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Cheats & Fun Stuff

This section features a complete listing of the cheat codes, as well as a listing of easter eggs and other weird stuff.

According to the 1,000 Cheats issue of CGW (can't find my copy of it, so I don't know the month/year), ROTT has the most cheat codes of any game they can find. Here's the complete listing, taken from a ROTT Cheat Sheet I wrote back in my newbie msn days.

Cheat Codes

Rise Of The Triad Codes
(*means only in registered version) 

TO USE: JUST TYPE IN WHILE IN THE GAME!
(AFTER TYPING "DIPSTICK")

R Code  Alternate      Description
 
 \ECC     DIPSTICK     Enable\Disable Cheat Codes

Game Control

 \GTL     GOTO         Warp to another level 
 \GOO     GOOBERS      Go back to Level 1 with only a pistol
 \REL     REEN         Re-enter Level  
 \L8R     GOGATES      Exit to Dos  
 \ECL     GOARCH       Exit Current Level
 \FUN     (NONE)       Rotation fun. While it's paused, move your mouse
                       and press mouse buttons!
 \EKG     (NONE)       EXTREME GIB MODE. WOO HOO!
 \LEE     MAESTRO      Game Jukebox
 \HUD     WHERE        Coordinate Display On\Off

Play Mode

 \WWW    CHOJIN        Woundless With Weapons. Invunerable forever.
 \GOD    TOOSAD        God Mode (Temporary Invunerability)
*\DOG    WOOF          Dog Mode (Temporary Invenerability)
 \MER    FLYBOY        Mercury Mode (Flying)
 \SHR    BADTRIP       Shrooms Mode
 \ELA    BOING         Elasto Mode (No Friction and you bounce)
 \RFA    SPEED         Enable Autorun
 \PAN    PANIC         Reset to normal, full heath, no modes, keys, or
                       guns
 \OOF    WHACK         Hurt Player 10%
 \BUM    SLACKER       Gives you 3 keys and health
 \DIE    86ME          Kill Player
 \MAP    CARTIER       Show Entire Map (Does not work from map)
 \CAM    RIDE          Missile Cam On\Off

Environment

 \DON   DIMON          Light Diminishing On
 \DOF   DIMOFF         Light Diminishing Off
 \FON   LONDON         Fog On
 \FOF   NODNOL         Fog Off
 \SON   SHINEON        Light Sourcing On
 \SOF   SHINEOFF       Light Sourcing Off
 \CON   GOTA386        Turn off Floor and Ceiling Textures
 \COF   GOTA486        Turn on Floor and Ceiling Textures

Armor

 \BAR     SHOOTME      Bulletproof Armor
 \FAR     BURNME       Asbestos Armor
 \GAR     LUNGDUNG     Gas Mask
 \GAI     SIXTOYS      Items Aplenty (Keys and Bulletproof Armor)
 \OFP     HUNTPACK     Outfit Player (Bulletproof Armor, Keys,
                       Heatseeker) In reg version, this gives you
                       a split missile

Weapons

 \GW2   JOHNWOO        Double Pistols
 \GW3   PLUGME         MP40 Machine Gun
 \GW4   VANILLA        Bazooka
 \GW5   HOTTIMES       Heatseeker
 \GW6   BOOZE          Drunk Missile
 \GW7   FIREBOMB       Firebomb
 \GW8   BONES          FlameWall
 \GW9   SEEYA          Hand of God (Permanent God Mode, Sort of) 
*\GWA   SPLIT          Split Missile
*\GWB   KESOFDEATH     Kinetic Energy Sphere (Dark Staff?)
*\GWC   HOMERUN        Excalibat
*\GWD   CUJO           Dog Weapon (Permanent Dog Mode, Sort of)

Demo

       RECORD          Record a demo
       STOP            Stop recording
       PLAY            Play a demo

Easter Eggs

With any Tom Hall game, there's bound to be some weird stuff. ROTT was no exception.

(NOTE: Most of these only work in the registered version)

DIP Balls

Remember how the ROTT Team referred to itself as the "Developers of Incredible Power"? Well, this is where the "DIP" bonus originates. IIn the game there are three icons, dubbed The Developer Balls, which have the letters ‘D,’ ‘I,’ and ‘P’, spelling out DIP, the initials for the Developers of Incredible Power.

The three Developer Balls don't have any effect on the game itself or your player, but if you collect all three, you get a 100,000 point bonus at the end of the game. Here's where you can find them:

“D” - E2A6, “The Four Way Chamber” The ‘D’ ball can be found in the circular room at the center of this level. There is an Oscuro door immediately beyond the path of a firechute. The ‘D’ is directly behind that door.

“I” - E3A3, “Dead in Five Seconds” The ‘I’ ball is located behind a pushwall in the maze. Look for a Ballistikraft which is patrolling a dead end. Behind the pushwall in this dead end is a series of floor firejets, beyond which is the second ball.

“P” - E4A6, “Circles of Fire” The ‘P’ ball is located behind the far wall of the great, circular chamber near the beginning of the level (the one which contains four, fire wanderwalls). To open the wall, you must trigger the touchplate in a similar room further through the level: The room which contains a wide firewall beyond the door you enter through, and three braziers on the center of the floor. The touchplate is directly in front of the center brazier, but you'll have to hurry back through the door you entered by, or else the firewalls will seal off the door back to the previous room with the ‘P’ ball.

Scott's Mystical Head

Scott's Mystical Head is a joke based on the old Wizard of Oz bit, “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” explains Joe Siegler. The item, a digitized shot of Scott Miller, the President of Apogee, awards 2,764,331 points plus a sound clip stating, “Scott's Mystical Head!” If you're saying to yourself, “Why 2,764,331points?” then think about Apogee's phone number: 1-800-APOGEE1, 1-800-(276-4331).

You can find “Scott's Mystical Head” in E2A3, “The Room” After obtaining the iron key, you have to open two doors to finally complete the level. One of the doors contains a touchplate which moves a wall leading to the final chamber (the chamber which contains the switch to move the wall behind the other of the aforementioned two doors). This chamber can be recognized by the rows of floor stabbers and a mercury mode near it's entrance. At the far end of this chamber is a jump pad leading to a catwalk, which you can follow around the outside walls of the level leading you to an alcove containing power-ups and extra lives. While on this catwalk, periodically look over the edge for the entrance to the hallway containing “Scott's Mystical Head.”

The Finger

Da Bird

While putting together my ROTT In Hell Article, I took somewhere around 200 screenshots of ROTT. This was one of them. Notice the middle finger on the severed arm? Naughty naughty. A member of the ROTT development team who doesn't wish to be indentified said that this was almost impossible to capture in a screenshot, and you can't see it while you're playing. So I guess I'll take credit for discovering this one :) (Yay!)

Dopefish

If you type in ROTT DOPEFISH to launch the game (instead of just typing ROTT), the first screen you see is a head swirling around the screen, and lots of belching. The head is "Scott's Mystical Head" and the belching is courtesy of Joe Siegler. Also, the level names are changed, there is burping as the levels loads, and a few other weird things happen.

In the secret level "Eight Ways To Hell" (episode 3, area 8), designed by Joe Siegler, there's a hidden area about half way through the level. It's a long, narrow hallway with boulders running down the middle and elasto-modes on the sides. There's a touchplate at the beginning of the hallway which, when triggered, will open up a secret room. The gray walls in the middle of the secret room spell a message written in the Commander Keen language (The Commander Keen world has its own language). Look at all the gray walls from all angles, or use the \MAP cheat. Then look at the map to see the letters. Translated, it says, "Dopefish Lives!"

Also, "Fish Polka" (the Dopefish theme) plays at the "goto" cheat screen.

For more Dopefish info and propaganda, check out dopefish.com.

Happy Holidays

If you play ROTT when your system clock indicates that it's one of five different holidays, the "group picture" of the five main characters is changed slightly. In addition, on Christmas, the music for the first level is changed to a familiar Christmas tune. The holidays and effects are as follows:

Easter (date varies) - Lorelei Ni wears Easter Bunny ears.

Cinco de Mayo (May 5th) - Ian wears a sombrero.

Independence Day (July 4th) - Doug holds an American flag.

Halloween (October 31st) - Thi wears a witch's hat.

Christmas (December 24th) - Taradino wears a Santa Claus hat, on December 25th, new music plays in the first level the first level.

Also, there's a way to get all five "holiday hats" in Rise of the Triad to show up on the screen at the same time. If you finish the game the right way, and destroy all the larvae in the last level, watch ALL the credits (takes several minutes). You'll get to a screen that says "The HUNT is victorious. The End." Do nothing. Let it sit there for about a minute or two, and you'll get another "The End" screen where all five "holiday hats" are shown at once.

Bonuses

ROTT has a ton of bonuses, which you recieve either at the end of a level or at the end of the game. Here's the list of them:

    BONUS                  WHAT IT MEANS
    Supercharge Bonus      Got all powerups on level
    Adrenaline Bonus       100% Kills
    Bleeder Bonus          used all health items on level
    Skin of Teeth          ended level with 1 dot of health
    Republican Bonus 1     Got all missile weapons on level
    Republican Bonus 2     Destroyed all plants on level
    Democrat Bonus 1       Never used a handgun on level
    Democrat Bonus 2       All shrooms & healing basins used on level
    Ground Zero Bonus      Hit with your own missile (hint: FW)
    Bull in China Shop     Destroyed all life items on level
    Curiosity Bonus        Every switch, pushwall, pillar, sound area
                           pushed, messed with, or whatever
    Bonus Bonus            Got all bonuses

    It is REALLY hard to get the Bonus Bonus.

    There are more bonuses at the end of the whole game in Dark War. 
    They are pretty tough to get, too.

    Genocide Bonus         Kill every one of the same type of actor 
                           in the game. 
                           This can be gotten multiple times depending
                           on how many different types of actors you 
                           can wipe out.
    DIP Bonus              Collect all three developer balls.

Steve "Dipstick" (get it? Dipstick?) Towle is the only known person to get the Bonus Bonus. This is his account of it:

(years ago) i'm sitting here on my 486 trying up my final paper for my science project. i have it set to autosave every 15 minutes cause i'm a paranoid little bugger like that. i actually finish this paper at 11:00, it's due in 8 hours, but i'm sitting here reading the RoTT docs and i'm going "what the _hell_ is the Bonus Bonus?" so i decided to whip up a RoTT level that would let me do that.. Hall is right, something like this took 10 minutes. sittin here in windows, load the map, and after about oh.. 4 minutes i actually did it without cheating... there were 11 things you had to pull off.. um i don't remember them all, they were like hit yourself with a rocket, kill everything, eat everything, break all of the plants, drink from the fountains, grab all of the ammo, destroy all of the triad points, finish with less than 10% health, and other stuff. i actually did it and guess what i got? bonus points? extra lives? a dopefish? no, it reset my fucking machine! and guess what? my doc was auto-saving, nuking both the original copy and my backup... "teacher, but RoTT ate my homework... what the hell?"

grrr.. i'm never forgiving tom hall for this. ;)

i _did_ like the scoring system though, it was a good way to measure your skills, that and a running clock.. look, i gottan the genocide bonus for _every_ single character in that game, that's how nuts i am. =P

bahhh.. hopefully anthrax <sp, Anachronox, Tom Hall's next game> won't freeze up on me like that... and this is what Tom Hall had to say...

"None of our testers were able to do it, so we don't know what would happen.." duh he made the game.

"I'm Free!"

Click for larger imageOne of the weirdest things you notice when messing around with cheat codes is a level called "This Causes an Error". I remember loading it up, walking around and then a stupid "I'm Free" graphic would pop up and the game would crash.

"The "I'm Free" graphic was a joke that took on a bigger life than it realistically needed to be." Joe Siegler explains. "However, we didn't care, several of us thought it was funny."

"What happened was this. The moving walls in ROTT followed paths set by the level designer via arrows on the floor. A wall would keep following that path until it hit another arrow. However, if a wall would reach the edge of the map grid w/o encountering another arrow, it would attempt to pass through the edge. If you remember Wolf3D, and it's "no clipping off the side of the map grid video funnies", it's the same type of thing here. The wall tried to go beyond the parameters of the game, and as such, caused an error. The actual error message that the game generated was

"Pushwall attempting to escape off the edge of the map it is located at..."

... and the game would give some coordinate. The first time I saw this message, I busted a gut laughing at this. I did it in Tom's office, and he drew up this picture of a pushwall with a face on it smiling escaping from a wall. It looked very silly and we all had a big laugh out of it. To be honest, I cannot remember who actually said "I'm Free" for the first time (I think it was Joe Selinske, though). Anyway, I ran over to the flatbed scanner, scanned Tom's picture, and gave it to Mark Dochtermann who put it in the game. When that error occurred, the game then displayed Tom's silly graphic before the genuine game error screen was displayed. Somewhere along the line, "I'm Free" got added to the error message as well. This is just another example of the silliness that went on behind the scenes."

Guess you had to be there. :)

There's also a sequel to "This Causes an Error" in the rejected ROTT levels pack entitled "This Causes An Error Too."

NME = RIP

Here's what's left of the robot boss, NME.

Click for larger image

ROTT in Duke3D?

In Duke 3D E1L3 (Death Row), there's a chapel. Most people know that the Doom Marine is hidden in there, but if you look up in the rafters when you're standing against the far wall, you can see this. Looks like a DeathFire Monk to me...


All Stuff © 1997 Kevin Bowen. Rise of the Triad is a Copyright of 3DRealms\Apogee and is used with permission.