on the secret game (spoilers?)

[DeviousDoctor]

the controls are nightmarish. i'm not sure if they were meant to be awful but the foxtrot(echo?) stage just MURDERED me. the least it could be is the ability to autofire while moving.

*edit: any thought of adding a sandbox for the few who can somehow beat SECRET?

[Grave Accent]

I'd like an enemy creator, but I don't think I want it locked behind beating SECRET.

[Farbs]

Fair. I kinda like having to mash the spacebar though? Without that it just doesn't feel like an oldschool shooter.

So, there's no sandbox mode exactly. But there is a debug/cheat mode which you can use to spawn a few different types of modules, skip forward to high powered ships etc. I dunno if I want to let that slip though because cheating will mess up your sense of personal progression. There's a minor hint in the credits screen, if you really want to go looking for it. Once cheats are enabled it's just Ctrl+1, Ctrl-2 etc to do stuff.

[DeviousDoctor]

huh. you weren't kidding when you said "minor", i don't even got a lead.

[Farbs]

It's not really meantttt to be a clue. PPPPPersonally I don't expect anyone to figure it out from this.

What the heck is my keyboarddd doing?

[DeviousDoctor]

well then. that helped a lot but also not at all.

[Ozzatron]

It's pretty clear to me what he means. I just haven't figured out how to apply it yet.

[Farbs]

It's good that you have several people looking at this. Three heads are better than one :)

[DeviousDoctor]

well.

"meantttt" four Ts, four "CAPTAIN ____" in the credits.
- or, "Micheal Prescott - Playtesting & Feedback". there's four total lowercase T's.
"pppppersonally" five Ps, user named 5P.
"keyboarddd" uhhhhh

"three heads" three captains

we also need to concider the fact that this was made for deving the game, and should have been made quick to access... although that isnt much help

[Farbs]

That's some good progression there.

[Grave Accent]

Yeah, i've got nothing.

[Ozzatron]

5P is listed for all three titles. Farbs has made it clear the P at least has significance. I'm not sure the other repeat keys have anything to do with it because all these "P" in the credits are credited with "Progression", and nothing else in the entire credits is listed as such.

Farbs just dropped the hint on the progression but I had already figured that part out.

I tried pressing P (with all permutations of modifier keys) five times both in the pause menu and game of all three games. I also tried holding P (and shift P, ctrl P, etc.) for five seconds. Also nothing. I think I'm pretty close, but I don't have any results yet.

The P47 in the trilogy overall credits isn't listed for progression so I'm rather certain it's irrelevant.

:edit: of interest, the ctrl+# keybinds have debug functionality in the Jameson/TDS builds.

[Grave Accent]

I tried pressing all of the repeated keys, and I got nothing.

I can also confirm the Konami code does nothing.

[Farbs]

Haha, nice catch there Ozzatron re Jameson/TDS debug keys. I don't think anyone had noticed before :) IIRC they were usually disabled, but I forgot once or twice.

Anyhow, good work on the cheat key sleuthing so far. That's some good personal progression.

[Ozzatron]

As far as I know the variable that controls them is disabled in every build, but I could be wrong on that. They do very interesting things though, such as copying a perfect map to your clipboard.

I don't think anyone in the old community ever found them even if you accidentally shipped builds with them enabled. I only found them because of my reverse engineering.

Probably for the best that you said what the binds were then... otherwise even if we solved this mystery and activated "The Cheats", nobody would know what they were. XD

[Badeline]

Might I add that even though Ozz was the orignal finder, I determined the function of each debug key (0-9) through playtesting.

I will not post them here unless Farbs gives permission but I will say that the debug keys do exactly what you'd think they do...barring one, who's internal name is actally a misnomer.

(And, yes, debug keys are disabled by default, in every build of both Jameson and TDS I've examined.)