MechVM
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 | Not Canon The subject of this article does not contribute canonical content to the BattleTech universe, either because it is not intended to or because it is not an official product. |
Overview
MechVM started out as a reverse engineering effort for the computer games MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat, MechWarrior 2: Ghost Bear's Legacy and MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries. Over time, additional features were added to install the different versions of the games. Eventually, it turned out that some editions of the game do not run well anymore under Windows editions past and including Windows 8, so the focus shifted towards recreating the game.
Features
At this point, MechVM installs all known editions of MechWarrior 2 with available patches to make the game run as smoothly as possible.[1][2] It also contains players for the sound, graphics and video formats used in the engine. In some editions of MechWarrior 2, the mech lab didn't work well, so a reimplementation of the mech lab was added. When it became clear that some editions of MechWarrior 2 did not work anymore in newer editions of Windows, a reimplementation of the entire game was started. That effort is currently ongoing, but a preview is available. By installing MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat and MechWarrior 2: Ghost Bear's Legacy via MechVM, that preview is made available in the "Play Game" menu.
Related Websites
The file formats were discussed in the mech2.org forum, which was kept online for documentation purposes even though most of the discussion takes place on discord these days. MechVM is available as a Windows executable that includes source code.