How to fix -loadfile not loading the map, main menu instead (Warcraft 3 Classic)

[Luashine]

Tested with v1.27 Warcraft 3. I wanted to run the game to quickly test maps, windowed mode + loadfile. For some reason it would not load the map and instead boot to main menu:

WRONG: War3.exe -windowed -loadfile "C:\WC3\v1.27\Maps\ShowAiDifficulty.w3m"
note the -windowed parameter changed to -window in later patches.

Turns out, old Warcraft 3 needs a specific order of arguments for loadfile to work:
CORRECT: War3.exe -loadfile "C:\WC3\v1.27\Maps\ShowAiDifficulty.w3m" -windowed

This works with w3l.exe launcher too, it's not at fault. In Reforged 1.32.10 it's fixed and the order does not matter. Just don't forget to use the -launch parameter or else it'll start the Battlenet App.

PS: Remember that old versions need to have the map path inside the game folder, I think system global paths don't work (they do work in Reforged). And the total path length must be under 80 characters.
PPS: Another reason for why you'd be dropped to main menu is a broken map script. For Jass there's no recourse to find out way, but Lua scripted maps actually show the error in game logs (Reforged only).

 

[LeP]

Also, at least on macos, on newest patch, i need to provide the full path to the map file and not just map.w3x in current directory, but like /Users/lep/foo/map.w3x