Under the microscope: Quake v0.819 (Saturn)
Cheat codes in the newly-released Saturn build of Quake
A new “65% complete” version of Quake for Saturn was recently made available by Saturn enthusiast vbt. I know what you’re wondering: does it have any cheat codes?
The answer is: yes, and they’re different from the ones in the final version. Let’s take a look…
The function at 06025d10 executes when the game is paused. At the top of that function is some logic that checks:
Whether you’re on the Options screen.
Whether you’ve just pressed L+R+C.
Which menu item is currently being highlighted.
If you pause, select Options, and then press L+R+C with Customize Contols highlighted, PAULMODE appears in the corner of the screen:
As in the final game, this makes you invincible. The 4-byte value at 0604f5d4 gets set to 1, which gets checked when you take damage. If it’s nonzero, your health won’t go below 100:
If you press L+R+C with Reset To Defaults highlighted instead, you’ll get a full set of weapons:
This works by setting bits on the 32-bit flag fields at 0604f5e0 and 06064810.
Highlight Music Volume and then press L+R+C to restore your health back to 100:
Health is stored in the 32-bit value at 06064820.
If you highlight Sound Volume and then press L+R+C, you get all runes. There’s a different code for this in the final game that makes an “All runes added” message appear onscreen, but this doesn’t happen in the prototype:
Like the “All weapons added” cheat, this updates bits on the flag field at 06064810.
Highlight Lookspring and press L+R+C to enable a framerate counter:
This changes the 32-bit value at 0604f5d8 from 0 to 1. There’s no equivalent effect in the final version, making this the one unique prototype cheat.
Outro
Some ending notes:
Many thanks to vbt for making this build available for study – I love it when we get new Saturn games to look at.
Alert Sonic Weekly listeners will notice that I promised an article on Mighty Hits this week. That one got bumped for this new Quake build. Look for it next week!
This version of Quake was made by Lobotomy Software. Last year, they put the source code for the engine on GitHub – check it out if you’re interested in that sort of thing.
Thanks for reading; I’ll be back with more soon.
