and taylor, if you're reading this, what's up with the up'n'coming launcher you mentioned earlier?
The new Launcher will be needed to go along with the large engine upgrade for options handling. There will be almost no cmdline options any longer, they will all be moved to ini files. Various ini options can be mod specific, and act in addition to, or override, other mod options which were specified in different ini files. Also, an upgraded and cross-platform ini file for general settings will be used instead of the current fs2_open.ini format for Linux and OS X or the use of the registry for Windows.
I'm also taking the opportunity to fix some major design issues with the current Launcher. The most visible of which will be usability. The UI will be greatly simplified and only give you the basic options. You will be able to setup profiles so that your favorite options can be activated by simply making a shortcut to the game exe with the "-profile <profile-name>" cmdline option. Profiles will contain all options, including resolution and color depth, AA and AF settings as well as sound and speech settings. So once you have your profiles setup you will hardly ever need use the Launcher again, only when you want to modify those settings or add a new profile. Aside from the general setup options, everything else will be available through an "Advanced..." button in the launcher. This will give you an interface a bit more similar to the current one, allowing you to adjust all options in detail. The available options will still be advertised by the build, and it will now properly indicate variable type options (like -ambient_factor) in the launcher and give min/max/default values for you automatically. The Launcher will automatically adjust the interface based on what the game advertises as available so that as options are added to, or removed from, the code the Launcher interface will include them as expected, automatically.
There will also be a hidden modders setup feature built into the Launcher. This won't be of use to normal users, since you can't play the game through this interface, but it will allow modders to build custom profile.ini files to include with their mods. This will allow them to set things that are default/required options which the user can't change, as well as things like minimums (like having to use 1024x768 or higher). It will also allow runtime executable customization, so you can change things like the window title and use a particular userdir (such as having a window title of "Wing Commander Saga: Prologue" and a userdir of "${HOME}/.wcs_prologue"). This will allow a fair bit of engine customiztion on the part of mods, and TCs in particular, which would otherwise need custom binaries to accomplish.
These changes will mostly be just a stepping stone to allow the in-game configuration screen functionality, so that one would only need the launcher for the most advanced options. So things like screen resolution, color depth, AA and AF settings, status of glow/spec/env/bump maps, etc. would just be settable in-game. And except for screen resolution, color depth and the AA setting, all of the options will be changable without restarting the game.
There is no ETA for all of this. There is a lot of engine work to be done before the actual Launcher can really get off of the drawing board (I have working prototypes, but have already redesigned several times). Other things are currently more important too (like the new pilot file code for instance). It is all slated for 3.7 though.
So... does that answer your question?
