Welcome all to 0.49.12

This is one massive release with lots of stuff across the programs. We have so much new exciting stuff in here I don’t know where to start. You’ll have to give the full list a review. But these in my opinion are some of the major ones.

The Advanced Unit Search has been redone and is now one of the most powerful out their to find units, including a quirk search. The ability to Show the Game board in all phases is now available. The unit Tool Tips have had improvements. The data being shown is huge, including long requested things like bombs on board. As an extension of this there are improvements to unit information in the lobby showing the role for example.

We’ve implemented numerous Alpha Strike conversion fixes and implemented the ability to print AS cards from inside MegaMek. As an extension of this we’ve implemented Strategic BattleForce Conversion and printing.. We need to stress that this, like the Alpha Strike conversions, are tools and we have no plans to implement playable Alpha Strike or SBF.

One final one, our decision to turn off the BONG! was met with cheers and howls. Since we like to make everyone happy (or try too) lets welcome the return of the bong. This can know be customized and as a couple of other options, it can also be set to on or off in the client settings.

We found that the 49.11 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

MegaMekLab

MekHQ

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 0.49.x development branches. 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

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MegaMekLab Change Log

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MekHQ Change Log

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Enjoy everyone!