MechWarrior: Living Legends moving to Crysis!

[[MyIS]Dan]

We've been sent some news today from the team behind the mod MechWarrior Living Legends (http://www.mechlivinglegends.net/). Their mod was originally intended for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars but the team has changed to the Crysis. Here's what they had to say:

Greeting to the Total Crysis community! We have been extremely active members over at Total Quake Wars and couldn't wait to share the news with the Total community!

I would first like to introduce myself, my name is Sean (Criminal) Tracy and i am the lead developer on a total conversion project entitled "MechWarrior: Living Legends" (MWLL).

With so many BattleTech/MechWarrior projects being announced never being released many people have been very disappointed and angry that so many of these projects have turned into hype and very little actual production. Finally, comes a MechWarrior a title that will deliver!

The main reason for pursuing this project is that their has not be and updated "MechWarrior" game for at least 6 years and there is a HUGE MechWarrior fan base out there just waiting for a quality product to be released.

Essentially the main reason for this message is to open up a friendly correspondence with the Total Crysis administrators and members since we do have a few very important questions that need to be answered, if we are to continue to develop the mod at the rate that we have been going. In addition the last thing our development team wants is to create a mod that just isn't fun to play! The best way around this is having constant input from the community.

To give a bit of history we've been working on this project for the better part of 10 months now...essentially it has all been asset gathering and pre-production. We spent quite a bit of time discussing which engine was going to do justice to the BattleTech universe, we initially picked "Enemy Territory: Quake Wars" or more appropriately the "Doom 3" engine. We've been working with the Doom 3 engine, for the better part of six months and have come to the point that we are very tired of having to re-work our design specifications to suit the engine rather than making the engine work with our design specs. Upon much research of not onlt the Farcry engine but as well as the Crysis engine we've really discovered that the Crytek engine is already inherently setup for many things that we have been working 100's of manhours to program into the core .classes of the Doom 3 engine.

The fact that Crysis can simply do the most amazing sprawling next generation environments where the Doom3 engine is stuck at a max of 1 mile. The inherent scale of MechWarrior is nearly impossible to fit into 1 mile square. Since launching our site in January the team has began to grow very quickly as the battletech community feels the need for a new and improved mechwarrior title. We've been blown away over the interest being generated with over 1200 subscribers already to our Monthly newsletter and over 30,000 page views a month our fanbase is quickly growing.

With that thought in mind this was a very hard decision to make from a community stand point. On the development side of the house it was a unanimous decision all 25 members of the team that are working on this project to add assets to their portfolios and to break through into the industry are far more interested in working in a next generation engine rather than on six year old technology. We are, however, going to take some flak from the ET:QW community but we truly believe this is the right move to make.

While this is great news for the Crysis community it will for sure upset a few ET:QW fans. As the team asked, what are your views on this platform change and are you happy to see this mod being developed for Crysis? If you haven't yet visited their website now is the perfect time to do so by clicking here (http://www.mechlivinglegends.net/).

We would like to give the team a warm welcome to Total Crysis (www.totalcrysis.com) and hope they enjoy their stay here!

[Kadath]

I never played a mechwarrior game, but I think it's a good step to move on to the cryengine, I think many don't do it, just because it's not from a company that has developed the first shooters and so on.
I think I'll play it, cryengine is, in my opinion, the best engine out there and crytek also supports their mod community well(www.crymod.com (http://www.crymod.com)). :)

[Criminal]

Thank you again for the front page news post. Obviously it does upset a few ET:QW fans but in all honesty to release our title to the quality that we are really striving to achieve the Cry2engine will be the best choice for us. Thanks for the words of encouragement and we look forward to working with you all!

[xXSocomXx]

nice can't wait :D

[Jacky]

A wise choise if you ask me

[Dangerdog]

I assume this is going to be a multiplayer only mod, I haven’t read anything regarding how big a multiplayer map can be in Crysis, even the player count hasn’t been formalized yet though I understand they’re trying for 32 players.

Crysis is still completely unproven with regards to its multiplayer component, most people are looking at it as primarily a single player game and think that it’ll have things like deathmatch tacked on (most aren’t even aware of power struggle game mode), others are looking at things like the power suit as being a goofy gimmick with things like being able to punch a tank to death or flip it over with ‘super strength’. And of course others are quick to point out the failure of Far Cry’s multiplayer and like to reiterate quotes from the devs themselves saying that the multiplayer was ‘sucky’.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m eagerly looking forward to some sort of multiplayer beta for Crysis and really hope that power struggle is as fun to play as it sounds in text that I’ve read, this is just some of the things I’ve observed from reading peoples posts.

Aside from the scale of the maps one thing that will be needed is some sort of support for biped vehicles, and especially support for inverse kinematics for the feet so they track to the surface of the ground properly.

If all else fails I guess you can switch yet again to the unreal tournament 3 engine.

[Gabe]

Makes sense, quake wars coming out a 3 months before crysis, game will be dead pretty fast. I see what ID software is doing though, they are probably rushing their asses off trying to get it out as soon as they can so they can get everyones money before crysis comes out.

[TheEn|gma]

Shame to see them leave the QW platform but I couldn't think of a better platform to move forward onto. Wish you guys the best of luck and sucess in the future.

[Kadath]

I assume this is going to be a multiplayer only mod, I haven’t read anything regarding how big a multiplayer map can be in Crysis, even the player count hasn’t been formalized yet though I understand they’re trying for 32 players.

Crysis is still completely unproven with regards to its multiplayer component, most people are looking at it as primarily a single player game and think that it’ll have things like deathmatch tacked on (most aren’t even aware of power struggle game mode), others are looking at things like the power suit as being a goofy gimmick with things like being able to punch a tank to death or flip it over with ‘super strength’. And of course others are quick to point out the failure of Far Cry’s multiplayer and like to reiterate quotes from the devs themselves saying that the multiplayer was ‘sucky’.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m eagerly looking forward to some sort of multiplayer beta for Crysis and really hope that power struggle is as fun to play as it sounds in text that I’ve read, this is just some of the things I’ve observed from reading peoples posts.

Aside from the scale of the maps one thing that will be needed is some sort of support for biped vehicles, and especially support for inverse kinematics for the feet so they track to the surface of the ground properly.

If all else fails I guess you can switch yet again to the unreal tournament 3 engine.
As you said, the devs said that FC mp was crappy, it is true. Now they say that they have a great crysis mp...;)

@Gabe: Your post is based on no facts, just that one of the games comes out earlier, doesn't mean that they rush it?

[Dangerdog]

Well, I wouldn’t call ET:QW a rushed job but they’re definitely not “done” with it yet, before the release was set in stone the only comment from id software was to expect it before Christmas, then a few days later it was end of September / first of October.

For Splash Damage not to be concerned about competition from the likes of Crysis and UT3 would either make them delusional or just plain stupid. A tell all sign will be if they hold off on releasing the demo till after the game is released, and if you haven’t had the chance to play the beta2 version then hold off until you’ve played the demo.

[Gabe]

Thats true I don't have any facts, thats my opinion. In my opinion the game will be a failure with crysis just around the corner, if they were smart they would have a DX10 update that would be announced before the game is released or release the game with DX9/DX10. Because they are not doing this, or at least nothing has been mentioned, the game will be a "has been" because of no competition once crysis comes out.

[Dangerdog]

id software is well known for going out of their way to not support DirectX, Quake Wars is no exception as it's an OpenGL game.

Technology wise the only glimpse into Quake Wars lack luster visual fidelity is perhaps due to it being the first time they’ve used their “megatexture” system, their new game RAGE seems to have a more refined version that is overwhelmingly improved over Quake Wars, visually speaking.

[Sauerkraut]

Your concept art is really amazing :)
LOL and I like you dancing rig test :D