MW4.exe accepts 76 command line switches. Only 27 of them appeared in the old
-help output, that output went to the debug log rather than to the user, and it
did not stop the game from launching afterwards -- so in practice the switches
were undocumented.
-help now writes a full, categorised reference to mw4-help.txt next to the
executable, opens it in Notepad, and returns from WinMain without starting the
game. If Notepad cannot be launched, a message box reports where the file was
written. The check runs immediately after the command line is lower-cased at the
top of WinMain, before any subsystem is initialised.
A file plus a viewer was chosen over a message box because MW4 is a GUI-subsystem
application with no console, and 76 switches with real descriptions do not fit
legibly in a dialog.
The reference documents every switch actually parsed, grouped as: display and
video, audio and plasma display, pod hardware and arcade (CTCL), zoom and field
of view, multiplayer and network, logging and diagnostics, development and test
builds, and other. Each entry records the accepted value range where the parser
enforces one -- for example -tbaud 9600-921600, -armorlevel 0-4, -tmfds 0-4,
-zmfovb 0.01-0.5, and the -zmtime special case where 0 means instant.
Two switches are listed under "recognised but inactive" so their behaviour is not
misrepresented: -join, whose consuming line is commented out, and -noabzug, which
is only parsed inside a disabled code path. The LAB-only switches are marked as
accepted and ignored in Release builds.
The old partial SPEWALWAYS list in GetGameOSEnvironment was removed so there is a
single maintained reference rather than two that can drift apart. A comment there
points at the new one.
Also adds an explicit #include <stdio.h>; this translation unit previously had no
direct stdio use and relied on transitive inclusion.
Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5 (Anthropic) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Co-authored-by: GitHub Copilot <copilot@github.com>
Display roles are auto-detected in FindVideoCards(): the main view takes the
first hardware-rasterizing device that is not a 1280x480-capable span, the radar
takes the next, and mode 4's two MFD panels take the two after that. That works
until DirectDraw enumerates the adapters in an unexpected order, at which point
the wrong content appears on the wrong monitor with no way to correct it.
Adds an override that keeps auto-detection as the default:
-tmon <main>,<radar>,<mfd1>,<mfd2>
Values are 1-based, so the normal case is "-tmon 1,2,3,4". A value of 0 leaves
that slot auto-detected, so "-tmon 2,1,0,0" swaps only main and radar. Separators
may be ',' '/' or ':'. mfd1/mfd2 are only meaningful with -tmfds 4. Omitting the
switch entirely preserves existing behaviour exactly.
Implementation:
- Parsed in MW4Application's WinMain alongside -tmfds. That runs before GameOS
calls FindVideoCards(), so the values are in place for device selection.
- Stored in g_naMonitorOverride[4] (VideoCard.cpp), extern'd in MW4Application.cpp.
- ApplyMonitorOverride() validates the index against NumDevices, so a stale -tmon
on a machine with fewer monitors falls back to auto-detection rather than
breaking startup.
- Ordering matters and is deliberate: main and radar are applied BEFORE the mode 4
MFD search so that search still skips whichever devices the operator picked;
mfd1/mfd2 are applied after it. Partial overrides therefore compose correctly.
Role map: main = Environment.FullScreenDevice, radar = g_nNonDualHead,
mfd1 = g_nMFD1, mfd2 = g_nMFD2. The mode 1 span (g_nDualHead) is intentionally
not overridable -- it is detected by 1280x480 mode support, which only the span
card advertises, so that detection is reliable.
Also adds a SPEW line logging the final role -> device map and device count.
Note this is only visible in Profile/LAB builds; SPEW compiles out in Release
(gos2X/Gos.h), so in Release the order is determined by observation.
Verified: compiles clean, console launches. Multi-monitor testing pending.
Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5 (Anthropic) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Co-authored-by: GitHub Copilot <copilot@github.com>
-tbaud <rate> (9600-921600) overrides the COM1 baud rate while keeping
old-RIO (type 0) protocol behavior unchanged; independent of -trio.
SetupComm buffers 2/2 -> 1024/1024 only when the override is active.
Rebuilt Release + Profile (0 errors), deployed rel.bin\MW4.exe to MW4\.
run-firestorm driver: game-start now takes optional extra args.
CLAUDE.md: branch notes incl. the CP949 comment-encoding hazard
(mw4 sources must be edited byte-safely).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Complete disaster-recovery snapshot: engine/game source, game data assets,
VC6 toolchain + DX SDKs, build outputs, deployed game, and _UNUSED archive.
Large binaries in Git LFS; text preserved byte-for-byte (core.autocrlf=false,
no eol attributes). See RECOVERY.md for the one-clone rebuild procedure.
CydandClaude Fable 5