MechWarrior: Living Legends Open Beta 0.3.0 Released news

After four months of long nights, shut-in weekends and unsafe volumes of caffeine, the MechWarrior: Living Legends team is pleased to present the release of MechWarrior: Living Legends Open Beta 0.3.0

This release brings together an array of balance updates, bug fixes, new features, gameplay modes and performance enhancements to provide a reinvigorated gameplay experience for the player.

The following download options are available:

A big thank you to all of our fans for your continued support of MechWarrior: Living Legends!I’ll see you on the field!

KingLeerUK

Changelog MWLL Open Beta 0.3.0 - (May 12, 2010)

Balance
- Almost every weapon has been rebalanced using the new internal balacing tools.
- Armor across all vehicles has been rebalanced as well.
- All vehicle variants adjusted to match perfectly to improved tonnage rules. Be warned these are not CBT, but are now strictly adhered to.
- Prices on weapons tweaked, more to come later.
- AC10's and AC20's are now automatic firing weapons.
- Ultra AC's now have a significant jam penalty when overheated.
- All tank's have had the their movement params tweaked.
- AMS now only focuses on 1 salvo of missiles at a time.
- AC10's and AC20's now explode after a certain range
- Increased repair costs.
- Increased maximum flight ceiling of aerospace to 1500m.
- Damage has been tweaked across the board to increase average combat time.
- Reduced order of magnitude on scores.
- Slightly reduced C-Bill accrual rate.
- Cockpit now shakes significantly when jump jetting in a Mech.
- BA view screen shakes slightly when jump jetting.
- Gauss projectile speeds increased.
- PPC projectile speeds slightly decreased.
- AC2/AC5 ranges slightly decreased, now inccur linear damage drop off after stated max range.
- AC10/AC20 inccur damage drop off after stated max range.
- Hawkmoth B reconfigured to hunter killer loadout.
- More than we could possibly listed here.

Bug Fixes
- Fixes for most Light Mech leg animations.
- Fixed out of combat area ceiling height on Inferno.
- If buying ammo for a partially empty weapon the player is only billed for the missing rounds (partial tons).
- AMS is now repairable.
- Aerospace manuverability is no longer frame dependent.
- Fixed vehicle heat damage behaviour.
- Fixed ejector seat not disabling after use for owner of the vehicle.
- Improved joystick support.
- Buying at an APC now also works when connecting to the server after the APC was spawned.
- Hovercrafts now have functioning boost with no overheat effect.
- AMS now stays on one Arrow IV if multiple missile instances are inbound.
- Fixed Mech landing sounds sometimes not playing.
- Fixed destructible trees demanding too much performance.
- Fixed pilot positions in a few mechs.
- C-Bill transfer dialogue and controls do not change weapon group assignments.
- Fixed Test of Strength prices.
- Fixed bug in BA jumpjet effect that caused a CDT.
- Fixed bug which caused weapon reloading not to be correctly displayed on the client.
- Improved Novacat leg animation & performance, *not final version.
- Fixed extra ton of ammo exploit.
- Bomb sight is now more accurate, lateral momentum still not accounted for.
- Fixed bug which caused a VTOL/aerospace to be stuck in hangar structure after spawn.
- Fixed a bug which caused the Harrasser to be stuck in water sometimes.
- Fixed bug which caused damage not to be transfered from the backtorso to torso when backtorso was destroyed.
- Fixed text on HUD grenade indicators and in Buy menus.
- Fix for NARC beacon not being removed after destorying a target.
- Fixed jumpjet percentage indicator.
- Players are not longer able to enter enemy APCs.
- Fixed BA drowning to death after 2 minutes.
- Wire guided weapons such as MRMs actually travel where they say they do now. Still affected by TAG & NARC.
- More than we could possibly listed here.

New Features
- Changed behaviour of ammo quick buy key.
1. Buy ammo for all empty / partially empty weapons
2. If there is only one weapon that needs ammo, that ammo has purchase priority.
3. If there are multiple weapons that need ammo, buy ammo for that weapon selected in the firegroup manager.
- Added possibility to limit player / team respawns with Tickets in Solaris Arena and Test of Strength modes.
- Added HUD display for player / team tickets (if team tickets are inactive the ticket display is used for regular team score).
- Added server variable so that limits teams to IS and Clan assets only (aka "IS vs Clan" mode).
- C-Bill transfer disabled during combat (damage taken), 2 minutes after suicides and reconnections.
- APC owners are now rewarded with 5000 C-Bills for every BA that spawns at their APC.
- ECM and passive radar now increase lock time for missiles (passive and ECM delay effects will stack)
- Added three state radar detection:
1. First state (between 60% and 100% with no line of sight): You only have a blip indicating a valid target and distance.
2. Second state (less than 60% radar range while active with no line of sight): You gain knowledge of the target's class.
3. Third State (less than 80% radar range with line of sight): You have all available information.
- Radar information is cached (but not updated) if you go out of range while targeting.
- Cached target data will show as "Outdated".
- Refactored LUA/HUD code to allow for easy implementation of new game modes.
- C3 broadcasters now receive money for transmitting new targeting information to team mates.
- Now possible to sell vehicles back at the Mech bay / aerospace hangar / VTOL pad, aero hangar. Default key 'J' while still in vehicle.
- When first repairing and then selling your mech you only get the C-Bills for the value of the Mech prior to repairing as it would otherwise be an exploit otherwise.
- Added posibility to limit buy options for a factory (not currently implemented).
- You can now repair aerospace on the runway.
- Betty events are now queued and no longer overlap each other.
- Non-destroyed Mechs without pilot now stay a lot longer on the battlefield.
- Improved landing performance for aerospace units with a "flatten glide path" feature, default key is 'L-CTRL'.
- When crouching, Mechs gain a higher pitch elevation limit to aim at airborn units. Four Mechs receive a base additional elevation bonus and are AA mechs.
- The firegroup manager now remembers the firgroup assignments depending on vehicle and variant. No need to reset them all the time anymore.
- Added crouch, shutdown, AMS, overheat, deploy and C3 indicators to Mech HUD.
- Changed night vision shader with custom configuration.
- Long Tom has now to be deployed before it is able to shoot. Deployed via 'L-CTRL' as default.
- When buying a second BA weapon and the BA small beam laser is still in the inventory, the BA small beam laser is automatically dropped.
- New chat system & killog font.
- New Spectator HUD overlay.
- New damage display icon for tanks,VTOLs and aerospace.
- Internal structure for the Uziel.
- New HUD indicator when overheating.
- Radar ranges and active / passive / GECM state is now shown for friendly units on the overview map as ring indicator.
- Legend on overview map to distinguish all the new symbols.
- Streak SRMs now have more unique firing pattern.
- Heat warnings in HUD overlay.
- Numerous other small features you may or may not notice.

New Content
- Uziel IS 50-ton Medium Mech added.
- Loki CL 65-ton Heavy Mech added.
- Aerospace IS Sparrowhawk added.
- Added AMS turrets for bases. These are neutral and will fire and enemy and friendly shells/missiles.
- Added sounds and effects to Long Tom tank and Long Tom shells.
- Added a library of betty sound warnings.
- Completely reworked SA_Frostbite map layout.
- Reworked SA_Extremity map with new assets and improved terrain layout.
- Tweaks to SA_Sandblasted map.
- Tweaks to SA_Marshes map time of day, added AMS/anti-LT turrets.
- Tweaks to SA_Clearcut map, trees should perform better than 0.2.0.
- New map SA_Mirage map.
- New map SA_ThunderRift map.
- Added Actionmapper input/controls utility accessible from new beta launcher.
- New Beta launcher, providing GUI for server configuration (including level rotation), giving you more advanced options for launching (32/64 Bit, force DirectX 9) and allowing for quick access to various configuration tools (Joystick.exe, Actionmapper).
- New Beta launcher has support for embedded update (future use).
- Added new BA footstep sounds.
- Added new BA gear sound (myomer approximation).
- Added limited library of impact sounds for weapons fire.
- New Long Tom tank model.
- New Long Tom deployment/undeploy animation.
- New Flamer effect.
- Updated PPC effect.
- New laser impact effect particle.
- Added missile models to most missile types.
- New BA weapon Micro Heavy Laser.
- New loading screens for all maps.
- New D/E variants for Shiva and Harasser.
- New sounds effects for certain weapons like the Gauss and UAC lines.
- Extensive Betty audio notification library added
- Betty target status announcements added
- Betty game state announcements added

Optimizations
- Optimized bandwith usage of Mech legs.
- Basic bandwidth improvements over 0.2.0
- Improved particle effect performance for many effects.
- Improved sound channel performance for several sounds.

Known issues:
- Inverting the joyaxis_y on vehicles does not work.
- Implemented impact sound library is only valid for LOD0 detail (only plays out to about 20m) but is sufficient for first person damage impactor notification.
- Impact libary will not play for impacts to Mech legs, tanks, aerospace or VTOLs, will be fixed in a later version.