Introduction
Hello modDB community & MechCommanders,
i have received the automated email information for modDB articles. It says:
f the news is important and you would like it to make the Mod DB homepage, follow our how to guide (link), fix your news formatting, add images and make the news as polished as possible (edit it here: link) - then contact our content manager
First of all: Love from Germany and i hope you are healthy & fine these days. I'm good - but in a lockdown situation. My state is hardly hit by the Corona virus. These days me must show solidarity to all people and try anything to keep our systems working.
My additional spare time i would like to spend into my MechCommander work - mostly here on modDB. I love the kind of profile design modDB offers to publish free(ware) information. Well first of all let me introduce myself: I'm RizZen, 37 years old and living in Northern Germany. I'm a hobbie modder since my early youth - and somehow at the end of 2016 i started modding MechCommander - stopped 2019. In this three years i developed a full MC content merging standalone built that was downloaded several thousand times by players and is truly accepted and respected in the Battletech Community.
Freeware proof / verification
MechCommander 1 (1997) & MechCommander Gold (1999) is my favourite Mech RTS game - ever. It is a bit familiar to C&C - but without any bases you have to manage - you just control up to three MechLances with maximum four Mechs per lance.
Since 2006 MechCommander is officially freeware (references: link 1, link2, link3, link4, link5), some quotes from that sites:
"Mechcommander Gold was released as freeware by Microsoft years ago", Reddit - MechWarrior Comm
"Die Mech-Commander-Reihe kostenlos im Netz", German Games News Article from 2006
"Mechcommander Gold for PC "Free"", MWOMercs.com
"Mechcommander Gold freeware download - Mechcommander Gold has been released as freeware.", thegameengine.org
Several fullversion *.iso files of MC are downloadable in the internet. People can get it from myabandonware.com, oldgamesdownload.com, gamestand.net, old-games.com or kerlin.de (German version) - for example. Some are more - some less good to me. The file sizes variate. Over the years i have downloaded and outsorted ALL MechCommander content i could find in the internet. Such as all fullversion you could get, all map files that where ever released for download - and all free game internal tactical information that was ever released.
Recreation of what is lost by NGNG shutdown
This let me come to my actual project. For the last decade the fan BattleTech lore site NoGutsNoGalaxy.net hosted the majority of all MechCommander information. This site is gone now. I was part of the modding community and honorary moderator of some MechCommander boards in their forum. I developed and designed MechCommander Gold - Darkest Hours on NGNG. Sad that it's gone. I don't know what happened to the side - neither i had a close contact to the owners. I just was put into moderator by them but never there was a big exchange of information between us. Even my mod work i did 99% alone. The missing 1% where people that posted their information decades or years ago.
To make a long story short: I created a new MechCommander community. The game fullversion, updates, optional customizing updates, optional visual updates for widescreen monitors and HD resolutions - and i extended the content +1000%. But that's not all. I even got more and more requests for game knowledge. The only existing game tactic tutorials are missing out much information or are only available as physical book via amazon and have limited editions with high collector prizes. I saw a manual for 1000 US $ on ebay. This finally brought me to create an own tutorial and guides for players who want to fresh up their knowledge or newbies that never heard of that game but are interested due to the BT lore it is connected with. Here is an example of how my work looked like:
Webarchive (Sep. 2018) screenshot from NGNG forums - MechCommander section
Actually - since NGNG is gone - i own the biggest file, information & content collection for MechCommander. My work was granted many times - even by MC's origin's project leading CEO Mitch Gitelman - who lead the project MechCommander in the 90s to a full success - and milestone in gaming history:
MechCommander Gold - Darkest Hours - SARNA.NET article from Jan, 2019
Am i allowed to use modDB homepage / my profile options for publishing and recreating my work on NGNG?
I would be honored when you let me continue my work. Yesterday i spent the whole day to rewrite 17 origin articles - most of them got lost and had to be totally recreated. I would like to extend these guides on a long time perspective. Each article will be overhauled and stuffed with links and additional information. I can't post the articles in a complete manner right now - cause the links they should refer to - actually don't exist at the moment. Such like the bottom line for example where users should be able to route through all MechCommander articles in a chronological order - for example - but although i will update all "lists" later - most of the lists will get linked to sub articles then, describing things more in detail.
I'm too lazy to create a mindmap - would last to long - it's in my head. And people / battletech fans & mechcommander players started to contact and ask me constantly for this knowledge since NoGutsNoGalaxy is gone. I hope you don't delete my work and probably will publish it one day on your homepage - or that way all MechCommander interested people can read that stuff and prepare for the game - cause it aint an ease or simple game. Opposite.
The old guide information was dayly visited by people who seek for informations. I could see it when i observed the online lists on NGNG in my Mod-times. This knowledge is wanted and in corona times games like MechCommander - that can be played offline - can help holding people at home - enjoying playing the game and think of something different that makes a better feeling.
My work is for free - i just do it cause it is fun to me and i enjoy it. There is no commercial interest from my side for all the stuff im doing - neither i want to beg for any money or donations for it. When you would like to know more about my modding intensions for MechCommander, you are free to watch this developer interview i gave in written form:
Please don't delete my work. I put thousands of hours of workload into MechCommander. I just would like to have the chance to secure it for the people worldwide - both: poor and rich!
Stay healthy and have fun, that's an order!
Regards, RizZen
