MegaMek is an open-source, turn-based strategy computer game that simulates the BattleTech board game. MegaMek is not licensed by or affiliated with Topps or Catalyst Game Labs, the owners and publishers of the BattleTech line, but is nonetheless a faithful simulation of the game. Exceptions are a few trademarked items changed by the developers.
Overview
MegaMek was started in 2000 by Ben Mazur and first made public with the initial revision on SourceForge in February 2002. Today MegaMek is developed and maintained by a community of volunteer programmers, with a small core of developers supported by numerous contributors. Originally hosted on SourceForge, the project is now hosted on GitHub and is distributed with its source code under the GNU General Public License. The game is written entirely in Java with graphics based on Swing, resulting in reasonable playability even on low-end platforms. Currently, MegaMek supports all the rules from the BattleTech introductory box set, most of the rules from the Total Warfare core rulebook, a number of advanced rules from the Tactical Operations rulebook, and some house rules. The game offers a bot that one can play against. It is capable of using most of the core features, but is unable to use many of the advanced rules. Also, most of the AeroTech rules from Total Warfare are implemented. The game currently supports multiplayer via TCP/IP, though play-by-email is possible through the exchange of saved games. MegaMekLab a tool suite for creating, editing and validating designs for various unit types available in BattleTech. MekHQ is a tool suite to help players keep track of their units across multiple scenarios. A sister project, MekWars, gives MegaMek a campaign structure with a chat interface, hangars, accounts, repairs, and numerous other settings which can be defined by each server administrator as she or he wishes. There are numerous MekWars servers which offer campaigns in the different eras of BattleTech.
Critical reception
In June 2003, MegaMek was chosen as SourceForge's project of the month and was featured in the print edition of the Linux Magazine. As of August 2019, MegaMek had been downloaded from SourceForge over 760,000 times.
