Well, here it is, the complete command line switch listing for Independence War. These switches also apply to Defiance, and there are a few more switches for Defiance not listed here. Enjoy!
Command Line Format:
GAME.EXE [options (eg. -noslab -nologos)] [mission script file (includes path)]
A typical command line would look something like:
GAME.EXE -noslab -lagrange -powers c:\I-War\MyMission\mission77.scr
Command line options:
-intro – If you happen to have CD 1 inserted, this should play the intro movie.
-english -french -german – Just in case you suddenly have a sudden impulse to play in another language, choose one of these and whack it on the command line.
-idemo – Independence War runs as if you are playing the Internet Demo version.
-lagrange – Enables the SELECT LAGRANGE button on the GSV. Allows you to choose your own LaGrange points!
-nologos -onelogo – These make loading the game faster, by giving you less or no logos.
-powers – Cheats are enabled as soon as you start playing, as if you had used the cheat mode from within the game. This only works if you have specified a mission to run on the command line.
-console – Shows you what is being loaded by the scripts when, er, loading.
-xsound – Turns off sound.
-nodialogue – Turns off all game dialogue (speech).
-nohud – Turns off the HUD. Useful for running demos.
-nobrief – No mission briefings are played.
-b -16 – Enables 3dfx mode. BOTH options must be used.
-debug – Turns on the debug messages.
-director – Turns on Director mode and leaves it stuck there. Like watching a movie. Useful for making demo scripts…
-oldkeys – The older, weirder, key bindings are used in the game.
-hardlines – Lines in the game are left for the hardware to do (hardware = 3dfx). Most times it doesn’t work.
-hardstars – Draws the stars as polygons, giving a framerate improvement, but the stars flicker. Also doesn’t work most of the time anyway.
-nostreaks – Motion blur for stars is turned off.
-noslab – The single, most important option for playing (and making) new missions. Instead of looking for the game files in the .SLB files, it looks for them in the directory structure. Be warned, you need to have deslabbed the slabs first, explained in the Scripting 101 Tutorial Series (also in the Databank section).
-disk – Lets you run the game off the hard disk. It needs you to copy all the folders off the CDs (2 + 3) into the psg\resourse folder. And sometimes you need to do a little tweaking of the dreadnaught.ini settings.
-nonavlights – Turns the running lights on ships off. Now you can play Hide and Seek! 🙂
-hidef – Forces hidef objects on, giving more detailed ships, but decreases framerate.
-800×600 – Lets you run the game in 800×600 resolution, for all the lucky Voodoo2 owners out there.
-1024×768 – Experimental hi-res mode. Note the experimental. I believe you actually need 2 Voodoo2 cards running in SLI mode to get this to work, as a single Voodoo2 card will not allow 1024×768.
-winmouse – Uses Windows mouse routines.
-nozlock – If your Voodoo2 screenshots don’t work, use this to fix them. The only problem is that you may occasionally see the lens flare from a sun when it’s behind another object.
-noprompts – Turns off the annoying help prompts in training missions.
-nolodfix – Turns off the Level of Detail fix. Whatever that is.
-logfile -loghistory – Logs things like files used and time playing missions, in debug.txt.
-norudder – Turns off rudder support.