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Wing Commander's pantheon of cheats is well known, from 'Origin -k' activating the finger of death to alswantsmoreships giving als more ships almost every game has had a hidden option used by the developers for testing but kept in for players to discover. That is, with the notable exception of Wing Commander Armada, 1994's wonderful multiplayer-and-strategy take on the series.
Until now! Thanks to some amazing research by--who else?--AllTinker, the process for accessing Wing Commander Armada's 'debug mode' is known! For the past few years we've known that an Armada 'cheat' existed but have had no idea how to access it or even what it really did. That's because one of the game's programmers mentioned in a Facebook comment that they were surprised that the team had kept their promise never to reveal it all these years (32 years and counting). But that was just an added challenge for AllTinker!
What AllTinker discovered is that there's a complex debug mode in Armada that can be accessed either with a series of very specific in-game mouse presses or using some command line manipulation. And there's a lot to explore, including the classic finger of death and a way to jump to any Gauntlet mission! The in-flight ship visualization options are pretty neat too... maybe a cooler effect than the real targeting system! AllTinker has written out the process with all the detail you'll need:
Armada with the debug screen visible. In Armada or Campaign mode, at the map, press "Execute" and leave the prompt on-screen.
Now click with the mouse at the corner extremes:
- Left Click the Top-Left
- Right Click the Top-Right
- Left Click the Bottom-Right
- Right Click the Bottom-Left
Press F10 - optional, but you can confirm it worked if debug text appears at the top of the screen.
Once debug mode is active, the following in-flight cheats become available:
Shift-Q ...... Explodes targetted enemy (...or friendly, be careful!).
Alt-Escape ... Disables both enemy and friendly AI.(*)
Ctrl-R ....... Reset battle - although it doesn't seem to resurrect exploded friendlies.
Another is gauntlet-specific (debug stays active even if you leave Armada/Campaign mode):
Alt-\ ........ Level selection (the code accepts 2-19).
There's several in-flight debug toggles available, including:
Shift-D ...... Main debug readout.
Shift-V ...... Visualise ship bounds.
Shift-F ...... A more compact framerate readout.
There are several more, such as Shift-W/T/S/O/Z/A.
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(*) You'll note that under Windows, Alt-Escape isn't really usable in DOSBox by default; you need to remap something else instead of Alt.
I used F12 as Alt; so the combo becomes F12+Escape instead; you'll need to use the DOSBox mapper to do this.
In the mapper (press Ctrl-F1 while DOSBox is active), select Alt and add F12 (or something else) as an alternate key to trigger it.
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There's also a second method which enables debug mode from startup, but it's less user-friendly.
Add the following to a batch file or adjust your DOSBox autoexec section:
ECHO. > SHIPS.CFG
SET ARMADA=GODMODE
COPY ARMADA.EXE CHEATER.EXE
CHEATER.EXE -@
Despite "GODMODE", this doesn't give invulnerability, it just activates the debug mode without having to go through the corner-click activation method.Here's a short video showing how to activate the debug mode using the process detailed about. It is also available as a GIF.
