Command line parameters

Introduction

When you launch Liquid War 5, you can use command line options. If you have no problems launching Liquid War, this section should not interest you very much.

You can use several options at the same time. The basic syntax for options looks like this:

lw -option1 -option2 parameter2 -option3 parameter3 -option4 -option5

Note that most of the options are legacy options which where usefull with the initial releases of Liquid War, when you had to run in a Windows DOS box, and when there were still plenty of 486 computers with only 8Mb ram...

Version checking

These are basic options which can be usefull to figure out which release of Liquid War is installed.

• "-v" : returns the version number of the program.
• "-h" : displays a short description and copyright information.

Changing default paths

Very usefull options, especially if you can not install Liquid War in default directories or want to put the game in a special place.

• "-cfg myconfigfile.cfg" : causes Liquid War to use the specified config file.
• "-dat mydatafilefile.dat" : causes Liquid War to use the specified datafile. This might be a very interesting option if you run Liquid War on a GNU/Linux box where you do not have root access and therefore can not put the datafile in /usr.
• "-map mycustommapdir" : causes Liquid War to use the specified directory as the user map directory. The user map directory is where you can put plain bitmaps to be used as maps.
• "-tex mycustomtexturedir" : causes Liquid War to use the specified directory as the user texture directory. The user texture directory is where you can put plain bitmaps to be used as textures.
• "-mid mycustommusicdir" : causes Liquid War to use the specified directory as the user music directory. Any midi file placed in this directory will be added to the list of available musics.
• "-server myliquidwarserverfile" : causes Liquid War to use the specified file as the server executable. This option has no effect for now since the server is not launched by the client.
• "-mapgen mylwmapgenfile" : causes Liquid War to use the specified file as the "lwmapgen" executable. "lwmapgen" is an utility by David Redick which generates random maps automatically for Liquid War. You might wish to change this option if random map generation does not work for some reason, or if you want to use your own map generator.

Troubleshooting switches

These options give you control on how Liquid War treats initialisation errors, how much memory it should reserve, what kind of video mode sit should not choose etc...

• "-vga" : This option forces Liquid War to use your video card as if it was only a basic VGA card. This option is required if you play Liquid War from Windows NT.
• "-no400300" : This option disables the VGA 400x300 video mode. I created this options for I know that some video cards/monitors don't support the 400x300 mode.
• "-silent" : With this option, Liquid War will not play any sound. It will not search for any sound card. This can be interesting if you don't have any sound card or if Liquid War doesn't handle your card correctly.
• "-nowater" : Causes Liquid War not to load any water sound. Use this if Liquid War runs short of memory, and you should gain about 850kb.
• "-nosfx" : Causes Liquid War not to load any sound fx. Use this if Liquid War runs short of memory, and you should gain about 150kb.
• "-nomusic" : Causes Liquid War not to load any midi music.
• "-mem n" : The parameter "n" sets the amount of memory (in Mb) Liquid War will allocate to do all its calculus. If this number is too small, you won't be able to play on all the levels. If it is too high, Liquid War may not start at all or crash while you are playing. The default value is 8. If you play Liquid War from Windows and Liquid War refuses to run because this parameter is too high, then try and give more dpmi memory to Liquid War.
• "-nojoy" : This option disables joystick support.
• "-noback" : Causes Liquid War not to load the background image. Use this if Liquid War runs short of memory, and you should gain about 300kb.
• "-notex" : Causes Liquid War not to load any texture. Use this if Liquid War runs short of memory, and you should gain about 750kb.
• "-auto" : If you set this option, Liquid War won't generate any error while allocating memory or loading data.
• "-safe" : With this option, you will play with a very reduced version of Liquid War. It looks rather ugly but should work in a DOS box with only 4Mb of DPMI memory. Use this if you experience serious memory or device problems. If Liquid War doesn't start with this option turned on, I really don't think I can do anything for you...
• "-nice" : With this option, Liquid War will use a mode which is between the default mode and the "safe" mode.
• "-check" : With this option, Liquid War will stop as soon as it detects something strange while initializing.
• "-stop" : If you set this option, Liquid War will prompt you for a key when the init process is completed.
• "-c" : This is a weird option, if you turn it on, the game will only use fonctions which are programmed in C langage. The default behaviour is to use some functions I rewrote in assembly langage, so that the game is a little faster.

Debug options

These options are usefull if you want to debug the game and trace what's happening.

• "-netlog" : Dumps all the network traffic on the standard output. This can help finding problems when trying to connect to the server in a network game.

Server options

The server command line options are described in the section which deals which network games in general. IMHO you need to understand how network works in LW before trying to tweak the server 8-)

Other options

Everything else 8-)

• "-capture" : Activates the capture mode. In this mode, the game will dump a .bmp file on the disk several times per second, which is usefull if you want to create an mpeg movie of your game session afterwards. You can also activate this mode interactively by pressing F9 within the game.
• "-metaserver url" : redefines the URL of the meta-server. Usefull if you want to use your own meta-server.
• "-nobeep" : Disables the system beeps that the application might fire. These beeps are mostly used on the server to notify clients connections.
• "-tombola" : Activates a special mode where scores are not displayed normally. Instead, the game displays 3 random numbers between 1 - 500.

lwmapgen options

The external lwmapgen program by David Redick accepts a number of command line options. You can type:

liquidwar-mapgen --help

to get a list of all available options under UNIX. Under Windows the command would be:

lwwinmap --help

Note that lwmapgen is called automatically by Liquid War when you click on the "Random map" button.

The idea behind lwmapgen is that you choose a function which sets the type of map generated, and then pass various arguments to this function. If you do not explicitly choose a function, one will be picked up for you randomly, and all other parameters will use default values.

The most usefull and common options are:

• "--help" : displays help.
• "--out filename" : save bitmap to filename.
• "--size n" : bitmap size (an integer between 0 and 5).
• "--list" : list all available functions.
• "--function function_name" : which function to use.

Here's a typical use of lwmapgen:

liquidwar-mapgen --size 3 --function hole --out test.bmp