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Options.ini Changes

GeneralsGameCode adds or changes 27 active Options.ini entries relative to the official EA retail source for Generals 1.08 and Zero Hour 1.04. This page documents those changes rather than repeating unchanged retail options.

The primary game instance reads Options.ini from the game’s user-data directory. Additional game instances read Options_InstanceNN.ini, where NN is the instance number padded to at least two digits, so simultaneous instances do not overwrite one another’s settings.

Option names are case-sensitive. Surrounding whitespace is trimmed, and the last occurrence wins when a key is repeated. For the boolean entries below, yes enables the option (case-insensitive); any other value disables it.

Entry Accepted values Default Availability Change and behavior
AntiAliasing 0, 2, 4, or 8 0 Both games Changed. The value is now the requested MSAA sample count rather than a retail menu index. Other integers are clamped to 08 and rounded down to a power of two; unsupported results disable MSAA.
TextureFilter None, Point, Bilinear, Trilinear, or Anisotropic Bilinear Both games Added. Selects the texture sampling filter. Matching is case-insensitive; an unrecognized value falls back to None.
AnisotropyLevel Integer 2 Both games Added. Sets anisotropic filtering strength. Values are clamped to 216 and rounded down to a power of two, giving the practical levels 2, 4, 8, and 16.
JpegQuality Integer 80 Both games Added. Sets JPEG quality for F12 screenshots. Values are clamped to 5095.
MoneyTransactionVolume Non-negative number 100 in Generals; 0 in Zero Hour Both games Added. Scales money-transaction sounds as a percentage; 100 is normal volume. There is no upper cap. The listed defaults come from the stock audio settings and can be changed by game data.
ResolutionFontAdjustment Non-negative percentage GlobalLanguage.ini value Both games Added. Provides an Options.ini override for the existing language-configured resolution-based font scaling. 100 means no additional scaling; a negative or missing value retains the language configuration.
Entry Accepted values Default Availability Change and behavior
GameWindowTransitionSpeedMultiplier Number from 1 to 1000 1 Both games Added. Multiplies in-game window transition speed. Invalid values use 1.
NetworkLatencyFontSize Non-negative integer 8 Both games Added. Sets the network-latency overlay font size. 0 hides the overlay.
RenderFpsFontSize Non-negative integer 8 Both games Added. Sets the render-FPS overlay font size. 0 hides the overlay.
SystemTimeFontSize Non-negative integer 8 Both games Added. Sets the system-time overlay font size. 0 hides the overlay.
GameTimeFontSize Non-negative integer 8 Both games Added. Sets the elapsed-game-time overlay font size. 0 hides the overlay.
PlayerInfoListFontSize Non-negative integer 8 Both games Added. Sets the observer/player information list font size. 0 hides the list.
Entry Accepted values Default Availability Change and behavior
ArchiveReplays yes or no no Both games Added. Keeps automatically named archives of completed replays instead of retaining only the usual last replay.
PlayerObserverEnabled yes or no yes Both games Added. Enables the player-observer perspective and shroud controls.
ShowMoneyPerMinute yes or no Game-data setting; normally no Both games Added. Shows each permitted player’s income per minute alongside current cash in the observer/player information display.
Entry Accepted values Default Availability Change and behavior
UseRightMouseScrollWithAlternateMouse yes or no no in Generals; yes in Zero Hour Both games Added. Allows right-mouse scrolling while the alternate mouse scheme is active.
DrawScrollAnchor yes or no no Both games Made functional. Controls whether the right-mouse scroll anchor is drawn. Retail wrote this entry but did not apply it.
MoveScrollAnchor yes or no yes Both games Made functional. Controls whether the right-mouse scroll anchor follows the cursor while scrolling. Retail wrote this entry but did not apply it.
CursorCaptureEnabledInWindowedGame yes or no yes Both games Added. Captures the cursor while playing in a window.
CursorCaptureEnabledInWindowedMenu yes or no no Both games Added. Captures the cursor while using menus in a window.
CursorCaptureEnabledInFullscreenGame yes or no yes Both games Added. Captures the cursor while playing in fullscreen.
CursorCaptureEnabledInFullscreenMenu yes or no yes Both games Added. Captures the cursor while using menus in fullscreen.
ScreenEdgeScrollEnabledInWindowedApp yes or no no Both games Added. Enables camera scrolling at the screen edge while playing in a window.
ScreenEdgeScrollEnabledInFullscreenApp yes or no yes Both games Added. Enables camera scrolling at the screen edge while playing in fullscreen.
Entry Accepted values Default Availability Change and behavior
ScrollFactor Integer of at least 1 Game-data setting; normally 50 Both games The retail 0100 maximum is removed. The value remains a percentage of the game-data keyboard-scroll speed.
StaticGameLOD Low, Medium, High, VeryHigh, or Custom Current static LOD Both games Adds VeryHigh. Matching is case-insensitive; an invalid value is treated as unknown.
IdealStaticGameLOD Low, Medium, High, VeryHigh, or Custom Auto-detected or unknown until populated Both games Adds VeryHigh. Matching is case-insensitive; an invalid value is treated as unknown.
Entry Status
SendDelay A retail network option removed from GeneralsGameCode. The current executable does not consume it, even if an old Options.ini still contains it.

Retail HTTP proxy settings were stored in the Windows registry, not in Options.ini, and have also been removed from GeneralsGameCode.