[Mongoose]

Not only all of that, but blaming the owners of the Macross franchise (and others) for protecting their own intellectual property (which, at least for Macross, is still very much in use), when the original BattleTech artists were the ones who stole those designs in the first place, seems very silly.

[NGTM-1R]

Not only all of that, but blaming the owners of the Macross franchise (and others) for protecting their own intellectual property (which, at least for Macross, is still very much in use), when the original BattleTech artists were the ones who stole those designs in the first place, seems very silly.

That would make sense except for the fact the original Battletech artists, y'know, licensed them, and Harmony Gold pulled the license in what can easily be construed as violation of contract. Which is in turn one of the reasons why Harmony Gold managed to alienate the Japanese licenseholders, resulting in difficulties making further imports from the Macross series.

There's plenty of legit reasons to be annoyed with Harmony Gold from both sides of the situation, and pretending otherwise suggests you don't have much of a grounding in what happened.

[niffiwan]

I don't think the lawsuit(s) are as clear cut as you make them out to be.  My understanding is that a 3rd company (TCI) produced images of mechs and then licensed those images to both FASA and Harmony Gold, even though they may not have had the rights to do so.

This link seems to have a fairly complete overview of the whole shenanigans, it seems to agree with other opinions I've seen.

http://www.terrania.us/journal/2009/09/harmony-gold-vs-battletech-second.html

This is probably most relevant:

We may never know whether TCI actually did have the rights to sell those mecha designs or not, because in 1997 a FASA representative posted to Usenet that the case had been settled out of court and dismissed. As one condition of the settlement, FASA was not permitted to talk about the settlement.

(ninja'd by NGTM-1R!)

[General Battuta]

Not only all of that, but blaming the owners of the Macross franchise (and others) for protecting their own intellectual property (which, at least for Macross, is still very much in use), when the original BattleTech artists were the ones who stole those designs in the first place, seems very silly.

No, the designs weren't stolen, and Harmony Gold actually are huge assholes about everything, Battletech related or no. They're IP squatters of a kind (plus they financed a probably racist TV show in apartheid south africa, woo)

For example, you seem to think that Harmony Gold owns the Macross franchise. In fact, Harmony Gold was licensed the right to distribute Macross internationally by the real creators )(Studio Nue) and another group (Tatsunoko), and they promptly hacked it up into whatever weird thing Robotech is, i don't even know. They failed as a business and cling to life only because of continued revenue from Robotech. They're fundamentally parasitic middlemen.

You don't know anything about giant robot licensing fights! A shameful display

[Mongoose]

Not only all of that, but blaming the owners of the Macross franchise (and others) for protecting their own intellectual property (which, at least for Macross, is still very much in use), when the original BattleTech artists were the ones who stole those designs in the first place, seems very silly.

No, the designs weren't stolen, and Harmony Gold actually are huge assholes about everything, Battletech related or no. They're IP squatters of a kind (plus they financed a probably racist TV show in apartheid south africa, woo)

For example, you seem to think that Harmony Gold owns the Macross franchise. In fact, Harmony Gold was licensed the right to distribute Macross internationally by the real creators )(Studio Nue) and another group (Tatsunoko), and they promptly hacked it up into whatever weird thing Robotech is, i don't even know. They failed as a business and cling to life only because of continued revenue from Robotech. They're fundamentally parasitic middlemen.

You don't know anything about giant robot licensing fights! A shameful display

I'm fully aware that Harmony Gold had nothing to do with the creation of Macross, but I honestly didn't know that they were the ones who caused the whole mess, and not the original Japanese production companies.  The bits and pieces I'd heard about the whole issue made it seem like the BattleTech guys had cribbed some robot designs from Japanese cartoons, hoping no one would notice, and then got burned when someone did notice.  Huh.  I knew Harmony Gold was one big SNAFU that inspired tons of nerd-rage, but I guess they had their hands in more nonsense than I knew.

[TrashMan]

Say waht you will, but Robotech has a kick-ass musical score. Far better then the original.


And, back on topic, did you know Angry Joe mentioend in a recent interview Freespace 2 as one of his most beloved games of all time?

[headdie]

* headdie puts HG into the same box as interplay

[SypheDMar]

That actually sounds about right.

[Lukeskywalkie]

Geez, I had no idea my post would stir up anyone - allow me to apologize for expressing a woefully under informed opinion.  It was very much 'off the cuff', and yeah, I got much less excited when MWO was announced, after looking forward to something more like 2 or 3.  Since at least some of this conversation was in response to me, I shall reply -

@ NG & niff,  it's not so much the legal blame that got me annoyed; I certainly don't dispute a company's right to protect IP, what gets me is that its a long standing legal dispute that never seems to get settled, one way or the other.  You're right, it IS complicated (I oversimplified), and to have such an issue interfere with a project - well, who wouldn't be annoyed?

@ battuda:  I was under the impression that the lack of interested publishers was due to the same legal/ ownership grey area issues.  Again, it's very confusing.
I though LL Was the only mech product to use a crytek engine? Apparently not, and that is good news.  I do like living legends - Just the same, is it so wrong to hope for a return to slightly-cheesy space drama?  I really am more of a single player gamer; I can't help but feel left out when a franchise goes multi only... Especially if its not how the project started.

Anyway, yeah.  I'm an ass.  I shall go now and be one with my humiliation.

[General Battuta]

No worries, I was probably a bit too harsh. I'd love to see another single player Battletech title too, but I have high hopes for MWO.

[SpardaSon21]

We're probably going to need to make another Hard Light Irregulars guild/clan/company when MWO comes out, judging by all the Mechwarrior fans on here.

[headdie]

We need to make another Hard Light Irregulars for MWO.

if my system will run the game chalk me up for the suicidal recon mech pilot just as liable to charge the Atlas as run away from it

[Meatball]

For a long time, it looked like big stompy mech action was dead too.

Hasnt Mech Warrior been revived and new game is being released?

Yeah, I guess we have to do that, since we can't exactly force retards to become clever enough to follow simple-ass tutorials...

People are lazy.  If they have to put any work into something, they'll go do something else.  Honestly, I would have thought you guys would have done it much, MUCH sooner.

Those "retards" are possible new members to the Community. You should treat them better. It's already ignorant enough to say the tutorial is simple.

There is always MANY more people who plays games, then makes games. (including people who do small time work with games)
Majority of games have a simple installation. Double Click the DVD Drive, Window pops up, "Install?" YES.
They are tons and tons of free to play games out there. Many browser games, a lot of them is not in the same class as this project. BUT, people are both lazy and afraid to mess with installers that dont say "Next,next,Install"

If we really want to have a lot of new members, the website should be obvious with how to get the game, (which is most important) and it should be as easy as possible for the user.
Most people who don't get the installation guides and still tries are people whom already played this during their childhood or when the game was released and popular.
Rest, don't mess around with weird installers if the game is not interesting enough. Space Shooters are already pretty dead out there. So don't make it worse.

So simple. Make the website easy to understand for first-timers. They don't want to be part of forum, they don't want to help at first site if they didn't know the game in the past. They want to try the "old space shooter game" which has been greatly improved. If they like what the experienced, they will join the forums and start chatting if interested which many does. And if we told them on the sidelines that many more campaigns exist as those that exists in the installer, they will definitely join the forums.

And make the download sequence, and install sequence easy, and the mod easy.


I think the current installer is great and easy to use. I don't remember if the Installer is up-to-date but that would be great if you keep it up-to-date.

I DON'T think It's easy to find out how to download this or where. Many links are dead and threads sends you to another one thread and to another and to another one. To Download and Install, there should be a big button on the website in your face that says it. And that takes you to the links to download it with high-speed servers. Don't recall if you guys use torrents, since this is free, torrents should be no problem. (Pretty sure it's already up on torrents tho, but something more official should be uploaded)

And that gives you the Installer. And oh yea, I think I recall the Installer to download directly from servers correct? That's awesome. And then you have it! Easy.

When they got to try it and tried the campaigns on the Installer, they prob want to get back for more campaigns.

[Liberator]

Say waht you will, but Robotech has a kick-ass musical score. Far better then the original.

I have heard this so called soundtrack and the VA for Minmei(not Minmay, I'm a books fan myself and think this animated THING that they sprung from is an abomination), anyway, the VA for Minmei could barely hold a tune and had about the energy of a rock.  I recall a LOT of voice crackage during her performances.  Frontier, on the other hand, has several glorious examples of what happens when you give Yoko Kanno the task of writing pop songs.

[MatthTheGeek]

I think the current installer is great and easy to use. I don't remember if the Installer is up-to-date but that would be great if you keep it up-to-date.

The installer has been out of date for years now. A new one is been remade by Goober5000. Don't recommend the old installer to anyone, as they will only get a corrupted install and that will only bring us more support nightmare.

I DON'T think It's easy to find out how to download this or where. Many links are dead and threads sends you to another one thread and to another and to another one.

If you have found dead links, you should tell us which and where so we can fix them.