Mechwarrior IV Mektek Game Matching
Connecting to MekMatch
This small manual page tries to show you how to connect to the new MekMatch server.
It is really simple so here it goes:
- Dowload the patch file: mekmatch.zip (4Kb).
- Unzip this file to your desktop, for example.
- Double click on the mekmatch.reg file. You should see a message along the lines of "Are you sure to want to add the information of the file xxx to the registry?" Click "yes".
- If instead of that message, you see one that reads something similar to "Windows does not know what to do with this file", then open a DOS prompt window, go to the directory where the mekmatch.reg is located and execute this command (without the quotes): "regedit mekmatch.reg". You should then see the message from point 3.
- That's it!
- Now open Mechwarrior 4 Mercenaries, go to the multplayer option and connect to "the zone". You should see at least the "Area 51" server running under the version MP3.02a. If you don't see it, make sure you have the appropriate filter options to see all the servers.
- You can also check the MekMatch web interface to see the servers that are online at that moment. Those are the ones you should see.
- If you want to host your own server, you need to do nothing extra: Just host it as you would normally do to publish it at the zone and check through the MekMatch web interface that it was properly published.
- Enjoy!
Going back to ZoneMatch
Not that we can think of any reason why you would want to go back to ZoneMatch ;P, but just in case you want to do it, just repeat the above process but using the zonematch.reg file instead.
What does this patch actually do?
In case you were wondering what this "patch" actually does, everything it does is, nothing more and nothing less, than changing one value in your Windows registry settings, so your Mechwarrior 4 Mercenaries game looks for another server when trying to find servers or when publishing himself as a server. That's it. No files installed, no network settings changed, nothing else.
You can edit the .reg files with a text editor and you will see that all they do is change the value of the key:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft Games\MechWarrior Mercenaries]ZoneServer
If you want, you can go and change those values yourself with regedit or similar programs, but unless you know exactly what you are doing, fiddling with the Windows Registry can be very dangerous for your Operating System, so we don't recommend doing it and we won't explain you how to do so ;).
Alternative way to configure your system to use MekMatch
If you are using Windows 2K/XP, there is an alternative method to the registry patch. But it requires fiddling/editing your O.S. configuration so handle with care:However, be aware that using this method you might need to change the IP in this file whenever we need to change it, so it is better if you use the registry option.
You can go to your hosts file located in c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc
Open it with notepad or wordpad, and add this line to it:
68.68.183.248 mwmatch.zone.com
Then your hosts file should look something like that:
# Copyright © 1993-1999 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host
127.0.0.1 localhost
68.68.183.248 mwmatch.zone.com
After that, you should restart your game and you'll then connect direclty with MekMatch.
Win9X and WinME have been reported not to work with this technique.
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