Run mercenaries on Vista with no DosBox?

[Knotanalt]

I have windows vista ultimate, couldn't find my old disks so I got some cue and bin files and have been trying to get those to work.

I got the dos it to "work" in DosBox, but it's so slow it's unplayable, even with the lowest settings. Not sure how anyone else is playing on DosBox. I tried to get it to run on windows in emulation mode but since it's 16 bit there's no support at all.

Next I tried to get the titanium version going. I was able to get it to install but whenever I try to run it it crashes out after the splash screen.

Some other way to get this going or some way to make DosBox speed up? I looked into the MechVM but it seems to be based on DosBox so it seems doubtful it would help.

[Sir MMPD Radick]

Really DOSBOX is the only really viable route other than using titanium version.
Regarding mechvm you can have it install titanium.

Speed wise there is not a whole lot you can do... if your comp specs are not recent ya kinda outta luck.
Best option to play if you are low specs is to dual boot to XP and follow the mech2 95 install instructions or the dos instructions. That is if you want to play anything other than Titanium.

But yeah short of that try titanium and mechvm it should work.

[Enzo03]

When you try to run the DOS version in DOSBox, does it say that the cycles are at "max"? If not you should use ctrl+F12 to increase cycles until it either runs smoothly (read: playable - if it is too smooth you might run into *other* problems) or says "max". After this you should turn off some options. I recommend shadows and possibly textured ground (can't remember what the actual option was.
You may even need to turn the resolution to 320x240 (or was it 320x200?)

If it already says max and you've turned absolutely everything down (even resolution (!)), I'm not really sure what else there is you can do, but that's mainly because I haven't played in a while and probably can't do so any time really soon to check unless I'm lucky.

[Skyfaller]

If this is laptop, you might want to check energy settings, and make sure the machine is plugged to the power grid, not running on battery.

[Knotanalt]

Ok, I got it semiplayable turning down some options.

How does mechVM work? I tried looking but there's no technical info on it. Is it just a modified dosbox VM or is it a full engine? Will it be faster than the dosbox version? Will I need the actual CD and not just the disk image files? I bought all of the mechwarrior series entries up to 3 when they came out but I've not seen the disks in years.

Is there a list of the weapons and their specs around somewhere?

[Sir MMPD Radick]

Mechvm works like you put the disc in the drive and it installs it for you. You can then either choose to use the mechvm shell for dealing with the game or just deal with the files located where you installed them. Mechvm is primarily just an installer to make your life easier. Yes to play th egame you still will need an img/cue set. Regarding faster no, via MechVM it runs in dosbox thereby speed is as fast as dosbox.

Regarding weapons table.. can't say i have one handy sorry

[Knotanalt]

Thanks, it turned out I just had to slow it down slightly and then it worked well.