Patching MechCommander's "left arm bug" for fun and profit
mhloppy.com67 points by Narann 4 days ago
67 points by Narann 4 days ago
I wonder if the board game materials have rules or guidance about where equipment goes? I dunno how close the computer games stick to the board game materials though.
The board game has extensive rules on mech design, but for weapons, it's just wherever they'll fit. Some of the built-in hardware has fixed locations: cockpit, life support, sensors go in the head; engines go in the center torso (with light and xtralight fusion engines spilling out into the side torsos as well), arm and hand actuators go in the arms, and hip, leg, and foot actuators go in the legs. You can see this in the critical slot section in a record sheet: https://i.redd.it/jt3p2f1v14gf1.jpeg
This one definitely deviates from tabletop: pretty much everything except the smallest weapons have an integral tonnage, and the weapons themselves don't line up directly with their tabletop versions.
The newer games tend to be absolutely consistent with the mech design rules in terms of what weapons are available, and their weights and sizes, such that board game designs are legal in the game (and usually the state you get the mechs in before you customize them), and customized mechs are legal board game designs. They tend to limit the customization by doing things like having mechs have predefined hardpoints that limit what types/sizes of guns can go where, because otherwise you just end up with every mech being identical, with maximum armor and the rest of the tonnage being spent on whatever happens to be the most optimal weapon.
This is cool, maybe "target left arm" implies that it's your left, when targetting them and you're facing each other. So, their right arm.
Btw, I recently did my first patches with ghidra. Is there any way to avoid jumping into a code cave by shifting all the instructions up then updating any statements referring to those memory locations? Seems like it should be simple enoigh in theory, but I didn't find an implementation on a cursory search. Could probably code up a plugin pretty easily.
How can you be dead certain that all references are known in Ghidra?
Just non-disassembled function or unidentified struct would ruin your plans…
I never played this game! I didn't realize there was a RTS after Crescent Hawk's revenge. I'm looking at the MC2 source code now... it looks like there is a Linux port, meaning could probably get it working for Apple using Fable 5, AI haters, I will challenge you to a batchall.
I wish they would release MC1 source the way they did with MC2.
If you need a compact byte -> bit lookup table on x86, consider using the memory form of the bit test (BT) instruction.
Oh man this was my biggest pet peeve with mechcommander as a kid, thanks for fixing it!
A bit off topic, but a very nice niche YouTubers "SardonicSays" posted a great Retrospective about MechCommander yesterday.
Great writeup! Vividly remember this being a thing especially in multiplayer. What was that janky match matching service, MSN something?
Also a really underrated game, the mechanics (line of sight over the horizon stuff) and isometric graphics were pretty cool for the time and it had a well developed story/campaign mode.
Now let's see this working for Darkest Hours. ;)
(Assuming they didn't fix it themselves, it is a pretty big overhaul to MC1)
99% sure it should work fine for (Exodus and Turncoat), (X-Ray and DSC Raid), and (Xenocide and Bengal Lancers) since those are just custom campaigns.
Lovely stuff. Always a joy to see anything MechWarrior related end up here on HN.
Dear god I loved this game when it came out. It was hard.
I remember it taking me ages to complete the demo missions. And once I had, there being tons of replay value just in the demo missions.
That damned Vulture in the base in the second demo mission was rough. I hit a serious wall in the campaign in Op1M5 when you had to defend the farm. It’s almost a shame that MC2 is so easy in comparison
It just hit me, in 2026, that MeshCommander [1] (the Intel AMT remote management tool) is probably a homage naming after MechCommander.
Came here excited that MeshCommander is maintained again.
I really need to put some of these techniques to the test with Metal Fatigue.
A rare gem to see someone talking about MF. I used to play lots of it with friends, our games would last for over 48 hours (we wouldn’t sleep). Different time.
My games would last until whoever was hosting had the bug that kills the game due to having too many units, or running out of names for pilots.
And it was somehow still incredibly satisfying, even though there was probably just one bugger who went underground at the start and all the people who over invested in giant robots would have to play whack a mole to find him.
