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MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries 3D Enhanced Edition

Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2011 7:34 pm
by Nitro
A few years ago, my cousin gave me his copy of MW2 Mercs. The disc said "3D Enhanced Edition" on it, I'm not sure if this version is similar or the same as the "3DFX Interactive edition". According to npsbre, its a somewhat rare version of Mercs with the 1.1 patch. The disc has both the MS-DOS and Windows 95 versions of Mercs on it, but I only tested the Win95 version. The "First Circuit" credits called the game something along the lines of "Mercenaries Direct 3D Version" (It scrolled by really fast). It looks and plays a lot like the Titanium version of Mercs. I took some screenshots of me playing:
High resolution support
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This version apparently supports resolutions up to 1280x1024 (At least on my graphics card). Putting it to anything higher that 800x600 caused long loading times though.
Colored lights
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This version has colored lights like the Titanium Version. (I'm pretty sure the original Mercs DOS didn't have lights like these.)
Incomplete wire frame
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This version of Mercs has an incomplete wire frame, like a lot of the other versions, proven by the fact that the target camera has solid blue models, and the fact that the "W" key does nothing. I also noticed cloud like things rolling by on the ground. I don't remember if this was in the original Mercs, or Mercs titanium.
Timberwolf!
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Timberwolf cockpit at 1024x768. The "virtual cockpit" can be disabled by pressing "U", I'm not sure if the original Mercs had this feature or not.
I'll get more screenshots later. These were kind of a pain to take on Windows 98.

Re: MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries 3D Enhanced Edition

Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2011 4:08 pm
by npsbre
Nice screenshots. Actually I meant that the 3dfx version of Mercs, if I understand correctly, is somewhat rare. Maybe that one is too, I don't know really the relative numbers of each version. I don't think the 3dfx and D3D versions are the same. As I mentioned in IRC, Venom posted some screenshots a few years ago of the 3dfx version.

Re: MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries 3D Enhanced Edition

Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2011 8:56 am
by Sir MMPD Radick
actually the 3dfx version is pretty similar to D3D edition. They never made a 3dfx version using glide drivers.

Re: MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries 3D Enhanced Edition

Posted: Tue May 07, 2019 1:49 pm
by CommanderHunter
The 3DFX Interactive Edition is actually the 1.08 D3D Beta version on a disc. This was the first version to include 3D acceleration. It was called the 3DFX edition because Activision used 3DFX interactive capable cards when testing it. It does not have dynamic salvage, 3D accelerated MercNet or 3DFX rendering, but it also doesn’t have the same A.I. Trackpath problems as 1.1 does, which was a problem caused by Activision changing the geometry of certain missions and not changing the paths for certain important NPCs such as dropships, making some missions unbeatable.


Hope that clears up some confusion!

Re: MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries 3D Enhanced Edition

Posted: Tue May 07, 2019 1:50 pm
by CommanderHunter
Also, there were 1 or 2 little known hotfixes for 1.08 that mostly increased compatibility with other 3DFX Interactive cards not listed in the box for the 3DFX Interactive Edition.

Re: MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries 3D Enhanced Edition

Posted: Fri Oct 25, 2019 7:19 am
by CommanderHunter
Correction, there were 2 versions just a bit before 1.08 that had Direct3D acceleration. The 3D Enhanced version, which doesn't have much difference from 1.08, and the "3D Positionsl Sound" version, which includes some improved 3D positioning software for the sound or whatever, as well as a bunch of cool new/revamped sound effects.


One thing that's interesting is both of these versions...actually have no hard limit on how many resolutions/what resolutions it can run at. In fact, if you copy the MW2SHELL file of one of these version over the MW2SHELL file of 1.08, you'll be able to run it at higher resolutions! This method might work with the other 3D versions of Mercs as well, but I might be wrong.


Info here: http://www.oocities.org/k_lupinsky/FAQ.htm