A Basic Guide to Launch Commands in the Source Engine

[PlayStation 2]

Chances are high that you've played a game made on the Source engine, be it CS:GO, Team Fortress 2, Garry's Mod or even Insurgency. I'm here to give a rundown on general console commands as well as certain specific console commands for specific Valve games.

 

The Absolute Basics:

Launch commands are initiated with either a - or a +, but what do those even mean?

- means that you're initiating a launch command at startup; for example, -noborder will launch the game in a borderless windowed mode.

+ means that you're initiating a console command at startup; for example, +mat_phong 0 will turn off phong shading.

 

Some Shared Launch Commands:

"-sw" and "-windowed" tells the game to start in a windowed mode.

"-fullscreen" tells the game to start in full screen.

"-noborder" tells the game to start in a borderless windowed mode.

"-w", "-x" and "-width" tell the game to start with this certain horizontal resolution; this only works with the below command.

"-h", "-y" and "-height" tell the game to start with this certain vertical resolution; this only works with the above command.

"-dxlevel" will tell the game to start in a certain DirectX rendering mode; what versions in the spoiler below. The "mat_dxlevel" console command serves the same purpose but can only be used in certain games.

-dxlevel 60 will start the game in DirectX 6.0 mode; this only works with pre-Orange Box versions of Half-Life 2.

-dxlevel 70 will start the game in DirectX 7.0 mode; this works with any game before The Orange Box.

-dxlevel 80 will start the game in DirectX 8.0 mode; this works with any game up to The Orange Box.

-dxlevel 81 will start the game in DirectX 8.1 mode; this works with any game up to The Orange Box but may provide better compatibility, particularly in Team Fortress 2.

-dxlevel 90 will start the game in DirectX 9.0 mode with no extensions; this is the default setting for all Source engine games made by Valve.

-dxlevel 92 will start the game in OpenGL mode; this only works on macOS and Linux.

-dxlevel 95 will start the game in DirectX 9.0c mode; this is the default setting for what the Source engine will consider to be a higher end desktop.

-dxlevel 98 will start the game in DirectX 9.0 mode with Windows Vista extensions, particularly relating to the Aero theme.

"-novid" will tell the game to skip the Valve intro entirely.

"-nojoy" disables joystick and controller support, which may help gain a little bit more performance on very low end computers.

"-threads" will tell the game how many threads your CPU has; this mainly concerns games from Left 4 Dead 2 onward.

"+exec [configuration file]" will force the game to load what's in the configuration file before the game really starts up; this will enable launch commands to be set up, but will still not enable certain broken commands to launch, like the "3dnow" command, as those are required to be initiated before any math is done in the engine.

 

Some Shared Console Commands:

"volume" controls the volume at which the game outputs at, which can go from 0 to 1.

"sensitivity" controls the sensitivity at which your mouse will run at, ranging from 0 to as high as you really want.

"bind" allows the user to bind a key to do an action or multiple actions; for example, "bind RALT "jpeg jpeg_quality 100"" will enable me to take a screenshot at 100 quality JPEG.

"fps_max" controls the maximum frame rate the game can run at. The default maximum in many games is 300fps; setting this to 0 will disable any maximum frame rate lock.

"jpeg_quality" adjusts the quality the JPEG screenshots from the game come out at when the "jpeg" command is used. This is not a usable command starting with Left 4 Dead.

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Demonstrations for certain graphical commands will be shown below. 

 

"fov_desired" controls the desired field of view; in certain games it is completely locked to a specified value, in others it is adjustable in limited increments. Team Fortress 2, for example, allows the FOV to be changed in a range from 75 to 90.

fov_desired 75:



fov_desired 90:

"viewmodel_fov" controls the desired field of view for the viewmodel; this feature only works on games with viewmodels, namely anything from The Orange Box and before. This value is usually adjustable up to 180, but in games where this is infinitely adjustable, anything from 180 to 360 will invert the orientation your viewmodel is seen.

viewmodel_fov 54 (default for many Valve games):



viewmodel_fov_100:

"mat_phong" controls if phong shading is enabled; this has the most impact on visuals and performance in Team Fortress 2 as this game makes heavy usage of phong shading for non-baked assets.

mat_phong 0:



mat_phong 1:

 

Specific Console Commands:

For this section, I currently only plan on writing for TF2 and CS:GO, so without further ado, let's explain what certain commands do.

 

Team Fortress 2:

"tf_use_min_viewmodels" will enable Team Fortress 2 to make use of a minimized viewmodel feature, largely present in competitive communities.

tf_use_min_viewmodels 0:



tf_use_min_viewmodels 1:

"tf_particles_disable_weather" controls if particle effects related to weather are enabled or not; this mainly pertains to maps with rain and snow, like Sawmill and Snowycoast. This requires a disconnect or a map restart if enabled mid-game, and may help gain some performance on low end machines.

tf_particles_disable_weather 0:



tf_particles_disable_weather 1:

"tf_scoreboard_ping_as_text" will show your ping as a text value rather than as a "connection" value.

tf_scoreboard_ping_as_text 0:



tf_scoreboard_ping_as_text 1:

 

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive:

"-tick [tickrate]" controls the tickrate at which what servers you connect to. Valve runs (or at least, used to run) 64 and 128 tickrate servers. This will largely matter depending on how strong your ping is.

"-nod3d9ex" disables the Windows Vista extensions to DirectX 9.0; this may potentially give you an FPS boost depending on configuration and may help in alt-tabbing out of the game; visual demonstration below.

Without -nod3d9ex:



With -nod3d9ex:

"fps_max_menu" controls the maximum frame rate the menu operates at; this can be overriden depending on what the "fps_max" command is set to and affects the former Scaleform UI more than the Panorama UI.

"-freq" and "-refresh" tells CS:GO the refresh rate of your monitor; this is mainly useful if CS:GO thinks that the refresh rate it should run at is lower than the refresh rate of your monitor.

 

That's about all I can think of for now. Any console commands from any of the Source engine games? List 'em and I'll get back to you on what they do!

[handymanshandle]

is it universal between the valve source 1 forks and source 2?

 

[PlayStation 2]

47 minutes ago, pinksnowbirdie said:

is it universal between the valve source 1 forks and source 2?

 

I don't know; this guide is intended for Source engine games. If I can get my hands on a Source 2 game that isn't locked down I can build off of that, too.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

I don't know; this guide is intended for Source engine games. If I can get my hands on a Source 2 game that isn't locked down I can build off of that, too.

DOTA 2? 

 

Edit 

I think he was talking about goldsource and source that debuted with half life 2. 

[PlayStation 2]

34 minutes ago, fpo said:

DOTA 2? 

 

Edit 

I think he was talking about goldsource and source that debuted with half life 2. 

I would if it weren't for the fact that I'd actually have to learn something about Dota 2; I know not a lot about CS:GO but I know enough to work around it.

[Guest]

11 minutes ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

I would if it weren't for the fact that I'd actually have to learn something about Dota 2; I know not a lot about CS:GO but I know enough to work around it.

Anyone that plays moba plays league of legends anyway. 

Csgo and tf2 are the only source games that matter. 

 

INB4 the 1337 DOTA kid shows up.