MechSelect

What is MechSelect?

MechSelect is a utility for Mechwarrior2:Mercenaries that lets you keep multiple directories of .MEK files and switch between them.

This is useful if you belong to more than one league. Leagues usually have differing mech construction rules. Using the wrong mech file can be considered cheating during an actual battle.

Download MechSelect

The latest version of MechSelect can be downloaded with this link MechSelect-1_0_4.zip (109k).

Installation and usage

There really is no special installation procedure. Just put the MechSelect application into a directory, say \Program Files\MechSelect\ and run it.

The first time you run it you will be asked to locate a directory where you installed Mechwarrior2:Mercenaries. Your "normal" \mek\ directory will be tagged so that we're clear on which mechs are your originals.

After that, you are free to add other directories to the list as mech groups. These other groups can be swapped in as your "real" mechs at any given moment.

You can only add directories that are under the game directory. Not any lower or higher on the directory tree. This is because MechSelect uses the DOS rename() function to do the actual swapping, so the paths have to be level with each other.

To allow mek directories to be in other places would require that this program copy and delete files from one place to another. I didn't like this idea because 1) it takes longer to do copy ops rather than rename ops and, 2) it's potentially more dangerous for a program to be deleting your meks, so this program doesn't do that.

I didn't think anyone would really want to have mechs somewhere wildly different than something like \MERCS\SomeMoreMechs\ anyway.

It's all done by keeping a tracking file in each of the directories and renaming the actual directories to something else when you swap things around.

Feedback

Please email me, Dino Morelli (Banichi), if you have any problems.

Removal of MechSelect

Removal of MechSelect is not automatic, but is very easy.

• In MechSelect, make sure your original "normal" mechs are swapped in as the "golden" group.
• Quit MechSelect.
• In your registry (run REGEDIT.EXE) locate this branch and remove it: \HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\BanichiWare\MECHSELECT\ -- BE VERY CAREFUL IN THE REGISTRY DELETING THINGS.
• In your game directory, you'll see a file called MSTRACKR.MSS in each directory you tagged as a mech group. Delete each of these .MSS files, they are the tracker files for MechSelect and won't be needed without it.
• Delete your \MechSelect\ directory and you're done.

revision history

version 1.0.4

• When adding mech directories, the program was hard-coded to look for "MERCS" for a parent directory. This caused problems for people who chose the default install directory of c:\Program Files\Activision\Mercenaries
  This has been fixed.

version 1.0.3

• Help button was changed to About. No help is really needed for this besides this document. And it was difficult finding the About command before with it on the System menu.
• The "golden group" and Mercs directory displays don't have that annoying white background anymore.
• The mech picture doesn't have that annoying white background anymore either.
• Cancelling a new group add operation generated an inappropriate message. This has been fixed.
• Removing a group gave no confirmation dialog. I can't believe I did this. It's been fixed.

version 1.0.2

• You are no longer forced to have your game installed in \mercs\ Any directory will do as long as one or more of the Mercs executables is present (mercs.exe, mercswin.exe, mercnet.exe, mw2.exe)

version 1.0.1

• Fixed case-sensitivity problem with directory names that was causing a crash on some systems.

version 1.0.0

• Fixed problem where program would allow a directory that was not where Mercs was installed to be selected as the Mercs directory.
• Added real program icon.
• Finished remove group feature.
• Added some feedback for improper usage like trying to swap the already golden group in and not having a group selected at all to swap in.
• Put in check for proper location of group directory to be added.
• Fixed some code where the program would crash because nothing was selected in the list.

version 0.01a

• Initial alpha release.

dummy

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