Mechwarrior 1

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Ironnerd
08/26/15 10:06 PM
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I was bumming around on the net and visited the Internet Archive, where I found MechWarrior 1, The Crescent Hawks Inception, and the Crescent Hawks Revenge in the DOS Games archive.

So much fun to play these old games again! Crazy as it seems, I remember saving my lawn mowing money to buy Crescent Hawks Inception for my C-64! To be honest, the game play in MechWarrior is pretty weak. The AI is dreadful and the controls are a bit cumbersome, but it's still a lot of fun to play.
ghostrider
08/27/15 12:24 AM
76.89.121.69

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The original mechwarrior was kind of fun, though some things were a pain to get down. And it was said that you could only control 4 mechs even though you could have alot more mechs and warriors. Granted it was one of the pioneers of that style of games. The later games kept with the stupid limitations of keeping your units limited making some scenarios frustrating.

And Hawks inception was fun until you realize your friend that loaned you the game forgot to give you the code for the end. They never got that far which is why they let you borrow the game.

Revenge was one I didn't finish, since some of the missions pissed me off to much. One was having to do the strafing runs on the elementals, yet a phoenix hawk could not kill a single trooper, and could not seem to escape them even though it was twice as fast on movement.

But they were still fun for the most part.
NeverSayNever
08/27/15 04:28 PM
77.181.3.143

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Quote:

I was bumming around on the net and visited the Internet Archive, where I found MechWarrior 1, The Crescent Hawks Inception, and the Crescent Hawks Revenge in the DOS Games archive.




Nice, I bought all three in a single box edition (including a nice poster and game documentation) many years ago, lots of fun, nice price, money well spent (IMVHO).


Quote:

Crazy as it seems, I remember saving my lawn mowing money to buy Crescent Hawks Inception for my C-64! To be honest,




Consider yourself lucky, back then you got a _finished_ boxed game including a printed manual and a floppy disc for your hard earned cash.

Today many developers / publishers exepct payment way in advance (e.g. for pre release kickstarter camiaigns / founder's packs, or for early access / closed paid beta access), usually for a not so finished virttual product (alpha / beta,, often a bug ridden mess), usually neither printed manual nor CD / DVD included / available, instead you got to download your game copy - and pray that the download manager / patcher does not mess up your ganme download / patch and that your connection renains stable and maybe even fast as well. on launch / patch day, yeah, sure...

And, of course, these days it would take quite a lot more lawn mowing than back then to pay for all that stuff, and then the cash shop / item mall / DLC could come and denand its share / tribute: the lawn mowing could go on, and on...


Quote:

the game play in MechWarrior is pretty weak. The AI is dreadful and the controls are a bit cumbersome, but it's still a lot of fun to play.




Game too easy due to poor AI? Simply replay from start and this time pick inferior units to help increase the difficulty level...
ghostrider
08/27/15 06:04 PM
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I agree with the software being incomplete statement. Too many game and even other software, (windows, cough cough) are being pushed out the door only to tell you that you have to get a patch for it.
Some things are not that bad, such as having 3 operating systems running causes the blue to look red or something to others being you can't do a damn thing like access the internet to download the patch, yet the company insist that is what you must do to get the fix. Not all of us bought windows, but came with it pre installed from the company.

It is even worse when you get that issue from game consoles that require you pay to connect, ie xbox 360.
Or the manufacturers disk has a virus from the factory, as one of my friends found out the hard way.
And now things are going digital, yet if you have multiple systems you have to pay for it multiple times, or if by chance your hard drive fails, guess what. You have to pay for it again.
The docks are very important for some games as with inception requires you to touch the right stars in order to send the help message. Without it, you can not win the game. With the ones you need, I seriously doubt you would randomly hit the right ones in under a week.
Ironnerd
08/28/15 10:24 PM
68.184.124.238

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Quote:
NeverSayNever writes:

Quote:

I was bumming around on the net and visited the Internet Archive, where I found MechWarrior 1, The Crescent Hawks Inception, and the Crescent Hawks Revenge in the DOS Games archive.




Nice, I bought all three in a single box edition (including a nice poster and game documentation) many years ago, lots of fun, nice price, money well spent (IMVHO).


Quote:

Crazy as it seems, I remember saving my lawn mowing money to buy Crescent Hawks Inception for my C-64! To be honest,




Consider yourself lucky, back then you got a _finished_ boxed game including a printed manual and a floppy disc for your hard earned cash.

Today many developers / publishers exepct payment way in advance (e.g. for pre release kickstarter camiaigns / founder's packs, or for early access / closed paid beta access), usually for a not so finished virttual product (alpha / beta,, often a bug ridden mess), usually neither printed manual nor CD / DVD included / available, instead you got to download your game copy - and pray that the download manager / patcher does not mess up your ganme download / patch and that your connection renains stable and maybe even fast as well. on launch / patch day, yeah, sure...

And, of course, these days it would take quite a lot more lawn mowing than back then to pay for all that stuff, and then the cash shop / item mall / DLC could come and denand its share / tribute: the lawn mowing could go on, and on...


Quote:

the game play in MechWarrior is pretty weak. The AI is dreadful and the controls are a bit cumbersome, but it's still a lot of fun to play.




Game too easy due to poor AI? Simply replay from start and this time pick inferior units to help increase the difficulty level...



...but I was driving a Locust, and took out two Warhammers and a Battlemaster without taking any damage...

For it's day, however, it was a pretty impressive game, and I really enjoyed it. To be honest, I didn't find MW2 to be much more difficult - it just had better graphics.
ghostrider
08/29/15 12:07 AM
76.89.121.69

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The worse part of mech warrior one is that it was cpu speed driven. Tried the game on a pentium 300. It was unplayable. By the time you reset to use a ppc on a battlemaster, the enemy mech was banging into your mech.

But is was definitely fun for the times. I think it helped move along the development of the first person shooter, though not as much as say doom.
Ironnerd
08/31/15 10:15 PM
68.184.124.238

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Oh yeah! It ran at processor speed! Back when I played it I had to remember to turn off my "Turbo" button or it would all be in ridiculously fast motion! Ah... the days of the Math Co-processor...

I don't think MW2 would have been as good without MW1. The software nerds had to figure out how to make mechs work on a home machine, and we players had to learn how to drive a battlemech on a computer.

The downside was that as soon as I played it, I realized how "unrealistic" the tabletop rules actually were.
Drasnighta
08/31/15 10:26 PM
198.53.98.65

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Quote:
Ironnerd writes:


The downside was that as soon as I played it, I realized how "unrealistic" the tabletop rules actually were.




I was totally the opposite. I hated how easy it was in comparison - how worthless the damage seemed in comparison, and how easy it was to actually target sections... I would have loved to have a randomiser in the crosshairs so your shot doesn't go straight on target, but within a rough target area...
CEO Heretic BattleMechs.
Ironnerd
09/02/15 06:57 PM
68.184.124.238

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Interesting counterpoint. I imagine the whole ease of targeting a single point (legs or cockpit mainly), would go out the window if the guy in the other mech was even close to human-skilled.

Even in MW2 (which I played too much of) it was pretty easy to defeat a genetically enhanced Clan Warrior. Mainly, I circled him and took out his legs. Even then things like small terrain changes effected the impact point.

At the Battletech Center in Chicago I would regularly get my back-side handed to me - so maybe the board game is not so far off from the simulation.

Even an excellent board game will have to make some adjustments in the interest of playability.

No matter. I enjoyed MWI, MWII, MWIII, and the Pods just as much as I enjoyed the board game - but differently.
NeverSayNever
09/13/15 05:36 PM
80.187.113.89

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Quote:

The worse part of mech warrior one is that it was cpu speed driven. Tried the game on a pentium 300. It was unplayable. By the time you reset to use a ppc on a battlemaster, the enemy mech was banging into your mech.




A software tool which slows down your Pentium 300 to classic 386 / 486 level (e.g. clocked at 25 MHz) might help.
NeverSayNever
09/13/15 06:37 PM
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By the way, ironically the CPU clock speed related performance boost could be seen as some kind of crude AI boost / 'upgrade' because AI units benefiitted from the speed boost the most, up to a point where the AI speed boost made the game unplayable / unwinable for human players.

Morale of the story? Careful what you wish for ('better', =faster, A) - you might get what you wanted, and then some more...

And yes, the AI in MW 1 did not get any 'smarter' by the CPU performance boost, it just moved faster, much faster - ofteb ebough way too fast for us poor old human players...

The good news? Thankfully later games, like MW 2, pumped technology related performance gains mostly into the 'eye candy' / graphics department, creating much better looking targets to shoot at.

All that raw processing power poured into creating much smarter AI opponents could / would have created AI opponents so fast and so smart that they could and would have owned almost any human player = human player / customer frustration guaranteed, so careful what (= smarter AI) you wish for...

You better think twice before you 'demand' much smarter AI opponents in your latest 3D shooter to help you finally max out the raw processing power of your new multi core gaming rig...


Edited by NeverSayNever (09/13/15 06:52 PM)
ghostrider
09/14/15 07:25 PM
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Yeah, I have heard about the software that slows down games that were cpu driven. Too bad windows 8 don't allow you to even install older games. You get the contact the games developers/publishers for the latest version. So most of the old library is no longer an option to play on a new system.

Now for some reason you equate better AI with shooting the player.
Better AI could be path finding, or more tactical thinking. I think on easiest settings the computer should not be able to dodge every last shot, while a rifle is able to hit you while in cover, yet the rocket launcher you have seems to not touch them even though the damn thing hit it's feet. The hard and insane levels should have the enemy think more, not just cheat with things like the rifle shot bending to hit you around the corner.

A good example would be command and conquor. The enemies units seem to hit with 2 to 3 times the damage to your units, but when you use those same troops, they do alot less damage back. That isn't AI. That is crap programing. And having the units move as you fire on them, but yet yours don't do anything but take damage is another part of the AI that needs to be fixed. If the enemy does it, so should yours.
That is where most people complain about AI needing to be fixed. Not having them kill the person with one shot or faster.
Akalabeth
02/19/16 09:20 PM
64.251.81.66

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If you've got a DOS game which runs too fast, just get DOS Box and run it through there.

http://howto-install.org/how-to-install-dosbox-on-windows-8-x64-or-x86/

MW was great as were the Cresent Hawks games. Though I didn't finish #2. Got as far as the mission where the battlearmour were attacking me and I got air strikes but don't think I got past it.

I remember seeing images of some MW mod or update where they added more mechs to the game but I don't know where or what it was. Mechs like the Crusader for example. Or maybe it was an online version of MW1? Wish I could have played it.

Quote:
ghostrider writes:
Now for some reason you equate better AI with shooting the player.



Better AI isn't shooting the player, in fact that's the opposite of good AI. Good AI is programmed to miss. Basic AI will hit you every time.

A good example is Doom 1 + 2 from the 90s. The zombies with guns would aim at the player, pause while keeping that aim, and then shoot. This would allow the player to strafe or move out of the way before they fired. So as long as you kept moving tangentially to the enemy fire or behind cover you wouldn't get hit. If the zombies adjusted their aim during the pause they would hit automatically.
KamikazeJohnson
02/19/16 11:18 PM
207.161.146.219

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Quote:
ghostrider writes:

Revenge was one I didn't finish, since some of the missions pissed me off to much. One was having to do the strafing runs on the elementals, yet a phoenix hawk could not kill a single trooper, and could not seem to escape them even though it was twice as fast on movement.



Th Elementals mission was actually quite easy if you use all your tools. Use the Sat Uplink to spot incoming enemies, call the strafing run to take them out before the even get close. Cluster your own units at a choke point so any enemy that shows its face gets insta-killed by the combined fire of your entire lance.

And to outrun anything with a P-Hawk? Set it to "Fire At No One" so you don't slow down from heat buildup. Your "friends" are tactically inept left to their own devices, you have to babysit them constantly.
Peace is that glorious moment in history when everyone stands around reloading.
--Thomas Jefferson
NeverSayNever
03/06/16 02:00 PM
80.187.112.156

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various


"Slowdown Utilities"

http://www.sierrahelp.com/Utilities/SlowdownUtilities.html



Good luck.
wilmarzop
02/07/22 08:48 AM
117.96.0.162

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It is even worse when you get that issue from game consoles that require you pay to connect, ie xbox 360.
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