MechWarrior: Living Legends is a total conversion mod for Crysis Wars turned standalone, mixing BattleTech's combined-arms warfare and universe with BattleField's vast open maps and domination style gameplay.

Post news Report RSS MWLL Development and Community Update - New Year's Edition

The community behind MechWarrior: Living Legends presents its first official news post under its new developers! This post will be covering upcoming and ongoing community events, as well as the history and the current state of development.

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Hello, and welcome to the first ever news article from your new MWLL developers!

In writing these articles, we hope to not only provide our readers and followers with informative content, but also maintain the high level of quality established by the previous devs, Wandering Samurai Studios.

Now, with that out of the way, let's dive right into the really interesting stuff. The MWLL team has been working hard to bring you updates for the past year-and-a-half. They've brought much content and balance to the game, greatly expanding it from where WSS left off. Of course, it's been so many years since this ModDB has had a proper developer update post, so let's do a quick recap of the past updates since the community took over this amazing project:

Update 0.8.0 - The update that started it all. It came with the unveiling that a team of community members had been working on reviving MWLL's development, as well as with an expansion of the community media to platforms such as discord and reddit - outside of just using the forums. Not only did it pave the way to where we are today, but it also fixed numerous bugs, changed many asset variants, adjusted nearly all weapons' stats, and added over 40 camos and two new weapon types! All HUDs got slight touch-ups to make the piloting experience easier and clearer. Everything came together in one installer, too. These updates represent only a large fraction of what was changed, as there were countless smaller adjustments to other elements of the game.

Update 0.8.3 - A couple adjustment and map-addition updates later, we got our first major content update! 0.8.3 added the Xerxes and Avar Aerospace Fighters, as well as changed the original flight system to provide more realistic movement. Among the updates to the flight system, a most prominent one was ASF no longer exploding when touching the runway! ASF also had bombs reworked, removing the Thunderbolt and FBomb weapons, and replacing them with three new bomb types: High Explosive, Laser-Guided, and Cluster! Many weapons and various other gameplay elements got new sounds, such as weapon readiness and new and unique vehicle engine sounds. The Uller/Kit Fox got a new look, while the Puma got a new cockpit interior. Many maps got an update pass, and a few new ones were added or officially became supported by the MWLL development team. These are still only but a handful of the updates!


Updates 0.8.4 through 0.8.6 - This short series of update patches brought some significant changes to the game's infrastructure. This included the removal of our dependence on the old Qtracker server browsing system (a Gamespy emulator), which means MWLL now works completely independent of third-party services. Additionally, a new game launcher was made - with a new interface, update notification, and installation integrity verification! The folder structure was also changed, in order to handle game data differently, namely client and server profiles.

Series 0.9.x (current) - Another major content update, 0.9.0 packed even more stuff than 0.8.3! Four new assets were added - the Cauldron-Born/Ebon Jaguar and Argus 'Mechs, the Rommel Tank, and the Regulator Hovercraft - as well as three new weapons - the HAG series, the Heavy PPC, and the Thumper Artillery Cannon. Among other new additions was a completely new launcher, one that can update the game and itself - unlike the launcher introduced in 0.8.4. Through this new launcher the MWLL team can release updates more frequently and cleanly, without having players download an entire few gigabytes' worth of patch installers or torrents. Many weapons' stats and assets' variants were changed or refined, many assets' tier and ticket values adjusted, several maps were revised (as well as a new map - TC_Oasis), and lots of sounds and VFX were improved or added. Of course, there were also numerous bug fixes, too! There was so much content included in 0.9.0, that its original designation as 0.8.7 had to be changed in accordance. This past October saw 0.9.1 released, which further adjusted variants, various gameplay aspects, audio content, and fixed several bugs.


This summary of updates serves as a testament to how active the MWLL community has been in furthering development - in a little over a year, development returned to life, and can only get livelier!

Now, for those wondering when 0.9.2 will be out - that should be between late January and mid February! We can't say much concerning what will be included, but the objects settings bug for TC_Oasis should be one of the more important bug fixes included. This, in addition to some variant and weapon mechanics adjustments. There may even be a surprise or two, certain conditions permitting.

In the meantime, there are plenty of community-hosted events to join in while you wait. There's Chaos March running every weekend at 1800 GMT - just hop into our TeamSpeak server at mwll.mwmaster.com and you'll get placed into the appropriate channels. We also have individual training "appointments" that can be scheduled with willing veteran players through our Discord server here. On top of that, there's a Solaris Arena tournament planned to take place January 19th, with a possible second round the next day. Signing up in advance will not be required, and matches will last up to twenty minutes. For more details, see here.

The MWLL community has also gotten together a few people to start our very own podcast series - Returning to Base! You may have listed to our first podcast, which was posted last month, and even if you haven't - expect a second and third podcast in the coming month! Returning to Base covers subjects such as developer interviews and development progress, gameplay advice and tactics, and community updates.

Lastly, earlier this month we released our new forum! It looks a lot nicer, and cleaner than the old one. For any old vets reading this, you can still access the old forum, though it's been archived. You can find our new forum at Forum.mechlivinglegends.net, and the old one at Old.forum.mechlivinglegends.net.

Welp, that's it for this news post!

Stay tuned for more developer and community updates in the coming months; there's plenty of stuff yet to happen. Also, though it is quite late, happy New Years from the MWLL team!

Post comment Comments
Chaotic-Entropy
Chaotic-Entropy

Nice work, all!

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TheVidmaster
TheVidmaster

still hoping for human-like bots here :-)

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Stry8993
Stry8993

Couldn't agree more. When the day comes that the servers are finally dead, I wouldn't mind loading up my own home server, and playing on my gaming pc with a huge battle to remember the good ol' days.

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JaTecha
JaTecha

MechWarrior games generally have third person shooter I hope the developers will eventually add it in MWLL.

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MWEL Author
MWEL

Unfortunately, third-person isn't something devs are planning to add. It will let give folks a bit of an advantage over those not using third-person, like not having to actually crest a mech over a hill in order to peek at what's on the other side, and instead simply using the third-person camera to do the same thing. It's nice in singleplayer games, but implementing it in multiplayer becomes an issue gameplay-wise. Third-person used to be a feature in the older versions of MWLL, though.

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JaTecha
JaTecha

I would have to disagree that it gives an advantage because even if someone is having a hard time seeing the other people, that same person can change to third person instantly and still also use the zoom ability to help and even then, I've noticed that even in first person I can sometimes see over the hill while playing.

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DewmBot
DewmBot

Not everyone is willing to break immersion for the sake of a competitive advantage. While it still is a choice; it would also require a lot of work and is likely to cause a decent few bugs.
Even if it were to be done, I wouldn't imagine it being really high priority.

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Gylfe
Gylfe

I would also love to see bots, although I understand there is an issue getting the bots to properly control the mechs and such. First Strike starting a SP mode, so I guess there is hope somebody will start to develop ai for it as the servers die. I wish I had the skills to do it.

This mod looks frikkin awesome! Thank you guys for your hard work on this. I played MW2, MW2 Mercs, and all the expansions. That was one of my favorite games and remains to this day. I have so many good memories of playing MW2 with my brothers when we were kids. It is one series that does not get the proper attention in its games beyond MW2. MW4 was pretty good, but it's just such a shame it was tied up as a dead license for so many years.

I really look forward to finally getting a chance to try this out and have a proper modern Mech experience! Here's hoping MW5 Mercs will be a proper game and not some online only, pay to win garbage.

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