Keyboard Commands (Hotkeys)¶
Ares includes several new commands that can be issued in game via the use of keyboard hotkeys. Note that the labels for these hotkeys are presently hard-coded, unlike the standard Yuri’s Revenge hotkeys (which use the string table).
Map Snapshot¶
A key can be assigned to save a snapshot of the current game as an YRM map file, which can be edited in FinalAlert 2 YR.
Note
Loading the generated map file in-game causes an Internal Error,
because the radar preview image is not saved. To circumvent this, add
[Preview]►Size=0,0,1,1 to the map file.
Note
This keyboard can be disabled in release versions of your mod. See Disabling Keyboard Commands.
New in version 0.1.
Debug Logging¶
A key can be assigned to toggle debug.log writing on and off. See
Internal Errors / Debugging.
New in version 0.1.
Type Data Dumping¶
A key can be assigned to output some additional information to the
debug.log file (see above). The additional information is written to the
log each time the key is pressed. This includes information such as AI trigger
weighting, so mod authors can see how the AI is performing over the course of a
game. Note that debug.log file writing must be turned on otherwise the
data will not be written to the file.
Note
This keyboard can be disabled in release versions of your mod. See Disabling Keyboard Commands.
New in version 0.1.
AI Base Plan Dumping¶
To output the current AI players’ base plan for debug purposes, you can use this
keyboard command. Each AI player’s base plan is dumped into debug.log.
This can help diagnose problems in the computer’s choice of buildings. Note that
debug.log file writing must be turned on otherwise the data will not be
written to the file.
Note
This keyboard can be disabled in release versions of your mod. See Disabling Keyboard Commands.
New in version 0.1.
AI Assume Control¶
Please refer to section Command Line Arguments under the tag:
| -AI-CONTROL: |
|---|
Note
This keyboard can be disabled in release versions of your mod. See Disabling Keyboard Commands.
New in version 0.1.
FPS Counter¶
This keyboard command allows players to display the current frames per second the game processes, and their total average value. The text is displayed in white color in the left hand side lower corner of the screen. Pressing the key again hides the FPS Counter.
New in version 0.3.
Toggle Power¶
The feature known from Tiberian Sun is now accessible from a keyboard command. See Toggle Power.
New in version 0.8.
Disabling Keyboard Commands¶
It is possible to disable certain debug keyboard commands from
rulesmd.ini for the release version of a mod. The affected keyboard
commands are AI Control, Dump Types, Map Snapshot and Dump AI Base Plan.
[GlobalControls]►DebugKeysEnabled=(boolean)- Whether the debug keyboard commands are enabled. Defaults to yes. If set to no, executing a disabled keyboard command will display a white text message instead.
The message string displayed to the player is defined by TXT_COMMAND_DISABLED. You can override this string in your language string file. You may include one (not more) “%s” placeholder, which will be replaced by the disabled keyboard command’s name.
Warning
Please note that this is neither a security feature nor any kind of real protection from rippers. This function is merely for convenience to not make it too easy to extract certain files from the game.
New in version 0.2.