While scouring the .exe file in my vain attempt to fix multiplayer functionality, I found an exhaustive list of command line parameters.

I'm not sure what a lot of them do. Some are obvious. If you learn what some of them do, feel free to post.

-subtitle
-powervr (removes text and gives an initial yellow overlay)
-triplebuffer (this might help with flickering graphics)
-noflipwait
-zbufferinfinite
-softinterface
-noplaycine
-colormouse
-hardmouse
-lowres
-nocdsample
-nosound
-lobby (this starts the game at the create multiplayer game page)
-notearing
-texturereduce
-fronttoback
-sortbyz (solves some transparency issues: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbpCzXxIydc )
-stipplealpha
-ignoreagp
-nofog
-nokatmai
-antialias (not 100% sure it's working, but the shadow does look a little better)
-noflat
-secondarycache
-blitsprite (makes character portraits and mouse not appear)
-32bit (everyone should play with this today -- especially on windowed mode)
-nocolorkey (may fix black box around cursor)
-primary
-window (play in a 640x480 windows [I think])
-notimeout
-full
-nobitmap
-soft
-reversecam : reverse camera rotation of direction keys
-keepalive : enable the DirectPlay keepAlive option (Default : IPX : on ; TCP/IP : off)
-nooptimizelatency : remove the bandwidth optimisation for latency delays
-directplayprotocol : enable the DirectPlayProtocol (Default : IPX : on ; TCP/IP : off)
-nodirectPlayprotocol : disable the DirectPlayProtocol (Default : IPX : on ; TCP/IP : off)
-noasync : remove the asynchrone network messages (Default is on)
-noguarantee : remove the guarantee messages (Default is on)
-nointro : skip the intro cinematic sequences (Default is on)

Great work. Thanks for sharing this.

I got issues on the single player using Win 8.1 after completing the first 2 lands the movie sequence ran and the game hung.

I fixed it with using switches path\\darkstone.exe -nointro -noplaycine -32bit

the noplaycine command stopped the hanging issue.

I was having an issue with black squares displayed around letters and some in-game sprites.
-sortbyz did nothing, but -nocolorkey solved the problem.

This is amazing. It's like trying to cure sickness with a bunch of expired unlabeled pills. You never know what each one does. Will it heal you or kill you? Or perhaps make you grow hair in places you've never had hair before?

Aaaand necroed!

Hello all, I'm smack-down in the middle of the blue of Darkstone and nerding out, trying to gather resources and find people to possibly fix a few issues with the game.

Anyway, helping out with this thread, as some of these can be found in the readme.txt:

- New command line options
-reversecam : reverse camera rotation of direction keys
-keepalive : enable the DirectPlay keepAlive option (Default : IPX : on ; TCP/IP : off)
-nooptimizelatency : remove the bandwidth optimisation for latency delays
-directplayprotocol : enable the DirectPlayProtocol (Default : IPX : on ; TCP/IP : off)
-nodirectPlayprotocol : disable the DirectPlayProtocol (Default : IPX : on ; TCP/IP : off)
-noasync : remove the asynchrone network messages (Default is on)
-noguarantee : remove the guarantee messages (Default is on)
-nointro : skip the intro cinematic sequences (Default is on)

If OP is no longer around can always start a new thread to properly update the list!

I just found these on my own and was about to update my post. Ha! I still don't know what some do. :)