MechWarrior 2 Series - Files, Mods, & Utilities


 

Introduction
When compared to Quake or several other popular multiplayer games of the period, the MW2 series is very limited in user mods due to the game's design [and especially] the tools that were used to build the game worlds (see here for details). Without having the source code, there are limits to what one can accomplish and to date [Feb 2002], Activision still has not released the code. At this point I don't know if it will ever happen, nor do I know of any active organized effort that has recently been lobbying for the code's release. Still, a handful of creative and dedicated individuals have worked hard over the years to create some interesting programs and files for the MW2 games. Included on this page are many of the mods that were provided to the Mecha community over the past 6+ years. All the files below are for the PC DOS/Win95 Platform and I am unaware of any mods or utilities that were made for the Macintosh port.

Hopefully this page will be a worthwhile reference for those who are new to the MW2 series, those getting back into it, or old pilots that just want to do a little bit of reminiscing. Also, if someone is interested in doing a future mod, this helps give them reference for the work that has taken place and the individuals responsible for it.

This listing is a work in progress, as it isn't easy to quickly and accurately find out what happened to all these projects. If you have any information about mods that are not listed or any updates/corrections for those listed below, please let me know, so I can offer a respectable, accurate account for all projects.

As for official patches and demos, they can all be downloaded directly from Activision. Sometimes their server is painfully slow, so you may want to check out the 3D Gamers' MechWarrior 2 Page or similar game file archive sites.

Note: I've included many defunct links to old sites for historical purposes. The "*WM Archived*" links listed below [and elsewhere] on my webpages are for sites that are down, closed, changed, not available, etc. and have a worthwhile copy of their old active webpage(s) archived on Wayback Machine. You will not be able to get downloads from these archives with the exception of some smaller images.

MechWarrior 2: 31st Century & Netmech Mods

MW2:

  • Battlemaster Patch I'm not sure who was originally responsible for these patches, but the original Battlemaster patches (the ones for instant action - single player) have been around from the very beginning. By applying this patch, then entering in names of "Enzo, Calvin, and Hobbes" for you and your wings in Instant Action, you can access the Elemental, Tarantula, or Battlemaster. Unfortunately it does not work in the campaign part of the game,nor in multiplayer (See Netmech II or Netmech Forever below for multiplayer Battlemaster patches). This patch is available for DOS and Win95 and the Win95 version also works on the 3D Enhanced versions, but not Titanium. You can download them from several sites including First of One's MechWarrior Arena, BadKarma.net, or Sarna.net.

  • MechEdit I couldn't find any info yet on who made this DOS utility, but it has been around forever ( I guess that could be considered good and bad) and it allows one to build super mechs. Many people use this program to build "hacked mechs" which are illegal in league play. Still, it can be fun to use these mechs at times, as long as all are aware of what is going on. You should be able to find it at several locations including BadKarma.net, or Sarna.net.

  • High Resolution Patch for MW2: 3D Accelerated/Enhanced From here at MW2 3D, there's still a possibility I may be able to do for MW2, what I did for Mercs, but I can give no guarantees. I'll see what happens over the next few months.

  • Others: There are several other misc utilities for building/editing mechs or weapons that can be downloaded from several sites including Bad Karma, which has many of these still available at their Technical Institute. You can also find several at Sarna.net. Custom mechs are still available at various locations as well including First of One's MechWarrior Arena.

Netmech:

  • Mech Lab Maid from http://www.iccom.com/usrwww/katzen/omlm.htm [Gone!] *WM Archived* MLM was an essential utility for Netmech players online. MLM allows you to organize, rename and view your mechs attributes, and provides a cheat detection function. Even though the home site has recently disappeared, you can find it at available for download at the main MechWarrior sites like BadKarma.net, Sarna.net or most of the larger mecha sites that have MW2 files.

  • MechMan I'm not sure who wrote this one, but it has been around for a long time. MechMan preceded Mech Lab Maid by a few years and it is much a much simpler program, but still helped to provide cheat detection for Netmech Players. You should be able to find it by doing a search for "Netmech Mechman" on Google.com. Note: Bad Karma has a file listed as "MechMan" but the description seems to describe a different program, so I'm unsure if it is the same thing or not.

  • Netmech II from NavAlpha.net [Down!] *WM Archived* Maerlyn of NavAlpha.net was doing some cool mods for Netmech when I first started expanding my webpage in 1999, but since my time away from MW2, his page seems to be have disappeared. He had several downloads available for Netmech Win95 and DOS (Mainly Win95) and to my knowledge they are not mirrored anywhere. Features of these Netmech II mods at present:
    • Battlemaster patch for Netmech95 (replaces Marauder)
    • Changed the gravity of the Maze (Kufstein) and the Forest (Galuzza) to normal.
    • Two new single player maps imported into netmech (1:1 change w/ existing)
    • Battlemaster patch for DOS Netmech (doesn't replace anything)

    A mech soccer map was being tested in late 2000, but there has been nothing available since then.

  • Netmech II/Forever project from Team NPX (Original Site) This was an organized and ambitious effort by Team NPX back in late 1998 into 1999 to create various mods for DOS Netmech. Mods they created and released included:
    • Battlemaster patch for DOS Netmech (replaces Tarantula)
    • Gravity and atmosphere patch

    The NPX Battlemaster patch is still available, but I did not see a link to the Gravity mod. They also planned and worked on but never released several weapons adjustments, new weapons, different mechs, and new netmech maps. The site appears to have been last updated in 1999 some time.

MW2 Expansion Pack: Ghost Bear's Legacy Mods

GBL:

There are no real mods that I know of and the lack of [a finished] multiplayer is probably a large contributing factor. IIRC, there used to be a weapons editor that appeared 5 years ago or so and maybe you still find it somewhere. I believe Maerlyn and the NPX were digging into the GBL PRJ file a bit, but the reason behind that was mainly to get material for Netmech DOS/95. For those interested in GBL, you might want to check out this old USENET thread: Play MW2 missions in GBL! Complete (almost) weapon editor for GBL!

Some misc. thoughts on GBL:

  • The one simple mod I would like to see? I wish someone would fix the damn clan emblems in the Titanium version of GBL and put the correct emblems on the vehicles and the mechs! It greatly affects the immersion factor IHMO.

  • I also wish someone could put the waterfall back in where is should be! It would have been great to see that in D3D/3Dfx!

  • Other issues: A higher resolution patch for the Titanium version of Ghost Bear. It may be temporarily possible, w/ editing the registry keys, but if it is like Mercs, then the mw2shell.dll will reset the res back to 640x480 (or 320x240) once you start it up. Unfortunately there was no other high res version made for me to hack like I did with Mercs (and may do with MW2).

  • Finally: The apparent existence of an unfinished GBL Netmech in the GBL prj file is very interesting. I don't have too many details on this. I remember someone from Activision saying something along the lines that "they just didn't have enough time to finish it," so I'm unsure of how much would need to be done, even if we did get the code. Would anyone even care by that point?

   

MW2: Mercenaries & MercNet Mods

MW2:Mercs:

  • High Resolution Patch for MW2:Mercenaries 3Dfx/D3D from right here at MechWarrior 2 3D This is the patch I put together after experimenting with the "3D Enhanced/D3D Video" versions of Mercs (this patch is the same one that is linked on my FAQ page). It should allow you to go 800x600 and maybe higher, but for 1024x768+ resolutions it is somewhat temperamental ( I could get up to 1600x1200 on 3Dfx Banshee card, but my Radeon 7500 only did up to 800x600!). Different driver versions can sometimes increase res. options. The zipfile includes a ReadMe and you can also go here for more details.

  • Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries - The Next Wave This is Demolishun's RPG Project for DOS Mercs. This project would provide an open ended complex world for a mercenary to operate in. There are details at his website, plus you might want to check out these links to discussions @ BadKarma's forums.

    The site hasn't been updated since the summer of 2001, but the downloads are still available as of present.

  • Others: There are several other misc utilities for building or editing mechs, weapons, maps, money, etc. that can be downloaded at several sites including Bad Karma has many of these still available at their Technical Institute and several can also be found at Sarna.net. Custom mechs files are still available at various locations, though I have no links at present.

MercNet:

  • The NAIS Shell from the New Avalon Institute of Science [Long Gone!] *WM Archived* Probably the best known and most widely used of all the MW2 series mods and a necessity for DOS MercNet players online. The NAIS Shell was created for DOS Mercs/MercNet by Ender and Co. that allows for the use of custom mech chassis and vehicles, custom logos and cheat detection. I believe v2.03 was the final version released it is still available at many sites including Bad Karma or Sarna.net.

    The MW2 Mercenaries Tactical Design Lab was a follow-up to NAIS, but it has long since moved on to other projects. I believe this was headed by Led Mirage, who had been a member of the NAIS.

  • MeX from Fozz's MeX Modification site : Similar to the NAIS Shell, but the MeX program is for Mercs v1.1/Titanium (IIRC, the early release was called "NAIS Shell for the Titanium Trilogy" instead of MeX). It's creators, -=Fozz=- and Co. were doing some interesting work, but Fozz has been MIA on the mecha scene for a while now and has not updated his site since 1999. When following the above link, at the main page choose the UK site, because the US site disappeared in 2000 sometime. According to the MeX site, the program does the following:
    1. Cheat / Hack detection and prevention
    2. Nuke / Torpedo stripping
    3. 250 new Chassis types to choose from
    4. Custom Insignia's of Units will be used
    5. 400 example configs
    6. Post-Drop logging to HTML pages for easy post-game viewing
    7. Fully independent settings for both single and multiplayer games

    The main problem: Even though the MeX Installer/Updater is still available for download, when you run the setup and try to download the MeX cabinet files, it cannot find them or MeX just locks up forcing a Ctrl+Alt+Del to shut it down. Well, at least this is what happened when I tried it :P I have no idea what the cabinet files were named to be able to search for them and searching for "MeX" only came up with the same old links to Fozz's site.

  • MW2 3D Mission Wizard (aka MW2Edit) from Aeternus Digital Design (I have no idea what their homepage was). This program was a mission editor for DOS MercNet and allows editing of most variables. Sarna.net has two versions on their site in the MW2 Mercs utilities section labeled "missioneditor.zip" and "mw2edit.zip" They are basically the same thing except the mw2edit.zip archive has slightly newer timestamps on the files.

    Back in January of 1998, ADD announced that they had a program to convert DOS missions into Mercs 1.1 , but then they seem to have disappeared w/o a trace. I don't know if the conversion program was ever finished or released.

  • Custom Maps & Missions Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries Mission Depot is probably the largest and most complete archive of Mercs and MercNet missions ever! As creating this page [March 2002], this site is still up and going strong with 138 custom missions available for download.

   

 

MW2 PRJ Tools
  • VMaxx's Mech Object Viewer 32 & Mechsploder. VMaxx created these great utilities for digging into the MW2.PRJ data file and they appear to work on any of the MW2 series versions. They are Win32 based and have a nice simple GUI. These are two programs allow you get an idea of the object organzation [and in some cases] the object shapes for the make up of the MW2.PRJ. *Note : These are viewers and not editors* , but a good starting point for anyone who wishes to experiment with mods or hacking the MW2 games. IIRC, I downloaded these from Vmaxx's site @ vmaxx.mektek.com, which has disappeared (are you noticing a trend?). VMaxx has had several sites over the years, but ever one of them seems to be gone! I'm now hosting downloads for both of these files, since neither seem to be available anywhere at present.

    • Mech Object Viewer 32: (objv32.zip 1.70mb) As the name says, an easy to use viewer that allows you to to display objects from the MW2.PRJ file as wireframe structures, also allowing you to rotate them along the XYZ axes.

    • Mechsploder: (mechsploder.zip 1.73mb) This utility Expands the MW2.PRJ so you are able to view the invidual directories and files within. Note: It seems that the "Properties" button in Mechsploder is not functional.

  • Demolishun's Launcher, SHP file viewer & MW2.PRJ Extractor. These DOS-based utilities for the MW2.PRJ are still available for download @ his website, along with more detailed descriptions, than what I have below. Also available is a Defmek.h file which in Demolishun's own words "is the internal definition of the MEK file format, with comments."

    • Launcher: (launch.zip 217kb) Has two parts: launcher.exe & userctrl.exe. Use the userctrl to start the launcher.You are given a DOS screen where you are able to choose Mech, Mission, and Chassis and immediate launch into the SIM. Some combinations of these seem to cause MW2 to crash. This program only works with the DOS versions - it will give you a shell error on the Win95 based versions.

    • SHP file viewer: (shpview.zip 204kb) A utility for viewing *SHP files. It works from the DOS prompt by entering "shpview filename.SHP" This appears to work for both the DOS & Win95 based versions.

    • MW2.PRJ Extractor: (prjget.zip 222kb) This program allows you to browse data files in the MW2.PRJ, then extract them. This also appears to work for both the DOS & Win95 based versions.

  • OTHERS??? The programs listed above are relatively new by MW2 standards and it is likely that there's others out there somewhere.

 

Utility Programs for MW2
  • UltraEdit: A shareware hex editor that is great for digging into the MW2 series *.DLL and *.PRJ files.

  • Rad Game Tools: This Bink & Smaker player allows you to view the *SMK files used for video and animation in the MW2 series.

  • HyperSnap-DX: Screen capture utility from Hyperionics that works with DirectX, Direct3D, and Glide applications (note: early Glide games may not work with it).

  • Snap3Dfx: created by David Heidmann, Snap3Dfx is a great screen capture utility for DOSGlide and early WinGlide games that are hard to capture screenshots from. It is getting harder to find so I'm hosting a copy of v1.2 for download. (The final release was v1.2).

  • FRAPS: A great framerate utility that now works with D3D and OpenGL, plus also gives you the option of screen capturing and fps logging.

 

3D API SDK's & related utilities

PC - Native 3D API SDK's

PC - Broad 3D API SDK's

  • Microsoft DirectX SDK @ the MSDN Website (~165mb for Dx 8.1!!!)
    http://msdn.microsoft.com/ (Go to downloads section)

  • MS should have archived Dx SDK's on there site somewhere. IIRC Dx 2.0's SDK was ~39mb and it got more and more bloated from there.

Macintosh - QD3D & RAVE API SDK's

Macintosh - OpenGL API SDK's

  

 


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