prefer always using the actually computers and devices than using emulators. I am a firm believer in that. That's why I am now a classic computer collector and my current fix is an Amiga 500.

Same here. I have an A500, A1200 and A3000 still. I also took a Panasonic Toughbook and then bought Amikit on a bootable thumbdrive and basically it now boots up as a high end Amiga from powerup. So when I cannot be on one of the real systems, I now have basically a portable Amiga and you really cannot tell the different today with the advances in the emulation capabilities in terms of running software etc..

[Pht]

MD, you might find this article about emulators interesting: http://arstechnica.c...-snes-emulator/

Inaccurate EMUs can be extremely annoying.

[ThoR294]

oh god the sega battletech game... never forget running out of PPC ammo.

I just booted up Mechwarrior VM with MW2. have to bog down my processors to 90% for jumpjets and missiles to fire properly.. LOL. no music though

[ThoR294]

I wish some game designer could just make it work lol