| -h | Print help summary and exit successfully. |
| -q | Quiet operation. Does not display normal status messages on screen. They will still be written into host.log. Errors and warnings will still be displayed. This is useful for running PHost from a cron job, for example. |
| -Q | Totally quiet operation. Like -q, but displays nothing at all, not even warnings and errors. |
| -c player | Check-only Mode. PHost will just check the turn file of the specified player, and display the results. Results will also be written into check.log. The player number can be zero to check all players. Note that turn file checking is also part of normal host processing. PHost will also check the host data files for integrity before doing any turn checking. ► Note: This option can also be used to check turn files for a HOST game, to complement HOST's weaker cheat checks. |
| -r | Read-only Mode. PHost will do all normal host processing, but not write any hosting files. Turn files will not be deleted. PHost can be run multiple times with this option with no ill effects. This option is mainly for testing purposes. Note that PHost will generate new result files (and thus overwrite the previous set) anyway. This option implies -k and -i. |
| -k | Keep turn files. Normally, PHost deletes all the TRN files after host processing, because the old TRNs are no longer meaningful with the new universe data. |
| -s number | Set random seed. The number must be a non-negative integer which is used to initialize PHost's random number generator. When PHost is started multiple times with the same data files, the same TRN files and the same seed, it comes to the same conclusion. This option is useful for debugging and for restoring backups. Note that add-on programs which involve random numbers must also accept a random number seed to come to the same conclusion. |
| -S | Turn number random seed. This option behaves like -S, but uses the turn number as the random seed. |
| -u | No utilX.dat files. This flag prevents PHost from writing auxiliary data files. In the name of your players, don't use it :-) |
| -i | No INI files. Do not run PControl or Auxhost programs. |
| -T | Old-style RST files. This flag causes PHost to generate result files in the "old-style" Host 3.15 file format. Those do not include mine scan information, explosions, Ufos, and race names (all this information is also available in util.dat, but there it is not visible to Winplan). Normally, PHost sends Host 3.20-style files to Winplan players, and Host 3.15-style files to DOS players. You should never need this switch. |
| -t | Print turn number. Just print the turn number, on a line by its own, on standard output. |
| -d | Print turn timestamp. Just print the time stamp expected for incoming TRN files, on a line by its own, on standard output. |
| -l | (lower-case letter "L") Print ship list. Print the ship list on standard output. No other processing is performed. The ships are listed in groups of 20, with each group corresponding to a slot in the truehull.dat file. Each ship has its name, mass, cargo, mineral cost, etc. displayed, along with any special hull functions that it can perform. If the special hull functions are limited to certain players, this information is also displayed. This option is useful for generating a ship list report to send to players when the ship list has been modified by the host. It is also useful for checking your work when configuring special ship abilities. This option also causes a hullfunc.dat file to be written. |
| -ll | (two lower-case "L") Print ship list. Like -l, but display ships with exactly one line per ship on long lines. This makes postprocessing easier. Special ship abilities are not displayed in this mode. |
| -F | Ignore timestamps in turn files. This flag can be used when restoring a backup. |
| -V | VPHost in use. When you use VPHost, you should also use this flag. It causes PHost to look for *.org files instead of *.trn, and just process command messages. VPHost does its own message processing; without this switch, PHost command messages would not work. |
| -v | Version info. Displays the version number on standard output and exits successfully. |
| -C | Write combat log. Writes a file combat.log containing information about all battles this turn. This file is intended to be evaluated by a battle simulator. |
| -o option=value | Set config option. This changes the value of a configuration option. This switch is mainly intended for use while debugging or setting up a game. For example, -oConfigLevel=2 will temporarily set ConfigLevel to 2 so PHost will warn you even if you forgot an optional setting. When you use this switch to change an option which also is defined in pconfig.src, you'll get a warning. This is by intention; if you wish to make permanent configuration changes, please do this in pconfig.src instead of using this switch. |
| -L keyword | Log events. This will log events related to keyword in a file trace.log. See below for details. |
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