Hello everyone, this is my first post. I've seen quite a few posts regarding problems running MechWarrior 3 and Pirate's Moon on newer PC's. I thought I should post that I've found a solution that may remove all issues found in game which include but are not limited to:
- Bouncing APC's
- Flickering Nav. Marker Arrows
- Inconsistent Mech Speed
- Desktop/PC Crashes
- Op 2 (Missing Long Range Missile Platform)
To name a few...
First off, I'd like to say that I'm not making any promises I merely found something that worked for me and I hope it will help others. Second, this is a solution that worked for NVIDIA Cards as you will need access to the NVIDIA Control Panel. Those of you with ATI (or anything else) may be able to apply the solution by transcribing these steps in accordance with your equivalent display driver manager.
With that said let's go over the specs of my "Rig":
ASUS G74SX Gaming Laptop
- Intel(R) Core (TM) i7-2630QM CPU @ 2.00GHz
- NVIDIA GTX 560M (2GB)
- 8.00 GB RAM
- Windows 7 (x64)
Solution:
Step 1
- Open the NVIDIA Control Panel (access from Start Menu, System Tray, or right-clicking your Desktop).
Step 2
- On the top left corner of NVIDIA Control Panel go to 3D Settings > Manage 3D settings.
Step 3
- In the Manage 3D settings area select the Program Settings tab.
Step 4
- Under 1. Select a program to customize: you may search for the Mech3.exe in the drop down list provide.
- If you cannot locate Mech.exe in the list provided click Add and a new window should pop up.
- Near the bottom left corner of the new window click Browse and a second window will open.
- Navigate to the folder where you installed MechWarrior 3 and select "Mech.exe" then click Open.
Step 5
- Now that we've located our MechWarrior 3 executable (Mech.exe) we need to go to 2. Specify the settings found on this computer.
- In this area we will find many features that we can adjust to change the way the selected program is run. We need only focus on two specific Features.
- The first (and most important) is Threaded optimization, we need to change this Feature's Setting to "Off"
- The second is Vertical sync, we need to change this setting to Adaptive (half refresh rate).
Step 6
- At the bottom left corner of NVIDIA Control Panel, click Apply.
Finished!
So, what did we do exactly? First off, Threaded Optimization is a feature that newer games make use of (I will not explain what it does or how it works). Being that MechWarrior 3 is quite old, this feature is the main cause of the glitches and crashes. The second option Vertical Sync merely caps the game's frame rate based on your monitor's refresh rate. In the case of MechWarrior 3, this game was originally intended to be run at 30FPS, any more than that, and things get... weird. You can run it at 60FPS if you prefer by selecting Adaptive instead of Adaptive (half refresh rate).
And we're done! You don't need to change your Compatibility Settings, and you don't need to download any 3rd party programs, easy right? Well gents (and ladies) I hope this helps.