News - MechWarrior: Living Legends mod for Crysis Wars

And it is finally time!

Firstly, a (belated) happy new year to all you fine folks reading this! We closed last year by celebrating MWLL's fourteenth anniversary, and teased a preview of what's to come in this update. We were really hoping to release 0.16.2 around Christmas/New Year's time, but alas a major blocking issue stood in the way (free ret again). Thanks to admanter – our one active and quite persistent coder – that block has been obliterated! So if you see him around, give admanter a thanks for making the release both less buggy and not further delayed!

With that, let's dive into v0.16.2's changes!

New and Updated Cockpits

The most visible change, a staggering total of 28 ‘Mechs, ASF, and VTOLs have received new or more finished cockpit art. Quality will vary, frankly, but at least now these assets have a bit more immersion (“muh immersion!”) factor to them! Some of these assets have been missing this for almost a decade! Here are the coolest ones:

Fun fact about the Atlas one: it's the only ‘Mech with a “screen” view and not the traditional “window” view, in that you have a forehead camera displaying what's outside the ‘Mech to a screen that acts as the cockpit's “window.”

As well, normal maps have been added to the Commando, Sunder, and Cauldron-Born cockpits.

Huge props and respect to project lead Invictus for slaving away for about three months solo, putting together all the art and other work for these cockpits! That's some seriously legendary dedication!

New Camos

Another visual update is the addition of three new camos: WaspBlackBlue, WaspBlackPurple, and WaspBlackGreen. Here's a Mad Cat/Timber Wolf sporting each one:

Gameplay and Systems Adjustments

All Tbolts now refire a bit faster, and hopefully their ammo's missile behavior will be more consistent. The Masakari/Warhawk got shrunk slightly, had its hitboxes adjusted, and the missile-spawning-in-cockpit-itis has been mitigated. Lastly, as usual, a handful of variants have had their loadouts adjusted.

The game's graphics.cfg has also been updated to provide better stability without sacrificing too much visual goodness. This means better shadow rendering and enabled SSAO (less flatness everywhere). The file also now incorporates several new keybinds by default to let you toggle some visual features and info, in case you're running into FPS and stability issues. There's also a key to toggle the net_channelstats command ( Wiki.mechlivinglegends.net ), which is quite helpful for troubleshooting connectivity problems.

Bugfixes

Biggest fix of all is to do with keybinds. As of the previous version, an issue with Actionmapper would cause some peoples' coolant flush key (C key) to be unbound. This has been resolved! Clanners feel free to ignore; we know you like your ‘Mechs HOT! Also certain jump-jetting Orions can no longer gain infinite heat capacity. Was pretty neat while it lasted, though.

And that covers just about all the important points in v0.16.2! You can view the full changelog at Wiki.mechlivinglegends.net. This doesn't include all the map updates (TC_Clearcut, for one...) that have happened since last summer, but perhaps we'll cover that next!

You can download the update through the MWLL launcher or directly from ModDB!

One last thing: we'd really appreciate hearing your feedback on our Discord server and seeing your reviews on our ModDB page.

Thanks for your time, support, and help testing via the last PTE.
Enjoy the new update, and we'll see you legendary pilots on the battlefield!

And we've returned to the announcement bulletin with a quick hotfix! Some new bugs were found shortly after 0.16.0 was released, but we tackled them in short order. Biggest of the lot was entering an HVTOL would force all other players on the server out of their locked reticle mode (they'd suddenly find themselves using free-reticle). Somehow this reticle part of the code was being run server-side...

Apart from that, the new heavy VTOLs got their first balance pass. The Behemoth B also got hit with the nerf bat, but not too hard.

Overall, there's not a massive number of changes going into this one, so here's the full changelog:

-----------------------------------------
------------- VERSION 0.16.1 ------------
-----------------------------------------

----- GAMEPLAY ------

- Karnov
- Moved some armor from wings to body
- Increased average max forward speed up to ~181kph from ~161kph
- Ticket cost 10->9
- Tier 11->9
- Base Chassis cost reduced by 10k
- Turned mounted RL10s on wings inward by 1 degree to help with convergence
- Removed Heavy Kinetic Bonus Modifier, reduced Light Kinetic Bonus Modifier to 1.05 from 1.15
- Anhur
- Moved some armor from wings to body
- Increased average max forward speed up to ~181kph from ~161kph
- Ticket cost 11->10
- Tier 12->11
- Base Chassis cost reduced by 10k
- Removed Heavy Kinetic Bonus Modifier, reduced Light Kinetic Bonus Modifier to 1.05 from 1.15

- Black Lanner
- Ticket cost 8->10
- Tier 9->10

- Ryoken
- Ticket cost 10->9
- Base Chassis cost reduced by 1k

- Variant tweaks or changes
- Oro E, Behemoth B, Karnov Prime/B/E, Anhur B

------ BUG FIXES ------

- Fix for bug where whenever anyone entered an Hvtol all players in server were forced out of Locked Reticule Mode.
- Fixed missing Cougar B radar
- Fixed missing ammo inventories for Hawkmoth and Anhur

And that's all we've got for now.

Till next time!

After a super long period of no new content, the MWLL Community Edition dev team is proud to finally present one of our most highly anticipated additions to MechWarrior: Living Legends - heavy VTOLs! We can officially say it now, triumphantly: Gunships today!

These VTOLs had been on our scope since the development revival of 2016. It took a few years and a couple sacrifices to the CryEngine code gods, but eventually we overcame the insanity of the nightmare spaghetti code! This, we hope, will be a worthwhile and fun addition to the game.

How do the HVTOLs work and what's their function? While we won't delve into all the intricacies of the former (that might as well be a college course on jankiness and hacking), we will say that the HVTOLs are essentially light VTOLs with tank turrets mounted to their sides - much like mechs are player characters with torsos replaced by tank turrets. Movement uses the new VTOL flight system implemented back in v0.15.0. Of course, the heavy VTOLs move, turn, and pitch much slower than their lighter counterparts, seeing as they're 40 tons heavier. Expect to be flying with the agility of a brick - a very well-armed brick.

Functionality-wise, heavy VTOLs double as both gunships and Battle Armor transports. Additionally, both vehicles' variants are able to support a role as either a Battle Armor spawnpoint or as an ammunition store. This opens up yet more strategies your team can employ on the battlefield! For instance, now Battle Armor can be dropped into combat zones like paratroopers, and ammo can now be provided to important areas much faster than with an APC. Of course, with the firepower and utility they bring, heavy VTOLs aren't cheap; they cost about four times as much as an APC. Lastly, each heavy VTOL mounts unique weapons, respective to their techbase.

Seeing as the Anhur is going in currently untextured, we'll show off both of these new toys more thoroughly in a future article!

Weapon Changes

This brings us to the next new addition in v0.16.0, two new weapons:

Rocket Launcher 10 - This ancient weapon has modernized a bit and found its way into the stockpiles of most periphery nations, and even Successor States. A simple, one-shot, unguided volley of ten rockets is fired. It's a dirt-cheap system and best at short to medium range. In MWLL, the RL-10 currently only appears on the Karnov, is hard to use (launchers are fixed to wings and don't track with crosshairs), and fire one slow-moving missile at a time. We should also mention that the RL-10 does not support additional tons of ammo.

Anti-Personnel Gauss Array - Though not an array in BattleTech's universe, the AP Gauss is a scaled-down Gauss Rifle that fires armor-piercing supersonic flechettes. This system was created by the Clans in 3069, and meant for anti-infantry and anti-battle armor work. In MWLL, the APG Array combines three such rifles, with a collective damage output of roughly three standard small lasers. Each rifle fires a rapid burst of fast-moving projectiles. Like the RL-10, APG Arrays do not support additional tons for ammo. These arrays are also currently exclusive to the Anhur VTOL.

Aside from these two new systems, a bunch of other weapons have received tweaks. A few honorable mentions: Flamers now have a stronger damage modifier against vehicles; Cluster Arrow-IV has been un-nerfed some; and all Thunderbolt launchers now share the same refire rate as the TBolt-20. We may see future updates expand availability of the RL-10 and APG Array to other assets, but for now we'll have to keep an eye on how they perform.

Controls Reset

The final major component with the new VTOL changes is - rather unfortunately - a controls reset. Yes, we get everyone hates having to redo all their keymappings and weapon groups. It's a side-effect of having to update the default control scheme when implementing certain new stuff. Additionally, a new version of Actionmapper is shipped with v0.16.0, which moves the free reticle keys from the Mech tab to the Vehicle tab. Before updating to v0.16.0, please try to take note of your current keymaps. If you were using the default controls before, just be sure to check Actionmapper that the free reticle keys are mapped correctly. Otherwise, please ensure you've cleared any keybind conflicts in Actionmapper before launching the game!

That more or less sums up the big parts to this new update! As usual, there's a good number of variant tweaks and balance and weapon adjustments, plus a couple bugfixes. Oh, and a couple new server variables to control asset spawning and build times.

As always, you can find the full changelog at Wiki.mechlivinglegends.net

Though we're finally past one of the last big hurdles, there's still more new content and updates in store. Thanks for being patient, by the way.
Till next time, everyone!

Welcome to a new chapter in the development of this beloved project! In keeping up with the times, we've rebranded! We feel this move is absolutely essential to the survival of our project, as we try to expand the playerbase and reach new audiences.

We got the idea in late January, when it became clear to us that a new look was needed to grow the community. By mid-March, we moved forward on the decision and began readying the changes. Now, with the start of this month, we've begun rolling out the new name and logo and all that jazz, which you can see on our website and Youtube channel. And speaking of Youtube, here's a little trailer of what awesomeness you can expect next time you hop into our newly-rebranded game - because we've OVERHAULED ALL THE VARIANTS!!

Now, in real MWLL news, how are we doing? Well, you'll probably hear from us some more very soon, but we can say right now that heavy VTOLs are extremely close to an initial working implementation!

We do, of course, always need help with both coding and a bit of art, so if you or someone you know want to pad your portfolio we'd love to have you! Check out our Jobs section for open roles.

Lastly, here's the list of monthly events for April:

That's all for now, we'll see you in the next dev article for MechWarrior: Living Online Legends!

The ThreeV3 Tournament returns this November, on the 12th and 19th at 1830 UTC!
For the uninitiated, this event consists of semi-competitive 3v3 battles across a multitude of arenas.

Here's a compilation of just some battle footage from last year's tournament to give an idea of what goes on:

As per usual, voice comms will be on Teamspeak server wr-clan.no-ip.org
Signup sheet can be found here.

You don't have to be in a clan or unit to take part, either! Unaffiliated players are encouraged to sign up under the "Players seeking teams" section. You'll get placed in an open team come first game day!
Signup deadline is November 11th!

Additional details on format (i.e. championship segment) are still being finalized.
We look forward to seeing you there!