Blogs - MCRizZen

The differences between MCG Prometheus & MCG Darkest Hours:

MechCommander Gold v5.0 - Prometheus

1. Backbone for this standalone is a pre-installed MCG-Darkest Hours v4.2 folder
2. Clan version of the game
3. Brandnew Clan 'Wolf XXL campaign, but contains ALL previous mission content for MC in it's libraries
4. New 'Clan Wolf Style Menu / MFD & HuD design with new artwork and recolored environment
5. Ongoing development & technical support
6. Next Full Version update on Eastern 2021
7. Mixed-tech base (Clan & Inner-Sphere) in purchase logistics
8. Extended Vehicle availibility during campaigns
9. Prometheus will be the greatest version of MechCommander and is the future!
10. Integrated Visual- & Weapon Range Re-Balance Mod for more realism! (for widescreens)

MechCommander Gold v4.xfinal - Darkest Hours

1. Backbone for this standalone is a pre-installed MCG Desperate Measures v1.8 folder
2. Inner Sphere (IS) version of the game
3. Content merge of four previous standalone versions, contains none of the new clan campaign content
4. Basic Menu / MFD & HuD design
5. No further development but ongoing technical support
6. No Full Version updates planned anymore
7. Inner Sphere (IS) tech base in purchase logistics
8. Standard Vehicles during campaigns
9. Darkest Hours v4.2final is greater compared to the original v1.8 and a finished product!
10. Standard Vanilla Ingame Physics!

All MechCommander 1 / Gold Versions:

As this seems to be not clear - or easy to misinterpret here a clear sight on my version mess...

v1.0 - MechCommander 1 - Original campaign - The original campaign is v1.8 content
v1.8 - MechCommander Gold - Desperate Measures Expansion (+ three different customermade campaign standalones with six additional campaigns to play on the original built)
v2.0 - MechCommander Gold - Ultimate campaign merge Update (prior Darkest Hours built)
v3.0 - first MechCommander Gold - Darkest Hours Full Version Standalone release
v4.2 - MCG Darkest Hours final
v4.3 - MechCommander Gold - Prometheus v0.2beta (actually v4.3)
(v5.0 - MCG Prometheus) - The game is under ongoing development until it's finished!

Legend:
Strikethrough = Those versions are outdatet, not supported or don't exist anymore! Their content remains in the existent builts that are available as freeware download content here on modDB or other places and gaming sites in the web.

MCG P.R.O.M.E.T.H.E.U.S. - is the future...

... v5.0 is the total version number for MechCommander in general. Only Prometheus will be evolved up to that level. Reason is that i took new paths during the creation process of the new standalone. The further development of the game content is obsolete for the existent versions. They are finished products and their version numbers won't change anymore. The Version number of the Prometheus Beta built will change to 4.x above when v1.0 beta is released. This v4.x built will be further developed until it can be considered as complete (v5.0 then).
During the creation process of Prometheus i'm limitbreaking many things that where untouched before. Such like unit limits become obsolete in my built. I managed to create scenarios with more than 200 enemy units for example. I created the biggest convoy ever seen ingame on screen for the next example. All of those mentioned details are already part/content of the current Beta release that weighs 33 missions !!! - a demo release for testing that offers more content than the original game had even with it's expansion content altogether!

MechCommander 1 / Gold 2020 - useful links:

• Beginner's Guide
• Player's Guide
• All standalones & campaigns overview & walkthrough information
• What is MechCommander?
• What is MCG Darkest Hours?
• What is MCG Prometheus?
• --------------------------------------
• Read for Installation notes
• Read for Resolution notes
• Read for Technical support

(c) by RizZen 2020

Hello dear MechCommanders,

in the last weeks i got asked very often, how many missions Darkest Hours contains. This depends on how you decide to extend it. I have created an optional mission pack that offers +139 solo mission - skirmish scenarios to play total - in addition to what Darkest Hours has with it's "basic" content. So here we are (counting the missions that are content of the biggest MC standalone, that ever existed):

Single-Player campaign mission count:

• 30 Missions - 1998 - MechCommander 1 - Original campaign
• +12 Missions - 1999 - MC Gold - Expansion campaign
• +89 Missions - 2002 - three usermade single-player builts contain 6 additional campaigns

131 missions total splitted into two major campaign builts overriding the original & expansion!

Single-Player Solo-Skirmish-Missions:

• 187 different solo scenarios out of the sp-campaigns & additional missions that never where released as campaigns (have a look into "SOLOMISSIONS")
• +139 missions - optional solo mission pack 3 - solo-mission scenarios from Sarna.net - compiled for Darkest Hours exclusive

+ 326 missions total - skirmish solo-mission scenarios with integrated mixed tech (Clan&Inner-Sphere)!

Multi-Player maps:

• + 64 different multiplayer map scenarios total
• (+21 MP scenarios from sarna which i believe already content - double existing)

= 521 playable mission scenarios in one standalone built. MCG-DH v4.2 Final with Sol-Pack3 Update (optional)

RizZ-Note: The special thing with the sol-Pack 3 is, that it contains those solo-missions from Sarna.net. Remastered for MCG Darkest Hours!!! Those are missions that where released in MSZone times. Some of them where hardly missed by players for DECADES! Just some of the new solomissions dont work or crash cause they where somehow corrupted. Some couldnt be introduced at all, cause they are broken on Sarna.net - just empty 0kb files.

Articles

Beginner's Guide
Player's Guide
MCGold.iso & Downloads (look into the description)
Overview - All MechCommander standalone version (pre-installed game folders)
What is MechCommander?
MechCommander Gold - Darkest Hours Free Fullversion Download (Patch v4.2)
What is Darkest Hours all about?

Downloads

You can find ALL MechCommander Downloads here & here

So we are back online. Most of the content got reuploaded now. Enjoy it! You can find about 50 articles of knowledge and several Download-Packages full of content for MechCommanders!

Start the journey...

(c) by RizZen 2020

Ingame screenshot - game played with 1440x900 widescreen high resolution - zoomed in

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.

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.

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

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

I couldn´t even say it better, very well translated XB-Walker! This is why i remastered the game.

New update releases (2019):

• Visual sight & Weapon range balance - light mod
• OrgMrg: Op1Mis1 patch - optional replacement - you can play the new modded one or the original on desire
• OrgMrg: Op1Mis20 salvage patch - with both (1&20) missions mixed-tech is optionally available in Original Campaign, too - not only Expansion
• Solo-Mission bugfix for OrgMrg: Op1Mis2 - *.sol file was corrupted - repaired
• Kotare - Turkina/Mad-Cat bugfix - Mech (Turkina) - just used Turkina sprites in mission but was actually a mad-cat model - corrected wrong file relations

Planned content (2019 - 202x):

• introducing/implementing ~250 additional mission scenarios
• new master campaign (going on with storyplot after operation bulldog (~150 missions minimum)
• new voices for additional pilots (voice packages)
• new in-mission music for new campaign
• a third - new campaign button
• more artwork (menu-design in depth)
• establishing new ingame-physics standards - compareable with higher resolutions effects
• maybe the creation of a MC `Gamelauncher`exe file that does even the last steps that needs to be done by people in order to start game (auto ISO load, auto *.exe file handling with right compatibility mode and auto adjustments for hardware usage) - just choosing resolution and some ingame settings like difficulty - then starting the game and just play
• one more Standalone version with campaigns like X-Ray, Xenocide or Exodus - just unpublished ones that can be played but where never released as indipendent campaigns

When this makes you excited, you should try out yourself (without annoying music - i promise):

Download MCG Darkest Hours Full Version 4.0 - Mod DB

Not much more to say right now, i wish all people a happy new year (this was my x-mas present).

Have fun, that´s an order!