Hi there,
first of all thank you GoG for adding this game to your library of awesomeness.
Now, as this game is very difficult without a joystick and I just want to experience the story first hand before playing Aquanox for the 1000th time (one of my all time favourites, didn't know that Schleichfahrt was its predecessor at that time), I tried using the cheat codes provided in the readme. But even if I press CTRL left + CTRL right + one of the numbers, the cheat codes aren't activated. Hence, I am very frustrated because I do not want to try a mission a thousand times just to get on with the story. Also, since I am not hurting anyone by cheating online or whatever, please do not insult me and just tell me if GoG simply has removed the cheat codes from the game or if something went wrong there...
Greetings!

Hi,

I can confirm this, the cheats don't work for me either. Strange.

I've been playing around with the files of Archimedean Dynasty and it turns out they are very easy to edit. All the .DES files can be opened with Notepad and edited, this opens up some possibilities for making things easier if you are having problems in the game.

One thing you could try is editing the armor values for the player ships, under VFX/SOBOJECTS in the AD installation directory. Go into the file after opening it in Notepad (or whatever) and change the four KineticShield variables under [Defense] to something high, which will give your ships far more health. Depending on where you are in the game, the files you should be looking for are:

HIOB.DES
GATOR.DES
ZORN.DES
SUCCUBUS.DES

Another thing you can do is open your save files, under DAT/SAVE and edit the amount of money you have in that save. Again they are just .DES files which you can easily open and edit, just find the number for "Credit" and change that.

Standard warnings apply: backup files before you play around with them in case something goes wrong and I'm just some guy on a forum, I can't guarantee you won't mess up your game/saves if you start playing around with them. I hope this helps those that need it.

Sorry to Necro an old Thread, but I had the same issue.

I went into the DOSBox Mapper Settings under Main --> Mapper (CTRL+F1) and just Re-Bound the left and right control Keys to... well, the left one to left control and the other to right control, and clicked save.

Then it worked. I wonder if it's a binding issue with my German OS? No idea. But for me it works now and I managed to skip a mission, yay, so I thought I'd share.


Okay, a lil edit:
Didn't work 100% of the time, for some reason. Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn't. It's an odd DOSBox, haha.
But I found an alternative solution:

I mapped BOTH control buttons to each control key.

So, in the Mapper view, i click on the Left Control button, and then "add" left control button, and then click "Add" again and then press the right control button. I did the same with the right control button.
Then it works. Interestingly. Finally. Agh.

Hope this helps someone.

Hello Crimzan !

Well yes, actually it does help a lot... or at least, believing in what you apparently did with success, it should help a lot... but it doesn't ^^ !
I'm in the same situation as you, trying to finish that game at the moment, quite bored of Bion scouts (paralyzed and) stuck in unacessible walls - which forces you to restart again those painful final missions -, and I thought about that code... But no, even after binding the Ctrl buttons - both each one to one key... and then both to each of them -, the code doesn't activate.
Now, to be sure I'm doing it right, what's the last button supposed to be active ? Was it, in your case, the zero from the keypad or the zero above the main keyboard panel ? Because the zero from the keypad activates the rear camera view (per default), which leaves me wondering if there's another problem somewhere...
Thanks for sharing anyway ! It was a nice move...

Edit : All right... I finally figured out myself what was going on, so here's my addendum to your solution : by default, the dosbox configuration file related to the game - not the general one -, which is dosbox_ad.conf, points towards a 'mapper.txt' file for all keypresses adjustments. Therefore, it doesn't matter if you've mapped your personnal preferences using Ctrl + F1 in the Dosbox : the game simply doesn't see them, unless you copy and rename the default mapping file (called 'mapper-SVM-Daum.map', located at the root of the DosBox subfolder) into that mapper.txt and (possibly) put it at the root of the game's folder. I say possibly, because I didn't bother to test the results while leaving it in that Dosbox subfolder... I was a bit fed up by those last missions and therefore took no risks : two copies of mapper.txt, both in the game's and that Dosbox's folders. And bam ! Your cheat codes will work again, all of them, probably without even needing to input Ctrl modifications, since the default mapper file already assigns the keys correctly...
That said, it's quite possible that the different versions of the DosBox toyed with the mapper file name, causing troubles... I would therefore advise anyone experimenting this kind of problem to check his files himself before modifying any of them.
As for me, good gracious, I've just finished the game and am finally free of that buggy wonky horrible gameplay ^^ ! Such a shame that the interesting world the developpers imagined suffers that much from it...

Cheers,
Benjamin

Can someone help me out please?
I installed the game via GOG Galaxy - but there are no mapping settings anywhere.
What do i have to do to bind the CTRL keys?
Thanks

Edit one day later:
Ah, good morning, CTRL-F1 it is.
As you said :p

Edit another day later - still cannot get the cheats to work. It seems ctrl buttons are still not bound somehow...

The "mapper-SVM-Daum.map" which user Zaephir-Moth is refering to is created by going into dobox's mapper (ctrl + F1) and saving, maybe you have to change smthing to have the save button.

Well, still doesnt seem to work for me, thats a pity.
Can someone send me the whole game with the correct key bindings in Dosbox fixed? Will that work?
I own the game - screen attached, so that should be ok :D

If you want to cheat in this game you can also simply edit your save game found in your game Folder
Archimedean Dynasty\DAT\SAVE

Edit for example the folloing lines


[ShipMounting0]
side = 0
type = 3
armor = 5121
sensor = 6145
buzzer0 = 0
buzzer1 = 0

to


[ShipMounting0]
side = 0
type = 3
armor = 5124
sensor = 6148
buzzer0 = 0
buzzer1 = 0

and you get the best sensor in game and the best armor.

Each Ship and eveery Ship part has it own number.

if you start a new game you start autamticly with Hiob Ship number 2049 Succubuss is 2052. (gator 2050 Zorn 2051)

You can also change there the ammount of credits
Credit = 2200

or you can increase your HP peer armor side by increasing the the lines.
Gun = 1.000000
ToMa = 1.000000
FArm = 1.000000
LArm = 1.000000
RArm = 1.000000
BArm = 1.000000
Tur1 = 1.000000
Tur2 = 1.000000

to eaxample FArm = 1000.000000 and your armor has 100000% health.
For turrets or addon parts like booster you have to ad a extra line but at the moment i dont know the correct line.

No worries about a wrong number in the save game by ship parts if you tipe the wrong number the ship is in the port with out a item you changed.

The Numbers went mostly up like the ship numbers. torps like from 1 up to 22.
Guns are diferent there are the Vendettas the highest numbers the max imp 3079 max imp 2 3080.
the Energie Guns have from 3073 to 3078.

have fun by testing

with this method i played a few years ago the hole game with Gator without armor increasing on the highest difficult
and it made fun or you can play it god like to see the story by yourself

Super necro on this sorry but I can't understand what you're saying here. I found the dosbox_ad.conf file in the root of the game folder, it says key mappings are "mapper.txt". I can see that the changes I made with DOSBox ctrl+F1 mapper were saved to the mapper.txt. in the game root folder.

I also opened mapper just from DOSBox, bound the keys and saved, so created the mapper-SVM-Daum file. So now I have two files with the modified key bindings, and the cheats still don't work. Any help?

Ugh... Sorry for the people above who wanted help. As long you don't quote someone, Gog doesn't bother to warn him about new posts. So I missed those...
Now, unfortunately, it's been so long that I'm not sure to understand myself either ^^ ! But it wasn't that difficult of an issue to solve...
From what I remember, it's precisely the conflict between those two (modified) files which is the root of the problem. One is seen by the game ; the other isn't, even though they both look fine if you open them. The one you'll want to retain is "mapper-SVM-Daum.map", from what I recall, while "mapper.txt" isn't taken in account by the game. So, I may be wrong, but I think you should try to use "mapper-SVM-Daum.map" and replace"mapper.txt" with it, renaming it to trick the game into using it - both in DosBox's and the game's dedicated folder. Of course, make copies of the files you're replacing before that...
I don't have the game installed right now and don't really have the time to fiddle with it again, but I'll try to help a bit if you report your experiments.

Thanks for getting back,. I did actually try this, I think before your reply. Because that is what it looks like you said above, all those years ago... So now my mapper.txt is a renamed copy of mapper-SVM-Daum, with the key bindings, but cheats still don't work. I just don't get it.

I'm thinking of modding the conf file to point to mapper-SVM-Daum and putting a copy of that in the game folder, just to see. It doesn't really matter, but i'm just mad that I can't understand what's going on


EDIT: I've had an idea. It might have something to do with "mod" keys in mapper. Which it seems are the ctrl keys. just think, its ctrl+F1 to open mapper..... so the ctrl keys as modifiers might alter the keystrokes so the game doesn't read the cheats input. there are loads of line at the start of the mapper files like "hand_togglemenu "key 13 mod1 mod2"
hand_shutdown "key 290 mod1"
hand_capmouse "key 291 mod1"

and so on, that seem to be combinations to activate commands in Dosbox itself. I'll have a think abou this and see if I can make any changes to get the cheats!

Ok, I changed the "mod" keys from ctrl to other random keys, scroll lock and pause. So it was then "scroll lock+F1" to open mapper, if you know what I mean. I was sure that this would mean that there were no conflicts, that the cheats would work........ they didn't.
I did notice something interesting though. The mapper application reads rightalt as leftctrl when inputting bindings. That is strange, but not realyl sure if it means anything for this.

EDIT: I got it to work, kind of. I just used mapper in the game ("ctrl+F1") to map leftctrl to scroll lock and rightctrl to pause|break, saved and returned to the game, and then when I held scroll lock+pause|break and pressed the numbers..... cheats worked. I don't know why it won't work when they are actually mapped to the ctrl keys.... but anyway now sorted for those final missions.

It definitely was something like this... As said, it's been too long for me to remember the exact thought process, but it wasn't that hard - I solved it in... half an hour maybe ? Possibly less... - and there was an issue with keys that needed to be solved by observation, trial & error. It doesn't seem impossible that the game (which is german) uses, as part of some internal files, a different keyboard standard that is QWERTZ instead of QWERTY. With some system keys swapped in consequence. Another possibility, frequently observed in other older games set with Dosbox is that different versions of that software use different keyboard settings, which end up being screwed when it is updated. In a game like Shattered Steel for example, you had to update Dosbox manually, by yourself, in order to play it without having gameplay issues. Some of them being related to the Doxbox's use of the keyboard & mouse...
In any case, I recall setting the required keypresses to something the game would actually use. And, yes, you needed first to make sure both Dosbox and the game use the same readable file to store them.

Glad to hear you've managed to solve it ! Good luck with the last ones, especially if you're not using the fan-patched version of the game... They're really a pain and I don't mean that in a pleasant satisfying way ^^' !