Welcome all to 0.49.11

It’s been a while since our last Dev release. Things had slowed as people took some much needed breaks.

But we have got a lot of exciting things in this release. We’ve had a couple of new and returning contributors and they’ve really worked on lots of fixes and improvements. We have the usual bug fixes in all three programs, see below for the detailed list but the big one in this release is…

Alpha Strike Support

OK that’s tackle the elephant first..this is NOT a playable version of Alpha Strike (Which if it every happened would be MegaStrike) it’s strictly support for Alpha Strike.

Please see Alpha Strike Card Support in MegaMek

We’ve also added support for Java 17 starting with this release but please see below for some cautions.

We found that the 49.10 release had more stability and general improvements around connectivity but we still aren’t 100% where we want to be. We know from experience that when we say this players generally stay away. But you can run both a stable release (0.48.0 or good dev release 0.49.10) you just need to keep them in separate folders.

Remember that MekHQ campaign files aren’t backwards compatible so if move your campaign from an earlier version to this you can’t go back. But you can keep backups and play in both versions to see the difference.

MegaMek

In addition to Alpha Strike Support there are lots of UI/UIX improvements

MegaMekLab

We got a few fixes and we’ve made some improvements to record sheets this includes engine ratings, improved visibility of armor type, and internal structure

MekHQ

We have quite a few fixes and improvements to the company generator.

MekHQ StratCon Alpha

StratCon remains a key part of MekHQ but the main developer on it (Nickargua) is taking a well earned break from the projects. This will largely stop new features being added until his return. We’ll address bug fixes as identified.

Stable 0.50.0 Status Update

We are still working on the development portion of the current dev cycle. We’ve been able to implement a new version of Gradle (our build language) starting with this release (0.49.11) we’ve added support for Java 17. This will require more testing and we encourage players to use the programs with Java 17, Java 11 at this time remains our recommended choice. We are still working on the connection stability issues. Until we resolve these issues and confirm Java 17 stability we can’t move ahead with a new Stable, and we have no ETA for this. With a milestone of 0.50.0 we need to make sure we get it right.

Until we resolve these issues we can’t move ahead with a new Stable, and we have no ETA for this. With a milestone of 0.50.0 we need to make sure we get it right.

Java 11 and Java 17

We’ve updated to Java 11, which means you’ll need to update to use the [b]0.49.x development branches[/b]. As Java is now open source, we recommend Adoptium Temurin 11 We have a help page for Windows and Mac. Further, for Linux, you should be able to use your package manager to install Adoptium Temurin from their repository. Finally, all our automated tests (with the exception of MegaMekLab) are done with Temurin 11.

This release implements support for Java 17. We need to stress this has had some testing and needs more players to use the programs with Java 17. But Java 11 remains our recommended version.

Social Media

We are also happy to announce we have an official MegaMek Discord. This is now our primary community location for the suite, providing superior voice support, individual channels, and assistance for the official public servers. There are also the following community Discords with regular MegaMek channels, namely Everything BattleTech and Classic BattleTech. We are also on Facebook, at MegaMek BattleTech and MegaMek for our group and page respectively.

Mac Users

Please check out this workaround for Mac Operating Systems.

Contributing

Please check out this document for contributing to the suite. Deadborder has us covered from land unit sprites and camos. But we desperately need sprites for aerospace units.

Updating Your Campaign

  1. Make backups of your campaigns and customs.
  2. Always treat each release as a stand alone release and only copy your data forward from older versions, never backwards.
  3. Do not copy MegaMek saves nor any preference file from a different version.

MegaMek Change Log

DOWNLOAD

MegaMekLab Change Log

DOWNLOAD

MekHQ Change Log

DOWNLOAD

On behalf of the whole MegaMek Dev team we’d like to wish everyone a safe and happy holiday season and all the best in 2023.