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Not that it was needed for this article, I basically followed a lead and figured the rest out by myself. I was a big addict of the console back in TA days, so it was second nature for me 
Basically if you get used to zooming out just a little, mouse scrolling gets that much faster and you can still distinguish most of your units before the tactical icons even show up. All I'm testing now is exactly where to put a script file to run a batch of commands automatically once the game starts. I'm pretty sure I've read about it somewhere while scrubbing the game files, more on that later.Posts: 1,049
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So what is a console? - It's a simple listener or command line interface. In lay man terms it's a window in which you can give commands directly to the game. Although creating interface controls like buttons and sliders is generally a challenging feat for game coders, and hence limited in quantity, this is no obstacle for a console since it's just an interface for text commands. That's why it's so common in FPS games (who doesn't remember the "sensitivity" command for older titles?) and why smart developers like Chris Taylor always add up such level of control in their games. Gamers get happier, and developers get a break of having to add an interface for every little customizable thing in their games. God knows why EA disables their console in the release version of their RTSes (yeah, there IS a console in Generals and BfME, it's just disabled), probably due to cheat-scare.
How to access it? - To open the console in Supcom, simply hit the tilde [~] key. You'll see a lovely ugly cyan window pop up on the screen, semi-transparent. To get rid of it, hit esc to disable the entry mode (blinking cursor) and hit tilde agay.
What can it do? - So much that it's out of the scope of a down-and-dirty article like this. If you type con_ListCommands and hit enter, it'll dump all the commands it has available, with a short description of what does it do. If you have a good idea of the name of the command, but can't remember it's exact spelling, type the first letter or first few letters of the command and a short-list of all matching commands will show in a black background. You can then use the top and down arrow keys to navigate thru them, and hit enter on them directly, instead of typing the full command.
How do I change these things? - As easy as possible, just type the command (if it's a toggle, ie. on or off setting) or the command followed by the new value and hit enter. Presto, instantaneous change in-game. Supposing a given command is not a toggle, to know its starting or current value simply enter the command followed by enter. You can also enter the command in the format command = newvalue, works exactly the same.
Useful console commands - There are many, and I haven't even tried all of them myself, but for now let's focus on the camera and graphical settings ones:
cam_nearpitch - Def: 45 - Sugg: 20
cam_farpitch - Def: 89.9 - Sugg: 89.9
That's what you (and Launcher) are looking for if you want a more tilted and "3D-like" view of the battlefield. I personally love it 'coz it adds lots of perspective and.. hmm.. for lack of a better term, "sense of scale" to the game
cam_farfov - Def: 1 - Sugg: 80
cam_nearfov - Def: 60 - Sugg: 75
These are the Field of View settings for both near and far zoom levels. The higher it is, the larger the viewing angle. That means you can see more, but it'll also distort objects near the edge of the view. Increasing the FoV removes the isommetric render style (ie. lines always parallel) so adjust it to your taste. I suggest 80 and 75 respectively.
cam_nearZoom - Def: 10.5 - Sugg: 5
This is the maximum distance you can zoom to. It seems a silly value, but it actually controls a lot of the camera tilting threshold in the closest zoom levels, which are the most useful in actual gameplay, so you might want/need to adjust this. I recommend 5 for this entry.
cam_panspeed - Def: 1 - Sugg: 4
The camera pan speed is simply the sexiest thing I've found in the console. Simply because it finally makes that fast-scroll button useful, since with a higher pan speed you can scroll to decently far distances without working out with the mouse
cam_free (toggle) - Tired of trying to see that hot action scene from some exciting camera angle but having to keep the MMB (middle mouse button) pressed to not snap back to the default an boring top-down camera angle? Then this is just what the doctor ordered, perfect for replay viewing. Just enter this once on the console to make the camera stay wherever you leave it from now on! Be warned that, by doing so, you completely lose the strategic icons overlay, even when fully zoomed out, so I do NOT recommend this for actual gaming. Notice that you can also disable cam_free (and restore your strategic icons) by hitting the default view shortcut "V". This is a quite handy (and generally overlooked) shortcut by the way, you can toggle between the starting view zoom and the full-out "minimap" zoom level with a thumb-reachable shortcut.
ren_fx (toggle) - If you have an absolutely lame machine like CowGoMoo, you can definitely benefit from totally disabling the particle fx when things get heated on. Don't forget most of the game's overhead is on the processor, not half as much in the video card, specially if you don't go overboard with high-end graphics options. Even if you're sure what's lagging it's your videocard, it's generally more effective reducing the gfx fidelity on the default menu. If you're really desperate for video performance try the wireframe view mode, Alt+V.
ui_keyboardPanSpeed - This setting is a life saver for people who use the arrow keys for scrolling. It's a separate entry from the regular camera pan speed, thanks GPG!
ui_keyboardPanAcceleratorMultiplier - This is how faster/slower the shift key will make you scroll with the arrow keys.
Although I'm not a big fan of keyboard scroll (although I realize its advantages, I just can't get too far from my # keys for group access!), one way I find it usable with these settings is making the keyboard pan speed very high, so I can scroll to the other side of the map with just two or three clicks, and having shift actually reduce its speed for fine tuning (with something like 0.25 or 0.15). This way it makes up for a quite decent minimap replacement while GPG doesn't fix Supcom's minimap click-scroll.
ui_TeamColorMode (toggle) - Last but not least, team game fans will love to know there IS a team color mode toggle in-game! Run the command once to turn it on, run it again to turn it off.
Well, that's it, hope you guys have enjoyed this article and can put it to good use. I'm personally finding Supcom all the more enjoyable with these very important tweaks. Have fun!
PS.: If someone feel I deserve a medal for this, please do it. Hint, hint! lol
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