Old School MW2 player reporting back...

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ThoR294
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Old School MW2 player reporting back...

Post by ThoR294 »

I'll never forget what started my computer video game crusade...

My mom got a computer when I had to be around 10. 200mhz pentium computer with like 32mb of RAM and what not.

My father bought me this joystick that was on sale. He said to me "Hey, you can play your flight simulator with this. It also comes with a free game!"

I open the box, and there it is... Mechwarrior 2, 31st Century Combat. Little did I know, this would be my first and most favorite game, ever. I played the game non stop. I even joined Mplayer to play online with people. I couldn't stop playing. Getting into a circle of death with C4 75T mechs was great. lag shooting with mass machine guns and LRMs, what a great time. I bought all the expansions, and every mechwarrior game after that.

Mechwarrior 3 was a flop, and MW4 was better, but I HATED the jumpjet/alpha strike phase it turned into. I missed the circle of death aspect that MW2 had.


Anyway, I try playing MW:online, but it still doesn't tickle my fancy like MW2 did. I downloaded Mechwarrior VM and got my Windows95/DOS MW2 working 95%. 5% because the music doesn't play! I think its because Windows 7 doesn't recognize that the CD actually has music on it. I think if I burned an audio CD with those tracks, it would work.

Im 27, located in NJ! I love online games, and Battletech/Mechwarrior is obviously my favorite.
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Re: Old School MW2 player reporting back...

Post by Striker »

Hello and welcome,

I think if you copy your MW2 disc onto an .iso file, and then mount it, and then install it through MechVM, the music might work. It works on my end (Windows 8.1), but I have an old 1.0 version of the 31st disc.

By the way, we have a online game scheduled for February, and you are more than welcome to join in. I'm also up for the random drop as well if you ever find me on the irc channel.
ThoR294
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Re: Old School MW2 player reporting back...

Post by ThoR294 »

Yeah mine is the 1.0 version I think. windows doesn't see the CD as having audio though... that may be why
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LordNova2
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Re: Old School MW2 player reporting back...

Post by LordNova2 »

Lucky #?@&!!!! I had to start out my mech days on a 100MHz PC, and I had to buy the joystick separately too :P
Just reading your PC specs alone takes me back to allot of good memories...
I actually learned how to type proficiently playing MW2, or NetMech rather, as you could not sit around very long hunting and pecking while in-game. However it did nothing for my spelling.

I agree the pop-tarting got old in MW4. In the earlier days it was not so bad, you could group up with a couple of guys go dark and sneek your way around the edge of the map and and see how low they had their rear armor, but this was typically when pop-tarters were also campers.
On a side note: I plan on trying to get some MW4 servers up an running later on, I actually have them up and running right now but I am having some issues with my router. It does not let me forward the same port ranges to multiple IP addresses. So I will have to look and see how to set up ESXi to have the VMs connect through one LAN port and have have the control features set up to another port (for controlling the VMs and the ESXI host) and stick the VM port in a DMZ. But when it is all set up it will be hosting dedicated servers for: MW4:Venge PR3, MW4:BK PR1, MW4:Mercs PR1, and MW4:Mercs MP3.1a.

As far as the music goes it seems DOSbox has some problems with reading it off the ISO format, seems like I got it to work with using the BIN & CUE format, and I think it worked for me as well when I mounted my CDROM in DosBox and ran it directly off the disc.
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ThoR294
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Re: Old School MW2 player reporting back...

Post by ThoR294 »

LordNova2 wrote:Lucky #?@&!!!! I had to start out my mech days on a 100MHz PC, and I had to buy the joystick separately too :P
Just reading your PC specs alone takes me back to allot of good memories...
I actually learned how to type proficiently playing MW2, or NetMech rather, as you could not sit around very long hunting and pecking while in-game. However it did nothing for my spelling.

I agree the pop-tarting got old in MW4. In the earlier days it was not so bad, you could group up with a couple of guys go dark and sneek your way around the edge of the map and and see how low they had their rear armor, but this was typically when pop-tarters were also campers.
On a side note: I plan on trying to get some MW4 servers up an running later on, I actually have them up and running right now but I am having some issues with my router. It does not let me forward the same port ranges to multiple IP addresses. So I will have to look and see how to set up ESXi to have the VMs connect through one LAN port and have have the control features set up to another port (for controlling the VMs and the ESXI host) and stick the VM port in a DMZ. But when it is all set up it will be hosting dedicated servers for: MW4:Venge PR3, MW4:BK PR1, MW4:Mercs PR1, and MW4:Mercs MP3.1a.

As far as the music goes it seems DOSbox has some problems with reading it off the ISO format, seems like I got it to work with using the BIN & CUE format, and I think it worked for me as well when I mounted my CDROM in DosBox and ran it directly off the disc.
That's what it was called. Pop tarting! ugh. so lame!

I learned to type also from Mplayer/netmech and Asheron's Call. Had to do a lot of typing! I got lucky with the Sidewinder 3D Pro joystick bundle.

If you get that MW4 thing going... pleaseeee let me know! I'm down for that!!!! I used to use a bushwacker with a LBX20 and knock down Direwolves hahaha
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Re: Old School MW2 player reporting back...

Post by LordNova2 »

I know during the mid-late 90s they started to bundle MW2 with everything. Joysticks, videocardes, new PCs...

I use to catch allot of flack in school myself for being such a MW2 nut ever since the game came out (which goes all the way back to middle school for me, class of 2002, so I'll be 31 this year), during the tail end of my senior year (graduation was less than a few weeks away) a couple class-mates got a hold of the MW2 game and tried it out. Like everyone else who played MW2, they were awed at the pure awesomeness at the start "Reactor online....". They came up to me the next day after playing it and apologized for giving me flack all those years, and said they could understand how a person could get into this game ass deeply as I did, and wishing they had gotten into it back when I did.

I kinda wonder if PG (owners of MWO) did not go around C&Ding everyone how Mek-Tek's MW4 and the MWLL MOD would be doing for activity. Chances are allot of new comers would get interested into the game by playing MWO and probably run off to MWLL or MW4 as they are more often found to be a better MechWarrior gaming experience as well as more matured for development. Not to mention have developers that try to listen to what members of the community have to say about the game and make changes to the game from this community input.


The IP adress for my MW4 server (which is running, but might have some issues with joining) is 100.42.81.182, and the domain name (or sub domain) mw4.starleaguepirates.com is pointing to that IP as well. The name should work, I know while doing some testing I forwarded the HTTP ports on my router to my APC battery backup and when I typed that in my address bar it worked without a hitch and loaded the web-page login to the APC unit. And I can connect to the servers locally on the LAN and play just fine.

There are a few tricks I might be able to try, right now there is only one LAN connection on the network to the ESXi host (and the server has two physical LAN ports integrated into it), and that one connection provides both the connection for Hypervisor and the VMs, when connected and everything is running my router gives the ESXI host and all the running VMs their own IP address. So I am getting five IPs off the same machine and connection (which to the rest of the network, it just handles it like it is connecting through a switch through ESXi).
The first trick is to see what happens if I configure all the VMs to have the same MAC adress, I am thinking massive packet collisions and/or port conflictions as they will all be running multiple machines with identical (or practically identical) applications hosting similar stuff on the same ports. If that works I can just use one IP on my existing router to set as the DMZ. Or I can just try throwing a switch in front of my router and see where that gets me.
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Re: Old School MW2 player reporting back...

Post by Striker »

LordNova2 wrote: I kinda wonder if PG (owners of MWO) did not go around C&Ding everyone how Mek-Tek's MW4 and the MWLL MOD would be doing for activity. Chances are allot of new comers would get interested into the game by playing MWO and probably run off to MWLL or MW4 as they are more often found to be a better MechWarrior gaming experience as well as more matured for development. Not to mention have developers that try to listen to what members of the community have to say about the game and make changes to the game from this community input.
I checked MWLL forum activity recently, and it looks like they still have the odd game here and there. Had it continued, I'm sure more people would have flocked to it, or stuck with MW4. Never played much of LL, but I did recall the graphics were awesome, and had tremendously more features than MWO, which is comparatively the most shallow game of the series (you can't even get knocked down).
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Re: Old School MW2 player reporting back...

Post by LordNova2 »

I think I might have gotten somewhere with the server yesterday, looks like I was going about this all wrong as I was able to host them all off the same VM. And this allowed me to easily and get them all through the router/firewall.
You will have to give it a test sometime and let me know if you see the games hosted, I am connecting through the domain name "mw4.starleaguepirates.com". Sometimes I have to refresh/update a time or two before I can see the hosted games.

I need to get some more info on MW4Monitor, which is a nice tool for hosting dedicated MW4 servers and adding automation of these dedicated servers. The documentation mentions how to set up MW4Monitor to host multiple dedicated servers by using an extra command line in conjunction with additional configuration/settings files, however they did not mention in the documentation what this command line was. And unfortunately it looks like the original programmer's (EvilCow) e-mail server is no longer around. :( So I am digging around trying to find a contact that could help on this situation.
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ThoR294
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Re: Old School MW2 player reporting back...

Post by ThoR294 »

what version of MW4 do I need
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Re: Old School MW2 player reporting back...

Post by LordNova2 »

The dedicated servers are hosting the following versions of the MW4 games:
Vengeance: you need to update to the PR3 patch.
Black Knight: you need the PR1 patch.
Mercenaries (Microsoft): you need the PR1 Patch.
Mercenaries (MekTek): you need the latest MP3.1c (v51.03.01.0030c).

You can easily find the Point Release patches in the downloads section of Sarna (http://www.sarna.net/files/programs/games/). You will need your original installation discs to install and play for the Point Release versions.
For the latest free version of MW4:Mercs with Mek-Pak 3.1c that was offered by MekTek you can find on ModDB (http://www.moddb.com/games/mechwarrior- ... /downloads).
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