Mech Commander Gold
 

Mech Commander Gold

[Protected until 2010] by Hasbro

Freeware.
http://www.reloaded.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=10620

Functionally this contains the base MechCommander game plus an expansion that never got a standalone release. This is the version we should get on the site.

There is a problem with the size - the high-resolution sprites for zoomed-in view cannot be removed and take up 246 MB of space.
I'm going to look for ways of dummying them out, but don't hold your breath.

Have you tried using RAR compression or different forms of 7z compression, and have you tried using their 'solid' archive mode?

For the moment I've tried 7z using LZMA algorithm at Ultra compression, with 64 MB dictionary and word length set to 64.

Oldgames.ru has a 180 MB rip. I'll see how they did it.

None of the videos can be transcoded without breaking the game's compatibility with them. I've removed pilot videos (tiny, tiny animations sporadically occurring wen the pilot's speaking - most of the time they're unnoticed to start with) and the intro (50 MB), while keeping the voices, outro and briefing videos.
The music could be downsampled to reduce it by some 50 MB.
Final rip is at 240 MB and the only major components missing are the intro and the zoomed-in versions of the sprites.

MechCommander is clearly my preferred game between them all. I know it extremely well and play it regularly... This is why I can tell you that removing those small vids you think are pointless would be a detriment to the game.

You see, every time someone speak those videos plays out. They hardly ever match with what they say, but this is not the point. The point is, if the guy tell you he's got crippled (lost a big chunk of armor suddenly or lost a leg) or he just saw an hostile, you want to know who just said that. If he got crippled and he's still mobile you want him out of the action ASAP so he don't get blown up or his weapons don't get blown up. If he just saw an hostile which you didn't expect, you want to be able to zoom on the area very fast.

If you have two or three mechs like in the beginning this is not much of a problem. You however have missions in which you can go as high as 12 mechs (if I remember well you have 3 dropships * 4 places) and those missions usually want you to split up your forces to cover more ground too. When you need to pick up one of those numerous units specifically then you're very happy to be able to simply click on the guy or gal who just said something.

So... I agree that removing them would not be game critical. But at the same time I don't agree that they are trivial.

Just saying.

You're right. The 6 meg or so size saving isn't worth removing them. They're back in. :)