Do I need to be a rocket scientist to use cheats in Carmageddon?

[blinkingboythe]

I am running DosBox 0.74 and Carmageddon 1. The game loads fine, and it plays (though choppy), but my problem
is trying to enter cheats. I checked around the web, and I am getting a lot of conflicting information on just how to do it.
One of the most notable is there a group of people saying that the "ENABLE" cheat needs to be entered quickly, giving explanations about how the game times key presses to determine if a cheat was entered, while the other camp says to type them in S_L_O_W_L_Y. Also, there does not seem to be any agreement on which menus to type a particular cheat in,
whether the cheats have spaces between the words or not, that sort of thing,

I am tearing my hair out over this! Please help!

[blinkingboythe]

Well after a lot of searching and trial and error, I got a couple of the menu cheats to work.

All cheat codes are in all caps without spaces

KEVWOZEAR (unlocks all cars, tracks, etc) has to be typed while the buttons to get to the various sub menus for race, car selection, etc are highlighted, NOT in the sub-menus themselves as the cheat lists imply. This means you highlight the first button, type the cheat, wait a second, highlight the next button, type the cheat again and so on till you do this for all 5 buttons. A screech should be heard everytime you complete typing in the cheat, if not, stay on that button and type it again. This game is very timing dependent, so you may have to do this a couple times.

To decrypt the .txt files to change various characteristics of the cars, tracks, etc, type IWANTTOFIDDLE at the car selection button (not in the submenu itself) only. Typing the cheat again re-encrypts them.

The menu codes must be typed in at the normal typing rate as a significant delay will 'reset' the character buffer. Also, you must wait a second or two between typing in the code and pressing a key/entering another code for it to register.

The in-race codes that let you stop the timer among other things are much more difficult to type in, as this is VERY timing dependent, and will trigger the default hot keys to boot. Unlike what many code lists are parroting, you DON'T type in ENABLE anywhere, that was just for the beta/demo versions. This can be very hard to do as something as simple as your car getting hit, or anything else that causes a "hiccup" in the game's timing can cause some of the typed characters to not register. I think this is a very bad design, and should have been doable at the pause menu, but it is what it is.

So far I could not get the in-race codes to work most likely due to the choppiness of the game on my machine, which I hope to resolve soon, but I'll post an update on what I find if/when it happens.

[MrFlibble]

Thanks for the research!

Once you're done with this maybe you could sum up your findings so that people know the correct way to enter cheats? I'm also interested in the demo-specific codes as well.

[blinkingboythe]

Thanks for the research!

Once you're done with this maybe you could sum up your findings so that people know the correct way to enter cheats? I'm also interested in the demo-specific codes as well.

I don't think the (non-beta) demo has any cheats, but I did get the stop timer cheat to work in the full version (can't post it here due to NSFW language the cheat is in) after a few tries. That was the only cheat other than unlock all tracks that I was interested in.

Also, it seems the unlock all * cheat can be typed in lowercase as after I entered it on all 5 buttons, I noticed my caps lock wasn't on. I'll have to do it again to be sure.

FYI-correction: the KEVWOZEAR cheat has an explosion sound while IWANTTOFIDDLE has the screeches

[MrFlibble]

Thanks for the info!