arx(6)

💖 arx(6) — Games Manual 💖

okay bestie, sit down, hydrate, because we're about to talk about arx and honestly? she's the main character. 🎀

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🌸 NAME 🌸

arx — Arx Libertatis, a cross-platform port of Arx Fatalis. ✨

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📜 SYNOPSIS 📜

arx [-hnl] [-d data-dir] [-u user-dir] [-c config-dir] [-g debug-spec]

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

arx is literally the main executable of Arx Libertatis, which is a cross-platform port of the first-person role-playing game Arx Fatalis. 👑

⚠️ bestie, listen: you will need the data from the original Arx Fatalis to run the game. no data, no game, periodt.

Wanna know where to get it? Go peek at https://arx.vg/data. 🫶

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🌈 OPTIONS SUMMARY 🌈

Here's the quick lil' rundown of what arx can do — but fr fr, go read the detailed docs below for the full tea. ☕

✨ Generic options

• -h, --help — Show supported options
• -g, --debug LEVELS — Set debug output levels
• --benchmark[=TIMELIMIT] — Log loading times and framerates
• --debug-gl[=MODE] — Enable OpenGL debug output
• --override-gl OVERRIDES — Override OpenGL extensions

🔍 Search path options

• -n, --no-data-dir — Don't automatically detect data directories
• -d, --data-dir DIR — Where to find the data files (can be repeated)
• -u, --user-dir DIR — Where to store user-specific files
• -c, --config-dir DIR — Where to store config files
• -l, --list-dirs — List the searched user and data directories

🚀 Startup options

• --loadlevel LEVELID — Load a specific level
• --loadsave SAVEFILE — Load a specific savegame file
• --loadslot SAVESLOT — Load a specific savegame slot
• --skiplogo — Skip logos at startup

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

• --benchmark[=TIMELIMIT] — Log time taken for startup, loading levels and shutdown, and the minimum, maximum and average framerate. ⏱️

If a TIMELIMIT argument is given, the game will exit after the specified amount of time has been spent rendering normal frames. This time does not include the startup or loading time. Valid values are a number, optionally followed by a unit. Valid units are "ms" (milliseconds), "s" (seconds), "m" (minutes) and "h" (hours). The default unit is milliseconds.

This option can be combined with the --loadlevel, --loadsave or --loadslot options to benchmark a specific scene. 🎬

• -c, --config-dir=DIR — By default arx will store configuration files in directories specified by the XDG Base Directory Specification. This option overrides the directory where config files are loaded from and saved to. 🗂️
• -d, --data-dir=DIR — Arx Libertatis will look for data files in directories specified by the XDG Base Directory Specification and in the directory containing the game executable. Besides the system-wide data directory, data files are also loaded from the user directory, which can be set by the --user-dir option.

This option adds additional directories to search for data files before the detected system-wide directories, but after the user directory. To override the detected data directories, combine it with the --no-data-dir option.

The --data-dir option can be repeated to add multiple data directories, in which case they are searched in the order provided. 🔥

See https://arx.vg/paths and the --list-dirs output for more details.

Use arx-install-data(1) to extract and install the required data files from the various different Arx Fatalis setup executables, archives, CDROMs and existing installs. 🧚

• -g, --debug=LEVELS — This option can be used to enable debug output for debug builds of Arx Libertatis. For non-debug builds, this option is not very useful but is recognized for convenience. 🙈
• --debug-gl[=MODE] — Control OpenGL context type and debug output from the OpenGL driver. 🐛

The following modes are possible:

• "enabled" — Enable additional error checks in the OpenGL driver and log all reported errors. This is the mode used when --debug-gl is specified with no MODE argument.
• "ignored" — Enable only the standard OpenGL error checks required by the standard and ignore all errors.
• "noerror" — Tell the OpenGL driver to assume that there will be no errors. Will fall back to "ignored" if not supported.
• "default" — Select one of the above modes depending on the build type and enabled features. This is the default when --debug-gl is not used.

• -h, --help — Show a list of the supported options. 💖
• -l, --list-dirs — Show the data, user and config search directories and how they were determined. To adjust the search directories, use the --no-data-dir, --data-dir, --user-dir and --config-dir options. 🔎
• --loadlevel=LEVELID — Load a level immediately after startup, without displaying logos or the main menu. LEVELID is the number of the level to be loaded. ⭐
• --loadsave=SAVEFILE — Load a save file immediately after startup, without displaying logos or the main menu. SAVEFILE is the path of the save directory or .sav file to be loaded. 💾
• --loadslot=SAVESLOT — Load a save file immediately after startup, without displaying logos or the main menu. SAVESLOT is the index of the save slot to be loaded. 🎰
• -n, --no-data-dir — Disables looking for default data directories. Default user and config directories and data directories provided using the --data-dir option are still searched. This option can be used for portable setups where user, config and data files are all in the current directory:

arx --no-data-dir --user-dir=. --config-dir=.

🧳 iconic portable-girl behaviour, honestly.

• --override-gl=OVERRIDES — Overrides the used OpenGL extensions and features. By default, Arx Libertatis will use all extensions that the driver claims to support except for some that are known to cause issues with certain drivers. This option allows the user to disable additional extensions or re-enable extensions that are by default disabled. It will not make Arx Libertatis attempt to use extensions that the driver does not claim to support. 🛠️

The overrides passed to this option are parsed after, and thus override, those in the extension_override setting in the [video] section of cfg.ini which is in turn applied after the built-in driver quirk overrides.

All disabled extensions — either by built-in rules or user-supplied overrides — are logged. 📝

The override string is made up of a series of override tokens separated by whitespace. Supported overrides are:

• "-GL_ext" — Disable OpenGL extension GL_ext.
• "+GL_ext" — Re-enable OpenGL extension GL_ext if it was disabled by a previous token (including built-in driver quirk rules).
• "GLx.y", "x.y", "GLxy" or "xy" — Re-enable extensions part of OpenGL version x.y and disabling all others
• "GLx" or "x" — Re-enable extensions part of OpenGL version x.0 and disabling all others
• "+*" or "+" — Re-enable all non-core OpenGL extensions
• "-*" or "-" — Re-enable extensions part of any known OpenGL version and disabling all others

⚠️ Note that the version overrides (i.e. all except "-GL_ext" and "+GL_ext") fully override the set of allowed extensions and thus make all previous tokens meaningless. In particular, --override-gl="+" will disable both the built-in driver quirk overrides and the extension_override setting while --override-gl="1.5" will disable the use of all optional extensions. 💀

• --skiplogo — Don't display logo images at startup. Currently this will not skip the intro cutscene. 🎞️
• -u, --user-dir=DIR — By default arx will store user files (saves, etc.) in directories specified by the XDG Base Directory Specification. This option overrides the directory where user files are loaded from and saved to. 💜

Configuration files are not stored in the user directory, but in a separate directory that can be set by the --user-dir option.

The user directory will also be used to load data, overwriting resources from the system-wide data directories and from directories specified by the --data-dir option. 🔥

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👀 SEE ALSO 👀

arx-install-data(1), arxsavetool(1), arxunpak(1)

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🐛 BUGS 🐛

To view known bugs and report new ones, please visit https://bugs.arx-libertatis.org/. bestie, they want your bug reports, that's literally the whole point. 🫶

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and that's the whole page, no cap. 💅

this was version 1.2.1, dated 2022-04-10, and yes, it's a Games Manual page for arx(6) — go forth and play, you absolute icon. 👑✨