The War Of The Registry

My important note on the file deletion-page goes for this page too ...

The War of The Worlds doesn't officially have a multiplayer mode, but it does have a lot of registry entries. Turning multiplayer on is just one thing you can accomplish by editing these entries ...

Oh, by the way, it seems you don't have to restart the computer or even close Regedit for the changes to take effect, at least not in Win 98, just exit and re-enter the game. Discovering that speeds up the experimentation process a bit ...

I will only include here the values for which I am certain of the effect, so expect this page to expand with time. All the values are found in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Rage\Jeff Wayne's 'The War Of The Worlds'\1.00.000 and its sub-keys.

Valuable contributions on keys affecting the AI has been made by Innovandora. His entries are marked with (I). If I have something to add on the same key, I'll do it after the (I). You're welcome to contribute too, just send a mail!

Stuff directly in the above key

CD Path: The path where the game looks for files from the CD. Changing this should make it possible to run the game completely from the hard-drive, but without CD audio.
Enable Network Version: Well, have a quick guess. This sounds great, but I've yet to succeed in establishing a connection between our two computers. Further experiments required ... Also this setting, for some reason, disables the ability to save single-player campaigns and generally messes around with saving and resuming. Don't try it if you haven't finished the campaigns ...
Full Screen: Changing this value to 0 enables you to run the game in a window. If you want to run in a window, you must have the same colour depth on your desktop as you have in the game or it won't work.
Install Path: Where the game looks for installed files. Can't really see a reson to change this value ...
Language: Seems to have no effect at all.

Stuff in the BattleMap key

EnableFogOfWar: A 0 setting turns the fog of war on the battle map off. Real men would never do that ;-) ...
Fog darkness: Raising this value makes the fog of war brighter. Looks wierd ...
Fog update freq: How often the fog of war updates. The lower the value, the smoother the fog is removed or returned.

Stuff in the Briefing/Debriefing key

Delay: the lower the value, the less the time the briefing/debriefing screen is shown. The value here adds to the loading time, so you can't get rid of the screen entirely.

Stuff in the Colours key

All these values should set the different colours used for things in the game. Not sure how they work though ...

Stuff in the Debug key

Enemy Visible: Change this to 1 to be able to see what's lurking in those enemy sectors.

Stuff in the Event key

All those keys store the critical event values. It's more convenient to use the in-game menu to set them.

Stuff in the Options key

More stuff you can easily set from within the game, without risking your registry ...

Stuff in the Screen key

AllowResize: When playing in a window, setting this value to 1 allows you to resize the window. Doesn't always work too well though ...
Scroll Border: How many pixels on each edge of the screen makes the it scroll in that direction.
Scroll Speed: Simply how fast the screen scrolls when scrolling.
Size: Screen resolution basically. Illegal values makes the game crash, so you'll notice when something goes wrong here ...

Stuff in the Tweak key

AI Eff Threshold: (default .60) Minimum efficency threshold the AI will allow. I'm experimenting setting it to .80 to see if a more efficent AI is harder to beat (I).
AI Frontline Attractor: (default 2.0) Setting this higher means the AI puts more of its units on the front lines rather than holding them in reserve in the back where they're useless. I've tried setting this to 8 and the AI seems to be advancing its units more towards the front, only leaving 1 unit to protect each back sector (I).
AI Frontline Attractor for Defences: (default 2.0) Setting this higher means defensive works are built towards the front more. With the default of 2.0 it makes wire defenses everywhere (Even though mined fences are available) (I).
AI Invasion Threshold PC: (default 150) Number of days to wait after the initial Martian pod drop before starting the invasion to the South. This is actually an important period where the Martian AI sets up infrastructure (like resource factories) that it otherwise wouldn't get to do (I).
AI Outnumber Force: (default 1.1) By how much to outnumber a sector before invading. Not sure if this is by units or attack strength (more likely). I'm trying setting this to 1.4 and 1.5 (I).
AI Retain: (default 0.20) Amount of force to retain defending a sector. I predict setting this to zero will mean all of a sector is launched into an attack, no forces are held back. Setting this high means AI will never attack since all units are held in defensive reserve (I).
AI strength table Human/Martian multiplier: When the computer plays a side, make the units this much stronger. (I).
Max boats/units in sector: This allows you to change the maximum number of respective unit types you may have in each sector.
Max Slope For Building On: Adjusts just that. The higher the value, the steeper the slopes you will be able to build on.
No-build border width (vertices): Adjusts how close to the borders of the Battle Map you are allowed to build.
Pod interval (hours): How long between each new Martian pod landing. Affects both campaigns, of course.
Text Line Spacing: Decides the distance between the lines of text in the information textboxes you can open for units and structures.




Game review by Scott Hunter.

Human strategy.

Martian strategy.

War Of The Worlds main page.

Links.

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