Preloading

[AF]

Is there a way to launch the engine and preload a game, then pass it a start script later on for the final load/initialisation?

[Silentwings]

Load up the game sdz (or some proxy pre-game menu sdz) with a predefined "default" script.txt, then manufacture the script.txt you actually want and use Spring.Reload(...).

It's not exactly what you asked for, but hopefully close enough.

[gajop]

Doing as Silentwings suggested should help update the engine cache (otherwise the caching process can be incredibly slow for the first run), and might also do some OS-level disk caching for the game, but afaik, Spring will still have to load the game for the second time once you pass the new startscript params.

[Silentwings]

Although, if you're using a separate sdz for your ingame menu part, that will be small in size and loading it will be very fast.