Studio MekTek, in association with Smith and Tinker, Inc.; Virtual World Entertainment, LLC; Catalyst Game Labs; and Microsoft Games, have just announced the release of MechWarrior 4 Free. The release puts an end to speculation that the long-awaited project would die in committee under pressure from Microsoft’s legal department.
“Getting started is easy. Just download and install MTX, MekTek’s free content delivery and updating system,” Studio MekTek said. “Once installed, simply click the Games Available tab, select Mechwarrior4: Mercenaries and click install. The game will download and install, all within MTX, and as updates become available, MTX will help you keep your game up to date.”
The list of improvements made to the original MechWarrior 4 are vast, including an updated Mech Lab that provides:
- 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
The Free edition also offers a raft of enhancements:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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).
- 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!
The MekTek MTX client and MechWarrior 4 release are available immediately for download with a total size of 1.7GB.
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