MechWarrior: Living Legends - January Update 3 news

Shortly after our last update, two of our most dedicated 3D artists went out of comission shortly after another - both with broken graphics cards. However, the team has finally achieved a level of familiarity and professionalism and increased not only experience in their own fields of activity but also with the CryEngine 2, so we still managed to make quite some progress.

Among other things, we were able to show off the 'destructable components' feature, that allows a quite realistic damage model and the selective destruction of weapons, limbs and other components on Battlemechs and the selective destruction of weapons and other components on most other vehicles. The first screenshot in this update shows a forcefully amputated weapon on a Shadowcat. The next screenshot simply shows some of the effects that will be there in the Mod. The Mech in this screenshot is the Clan's Blood Asp firing his Gauss Rifles.

The community on the forums of MechWarrior: Living Legends had expressed concerns regarding the dimensions of Mechs and other vehicles in the Mod, which is why we decided to ease some of these concerns by setting up comparison shots. The first one of these two shots displays selected Inner Sphere vehicles and Mechs of different weight classes and heights. Of course a similar comparison shot for Clan vehicles and Mechs has been set up as well. This comparison can be seen in the second screenshot below. Both screenshots also feature the original US battletank from Crysis to further help understand the dimensions in MWLL.

As said already, our 3D artists were - respectively still are - out of commission for quite some time, but still we managed to get some new gear in game. One of these new additions is the Clan's Novacat, displayed in the left of these two shots below. The 70t-Novacat belongs to the Heavy-weight class of Mechs and packs quite some punch. As the typical loadout brings mostly energy weapons, heat on this warmachine is an issue. In case you're wondering whether or not the Demolisher tank got hammered: be our guest to find out for yourself upon release.
The second addition brings additional firepower to the Inner Sphere: the medium class Uziel, a Mech that already in former games was able to use Omni-tech. The four variants to be expected in the upcoming beta release are displayed in the right screenshot below. This screenshot, however, brought another addition: an unfeatured scenery. This map, working title SA_Sandblasted, features - quite obviously - a lot of sand, some palms and water, pyramids and ruins.

Another new addition to the gameplay, a long announced feature, is being displayed in the final screenshot for this update. It's a view from the cockpit of a Clan Blood Asp that has to watch an Inner Sphere's Longinus stick explosives on its hull, while another one is about to shoot the cockpit with a manpack PPC. The features displayed in this are not only the ability to stick explosives to an enemy, but also the new model of the Longinus battle armor in game. In the distance, the Blood Asp's pilot can see an allied Puma trying to shake off another group of Inner Sphere's battle armor.

This concludes the third update for January 2009. The team would again like to thank everyone for their support and encouragement and in return encourage you to bear with us while we're pushing hard to get MWLL ready for all of you to play it.

Just in case you haven't already done so, please consider placing your vote for us in the ModDB Mod Of The Year 2008 awards. We're taking great pride in being one of the few remaining Crysis Mods in the competition and would be even more honored to be able to make it to the top.