MechWarrior 4 Free Release Delayed By Microsoft 90
Vamman writes with a followup to news from 2009 that MekTek.net was going to release MechWarrior 4 for free after obtaining permission from Smith & Tinker, who licensed the MechWarrior rights from Microsoft. Now, almost a year later, the free release has yet to see the light of day, in large part due to Microsoft. Quoting:
"... the Free Release is held up at Microsoft and it is unknown to us and our studio when the Free Release will be given the final go ahead. Due to the demands placed upon us by industry lawyers to release the Mechwarrior4 Free release we were forced to insure our studio at a premium rate to meet the Microsoft standard. Our insurance policy is a one year lease and we are unable to tap out of this policy until next fall. In addition to our insurance costs we are also struggling with our server costs. Currently, our server fund has run dry and staff and beta members are paying out of their pockets to help keep MekTek online. At this point we don't know from month to month if we will be able to stay online."
Vamman adds, "MekTek has released a major update for their existing community, expansion MekPak 3.1. They are also promising their new expansion, MekPak 4, in a few weeks as open beta!"
You mean "Free Allegiance", free game from MS (Score:2)
Antithesis of Free (Score:2, Insightful)
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Re:Antithesis of Free (Score:5, Funny)
You're == You are.
You are clearly meant for each other.
You're is correct.
You're an idiot.
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You're is correct.
You are correct
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You're is correct.
You are correct
"You're" is correct. You're wrong.
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So who got the quote wrong?
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master
I think is correct. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sid_Meier's_Alpha_Centauri [wikiquote.org] and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0292917/quotes [imdb.com]
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I could always go back to my sig about the affairs of dragons and ketchup but that just doesn't seem as social relevant to whats going on in the world today.
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Microsoft seems to be the antithesis of free especially when you look at their Xbox network. They don't allow user-generated content at all.
Halo 3? Trials HD? And that's just a few on top of my head, from Microsoft-published games. Granted, more than slightly lame compared to mods in PC games, but still, some user-generated content is better than no content at all...
Fallout 3 (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Fallout 3 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Fallout 3 (Score:4, Insightful)
So only professionally drawn penises are acceptable to Microsoft for distribution?
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Microsoft is afraid someone will draw a penis.
Right, young gentlemen, show of hands: how many of you have made... certain object shapes in Super Smash Bros. Brawl's level editor? ... Quit blushing now, young lads, this is a serious issue! Surely Nintendo is more conservative about these issues than Microsoft! Out with it!
In other words, I think such fears are sort of justified, but *ahem* sufficiently motivated people can, and will, find ways around the limitations, so I think Microsoft is being more than a little bit too strict here.
Re:Fallout 3 (Score:5, Interesting)
Valve Software wants to release their DLC on Xbox Live for free, like they do on the PC, and MS literally will not let them do it.
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Valve doesn't pay for the DLC servers on steam unless you download directly from them. The rest are local mirrors, selectable via the steam settings.
Do we pay for each match when it's hosted on EA or MS servers? Didn't think so, we pay for XBL subs so I think it's a bit rich to say we shouldn't be allowed to have free downloads.
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Wait. What?
PC gaming is dead because of the tons of content available for free? I don't think that having to pay for patches and being denied user-created content is a very good argument in favor of consoles.
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Yeah, he's not the only person that got whooshed on that one, because GP's post didn't make any damned sense.
Developers give you free updates and user-content on PC, but console companies won't let anything through their fingers for free, and so PC gaming is dead? Where the hell does this conclusion come from?
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I imagine the tens of millions of people playing MMOs, 4X, RTS, and FPS games would disagree with you.
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Of course there are sources.
EuroGamer reported on it [eurogamer.net], and it's quoting Valve's Chet Faliszek.
Note: This is for the already released Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 DLC, and not about the vaporware that is the 360 Team Fortress 2 update (which makes engine changes).
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- Visual Studio Express Editions
- Windows API
- XAML Development Tools
- Microsoft Virtual PC
- Windows Movie Maker
- PhotoSynth
- Windows Defender Anti-Spyware
almost everything they release is free (except for windows, office, and visual studio pro)... granted it's all part of vender lock-in so that Windows stays #1 for market penetration, but you can't say they don't give out free stuff. (not to mention they mailed me a free office 2007 t-shirt for beta testing and a free copy of Windows 7 Ultimate and Office
Re:Antithesis of Free (Score:5, Interesting)
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Forza 3 seems to have plenty of opportunities for user generated content though, so clearly Microsoft isn't sitting in their heavenly throne frowning at all the game devs who want their players to be able to customize their gear a little. As far as custom maps/mods goes, I can envision a slew of technical reasons why that wouldn't be attractive to MS, in addition to the issues mentioned elsewhere of users drawing penises on every surface they can touch. I don't think Microsoft is quite as anti-free as everyone seems to think. They just like control over what's free.
Forza 3's studio, Turn 10, is owned by MS. So, the rules are obviously different for a 1st party dev. Of course, this also means they take moderation of content very seriously, and hand out lots of bans for even relatively minor issues. They also are required to use only matchmaking with TrueSkill for public online play. The older games allowed players to set up PC-style public lobbies, but that went away with 3, likely at MS's request/mandate.
I think you're absolutely correct that MS just wants to con
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I'll come pay to play (Score:1, Funny)
I'll come pay to play; Just give me a "Donator Mech" that can unload a Macross Missile Massacre [tvtropes.org] at will and I'm in!
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Damm, i hate being right. (Score:3, Informative)
I had the thought of 'microsoft will NEVER put out anything free thats any good' back when they announced this.
I'm a big mechwarrior fan and i own all their games. And holy crap its a pain in the ass to install mech4 series with all the packs, keys, drm, patches, updates, and other hoops to jump thru.
A free all in one pack would make it so simple.
Mechwarrior is also what got me started on piracy. The retail version had that horrible copy protection running sucking up resources and causing crashes. Kill that during the game and it runs fine.
Till the next game looks for it. And you have to reload. But the pirated copy didnt have any of that problem.
So mechwarrior was the first game i owned that i pirated. because the pirate version ran BETTER!
Since that day its been pirate first. Buy if its worthy. (Looking back, there were not a lot of them worth buying. maybe 3-5 games a year max.)
MechWarrior series (Score:5, Interesting)
I left it after a while, but I enjoyed it and thought that it was a fun experience. That is an MMO, IMO. Eve is okay in this area, but MechWarrior just had the stories and the background. When MW3 and MW4 came out I was hoping to see that they were still around. They kind of are, but not in the scale that I speak of above. People didnt like MW3 or MW4 in the dynamics it provided like MW2 did.
One day I hope for a MW Universe based off the MW2 online community, but it may never happen because WizKids made it the lamest piece of crap I have ever seen.
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I agree with everything you said.
However, I wish the game could have been re-skinned to be more modern.l On the video I see on MekTek it still looks like something out of the 90's
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However, I wish the game could have been re-skinned to be more modern.l On the video I see on MekTek it still looks like something out of the 90's
In order to accomplish that the engine would need substantial updating. Essentially, the source code would have to be released, as it was for Allegiance [microsoft.com]. Only, I had never even heard of Allegiance until Microsoft released the source; Mechwarrior IV is one of the more popular PC games out there. And I, for one, will play the living heck out of it if it will run on WINE, and see if I can get back to the top of the Attrition and Team Attrition rankings :) My gigabyte mainboard produces black screens when tryin
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Apparently, Allegiance is from Microsoft Research. They really don't seem to commercialize their software much...
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Honestly, I don't think MW3 & 4 are to blame for it, MW2 was simply made in a different era. I mean, back then MS Flight Sim was one of, if not *the* biggest PC franchise of all, yet the last one sold so badly it killed both the franchise and the studio that developed it. Racing sims, space sims, new installments in those genres used to get front-page ads in gaming magazines, nowadays you're lucky if they get a short review alongside the latest Bejeweled clone.
For whatever reason, PC gamers seem to have
Re:MechWarrior series (Score:4, Insightful)
MW2 was simply made in a different era. I mean, back then MS Flight Sim was one of, if not *the* biggest PC franchise of all
The different era is the standardization of computers. Back with the early mechwarriors not even mouses were a standard on all computers. The standard PC didn't have a sound card. You bought a sound card specifically for games (which is why sound cards have gameports for joysticks). Every PC game released in that era required setting up. So an extra $50 for a joystick and dozens of keybindings wasn't considered that much of a pain.
Nowadays PC games are standardized, they assume you have a keyboard+mouse (or are using an xbox gamepad). With DirectX it's mostly seamless for controls, sound, and video. Joysticks are a very niche product. What's common about mech/space/flight sims is they all basically require a joystick. Gamers with joysticks nowadays are so few that the market is small.
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The last serious giant robot sim would have been Steel Batallion. Which came with it's own control panel plus pedal assembly. (You cannot, in good faith, refer to the controller with came with Steel Batallion as a 'joystick.')
Good old joysticks (Score:1, Interesting)
I am 20 years old software engineering student and moved away from home about a month ago. As I was packing my stuff and rummaging through all the crates, I found a dusty joystick. I remember using one of those when I was a kid (some of the older people here probably would still consider me to be one...). I used that controller so much in games like Descent and MechWarriors (I just checked the Wikipedia. Seems like I was about 10 when MechWarrior 4 came out)... And then forgot that it ever existed.
Finding t
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The different era is the standardization of computers. Back with the early mechwarriors not even mouses were a standard on all computers. The standard PC didn't have a sound card. You bought a sound card specifically for games (which is why sound cards have gameports for joysticks). Every PC game released in that era required setting up. So an extra $50 for a joystick and dozens of keybindings wasn't considered that much of a pain.
This is only completely true for Mechwarrior, the original, which was only a DOS game. So was Mechwarrior 2, but then it became a windows game, and didn't require setup. What it DID require was that you had the right version for your particular video card; at the time, there was no Direct3D, and PC gaming wasn't yet using OpenGL. About the only games that actually came in a version for every card were Mechwarrior 2, and Tomb Raider. But if you ran Windows, sound and video configuration were taken care of fo
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That said, compared to MW2, MW3 was beautiful but ultimately limited. The options for random scenario play was pretty constrained; it was a sterile environment compared to the first two games that gave you dozens and dozens of chassis' and planets and scenarios. MW4 was even worse - not only was it sterile, it was also unfaithful to the mech build
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MW4 wasn't "unfaithful", it merely incorporated more material (specifically, the hardpoint limitations and more faithfully applied the weapon reload times) from the Solaris VII material and Mechwarrior RPG books that FASA themselves wrote, in order to make you have honest choices between mech chassis.
Remember, in the tabletop game, if you want a "custom" 'mech, you have to either be (a) an elite front-line Clan warrior or (b) insanely fucking rich (Solaris champion, IS House, owner of a mech factory, etc).
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More importantly, if you have an omnimech, say, why aren't all its hardpoints generic hardpoints, rather than having them typed like they do in the game? It would have bothered me less if IS designs had limited hardpoint configurations but omnimechs had full flexibility.
Because even Clan "Omni" 'mechs weren't all Omni? If you had read most of the sourcebooks, many of the Clan "Omni" mechs still were (at least as far as sourcebook/novel) limited to certain areas being Omni. Arms were especially good for this
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I disagree that most clan units were only partially omni. In fact, by Battletech Master Rules standards, a unit is either all omni or not omni at
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Sounds more like releasing it for free means no income from MS to pay the insurance and server operating costs. Maybe the notion of a free game doesn't work if no-one pays for the server end of it?
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No, that's not the problem. The server expenses aren't servers hosting the game. Not "JimBob's 16-player Jerkhouse". More "Click here to download" type server. Microsoft isn't going to lose a (real) dime releasing this for free -- Mektek would be the one incurring all the costs for distributing it. Microsoft is worried, I think, that they'll be losing (potential) dimes on it, because Free Is Bad. And, so, because they don't want to lose potential dimes, and because they don't want to axe the whole thi
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To quote a great American philosopher (Score:2, Informative)
"You fucked up! You trusted us!"
- Otter
Re:Financial angle (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the Shared Source release for MechCommander 2. This release contains all of the source code and source assets required to build MechCommander 2. This release can be used with the Microsoft XNA Build March 2006 Community Technology Preview (CTP).
They've given this away for free (with source code), so why not give away Mech Warrior 4 for free, too? It's not like the games are extremely new or anything
This makes no sense (Score:2)
I've read the post and links three times. There is no statement of fact that makes any sense. At all.
I will now guess at what the problem is. The terms of the license from Microsoft require Studio MekTek to have some level of insurance -- possibly to indemnify Microsoft. MekTek doesn't have enough money to purchase said insurance. So the gating factor isn't Microsoft, it's Studio MekTek's lack of money.
And by the way, Studio MekTek doesn't have enough money to keep their servers running.
So what we have here
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Perhaps a series of simple fact filled statements would have been better. ... and so forth.
1. We (MekTek) were required to purchase insurance indemnifying Microsoft before we could release the software.
2. We purchased this insurance on (date).
3. We notified Microsoft of this according to their instructions on (date).
4. Two weeks later we had not heard back from Microsoft.
5. We then contacted (name) at Microsoft on (date).
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Boo to Microsoft (Score:1, Troll)
I thought Microsoft said it would fully 100% support free and open source software including games.
Thank you for proving that you are jerks once again Microsoft by stopping this free Mechwarrior 4 release. It could have been good public relations and got you more business. Now we FOSS developers are going to have to speak against you for some bad public relations and hurt your sales and business and reputation.
Only Microsoft can beat Microsoft in this way and put themselves out of business by 2017 [kuro5hin.org], indeed!
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If you honestly think that a few pissed off FOSS developers are going to even slightly affect the sales or reputation of MS games, you are quite terrifyingly deluded.
Mechwarrior Living Legends beat them to the punch (Score:4, Interesting)
With the advent of the open beta of Mechwarrior Living Legends [mechlivinglegends.net], the "official" games may well be eclipsed by a fan-made total conversion mod for Crysis/Crysis Warhead. MWLL features, among other cool things, combined arms: air, mechs, infantry, and tanks are all playable and useful on the battlefield.
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Battletech/Mechwarrior - so much promise (Score:2)
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Are you sure you played Mechwarrior 2? It was the most customizable of the lot, by far. It was also the Mech game with the best gameplay, single and multiplayer.
Microsoft is working out the details. (Score:2, Funny)
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Suck.com hasn't published since 2001.
Boy was it good though.