Bonum Certa Men Certa

All Software Should Come With a Cheat Mode

Article by figosdev

Dice



Summary: Cheat modes are useful for developers because they enable debugging, and are sometimes called "Debug mode"

This article is more about an ideal than a hard rule, but it's an ideal that I want to encourage.



Lately I've been teaching a little about minicomputers, as a different perspective on coding and program design. I don't know a lot about minicomputers, but then I'm not teaching expert-level stuff either. In the process, I've learned some cool things myself. I am happy to note that there are people I can consult about and discuss minicomputers with who have actually worked with them.

One of the things that is very cool about minicomputers, is that some have a "cheat mode" even for the CPU itself. I was going to call this article "all software should be programmable", but then I realised that cheat modes were not just a great metaphor for what I mean, they're a good example.

I did not play all that many games on computers, at any point since I learned how to use them. I played Ghostbusters on a PCjr connected to a television, I played with an Atari 2600 before most people had ever played Mario on an 8-bit console, I played Tetris and Solitaire, and I played a handful of DOS games -- including Monuments of Mars and Commander Keen.

"Cheat modes are useful for developers because they enable debugging, and are sometimes called "Debug mode"."My original experience with computing (other than a few month stint with an 8-bit cassette-based Timex Sinclair) was a command prompt, a graphical, mouse-driven DOS application for drawing, and a manual for writing in BASIC. I would eventually learn that changing the code in BASIC programs was a lot of fun (and extremely educational) but it gave me an opportunity to try a lot of programs for free -- you could just borrow (or purchase) a magazine or book from the library or a friend, and start typing things in.

Monuments of Mars was a simple CGA game that I honestly thought was one of the coolest things ever. The graphics were simple, but the structures put together with sprites (along with aliens and robots that had only two to five frame "animation") were something I found exciting. Jumping up to shoot switches to turn them on and off was also cool.

I did eventually go to the trouble of beating both Commander Keen and Monuments of Mars without cheating, of course. But I honestly found cheating was more fun. At the time, I was more interested in the possibility of making games than playing them, and I wanted to explore the levels more than I wanted to jump up and shoot robots. Obviously, straight game play did demonstrate things that cheat mode did not -- like how far a jump will actually get you when it's not unlimited and basically flying.

Cheat modes are useful for developers because they enable debugging, and are sometimes called "Debug mode". This is also true of ODT mode for some late-model PDP-11 machines. But the cool thing about cheat mode, whether you're talking about a minicomputer CPU or Commander Keen, is that a lot of boundaries created by the game are transcended. This is something we generally want in our programs.

"The term window is a bit like "cheat mode", especially when you're root."It's a unique feeling to suddenly be able to walk through walls, fly around, visit game levels that were inaccessible or discover hidden levels and easter eggs. When you're writing code, a lot of this is simply the nature of being able to tell the computer what to do. And there are levels of accessibility, to be sure -- I don't have to recompile the operating system to be able to open a term window and become root. The term window is a bit like "cheat mode", especially when you're root.

Obviously I'm not saying that administrators shouldn't be able to lock down certain features, including root and sudo -- but the owner of the computer should be able to override everything; that's one of the promises of Free software. But this idea is about exposing a bit more power to the user, for those who would use it.

And it's not a new idea -- ODT mode on the PDP-11 let you change any value at any address. BASIC let you do more or less this with the PEEK and POKE commands. The Sugar platform was designed for a laptop that had a "View Source" key that was meant for native applications, not just HTML and JavaScript. And various games let you use cheats to add points, ammo, health and extra lives.

Before Minecraft, the Sims let you build a house with unlimited access to materials. I was more interested in putting weird houses together than actually playing. If I was using Minetest, it would be the same. It's cool that Minecraft is also a game, but what I really want is a voxel building application.

"This is a fun way to introduce the concept of variables and coding to users."Having explored some of the recent Unity-based games designed to teach coding -- I'm not interested in promoting them, though I did want to be able to rate and explain the concept -- for some of them, "cheating" (debugging the playing field) is really one of the goals of native game play. If you want to cross a bridge, the way you do that is by loading the bridge values in a widget and changing them so the bridge is long enough to cross.

This is a fun way to introduce the concept of variables and coding to users. You could put this sort of thing in so many games, including ones that aren't written for a non-free engine; instead of just having a cheat mode, you could make it so the player could bring up an option to "hack" individual objects in the game.

For Monuments of Mars, which came out decades earlier -- I found that save games were basically two bytes -- one was the ASCII value for the saved level (there were only about 20 levels per game) and the other was an ASCII value for how many charges you had left for the gun. Rewriting this binary file using BASIC (or a hex editor, though writing a few reusable lines of BASIC for the task was satisfying) was extremely fun for a beginner.

I also put a cheat mode in the text editor I'm using / extending / writing. The goal is to have something to use instead of Leafpad. It doesn't have proper word wrap (it just wraps around mid-word like the cat command does) but it does let me pipe text to it like a graphical version of "less" and CTRL-T runs whatever text is on a certain line as a shell command. So for example, there is no word count feature, but while I'm typing this I can hit CTRL-S to save and then type:

    wc cheatmode.txt


And if I hit CTRL-T then it tells me how many lines, words and characters the file I'm writing has. I could also open a term and do that, but this lets me do it right from the text editor. Then I just select the output, delete it and keep working.

This is more than a way to have features available before I even implement them. It means that I don't have to copy text to and from the term window nearly as much. Output is piped directly into the editor, and every line of text in the editor is a line of text I can run.

People who use programmable text editors already know how cool it is to be able to do this, but I don't really love Vi or Emacs. I use GNU Nano and Leafpad -- these are not editors known for a lot of features. I like them for their simplicity, and if I make a programmable text editor it's going to be designed for simplicity as well. Suppose I want to run some figplus code:

    figplus
    p "hello world" split p " "
    forin each p
        c randint 1 15
        now each colourtext c print
        next


Then I select those lines of text and hit CTRL-T again. This isn't implemented yet, though the first line of the selection would be "figplus" -- telling it I want to run "figplus" code. It then treats the rest of the selection the way it's designed to treat selections that begin with that keyword. Since a child process can't change the cwd of a parent process natively, I've already implemented a "cd " command that changes the cwd for the editor process via os.chdir. If Leafpad had this I would use it!

I could take all the code for figplus and stick it in the code for the editor, but since this creates a second version of figplus to maintain, I think I will just have it call figplus from the shell -- much easier to implement and maintain for snippets of fig code (doing it this way will create a few limitations).

I could have it simply save the code to a file, compile and run it -- and if I make it process standard "fig" that is how I will most likely implement it. But just to extend the capabilities beyond shell code, all it needs to do is take these lines:

    p "hello world" split p " "
    forin each p
        c randint 1 15
        now each colourtext c print
        next


-- put a newline between them:

    p "hello world" split p " "\nforin each p\n    c randint 1 15\n   
    now each colourtext c print\n    next





-- change the double quotes to single:

    p 'hello world' split p ' "\nforin each p\n    c randint 1 15\n   
    now each colourtext c print\n    next





-- and add double quotes to each side and call with figplus:

    os.system("figplus05.py -c " + chr(34) + 
    "p 'hello world' split p ' '\nforin each p\n    c randint 1 15\n 
    now each colourtext c print\n    next" + chr(34))





Then CTRL-T can run fig code as well as shell code. And we can add other commands too, like:

    append-to log.txt
    These lines will
    be appended to
    the log file.





Highlight that, CTRL-T, it writes what I've highlighted to a file. The only tokens processed by the editor are "append-to" and "log.txt".

Again, this is not the first editor that does stuff like this. But it's written in Python, it's PyPy-compatible, and it's designed the way I like it. The lack of a Code-of-Conduct is just a bonus.

To distinguish "all software should have a cheat mode or be programmable" from something like "all software should be as insecure as browsers with DirectX support, let's note a couple of things here:

The editor doesn't actually DO ANYTHING with the text when it loads. It doesn't get parsed, no automatic actions are taken.

To run code, you have to hit CTRL-T on a line that has code on it, or select code and hit CTRL-T where it recognises the first line of the selection. This is nothing like JavaScript, which runs when it's loaded and parses the entire document. It's not even like HTML.

"Different programs benefit from different cheat modes."The entire document is just text -- it may not even contain code, but the editor has no idea if it does or not until you highlight something and ask it to run what's highlighted.

Different programs benefit from different cheat modes. A video game that lets you change how long a bridge is might not benefit from calling shell code (it probably won't, unless the game design is very unusual). JavaScript might pose a security risk to the user sometimes, but the JavaScript console itself is less likely to.

One thing that saddens me at times about JavaScript (and HTML) is how complex it has gotten. To have a "cheat mode" or be programmable, I don't think every application needs a full-fledged, general-purpose scripting language. Though that's one way of doing it.

Simple languages with a handful of commands (10 to 100, just for some simple features) with simple syntax provide enough of a window to the program, to get more people interested in programming and computing in general. Sometimes you may need more than that, which is alright. But I'm still talking about all this in the context of homemade software I think corporate software should have features like this as well, but sometimes (as with Minecraft, Mozilla and LibreOffice) corporate software already is programmable or has debug or cheat modes.

As for the amount of work it took to add shell code processing to a text editor, I can actually grep the code while I'm writing this:

    nl = chr(10) ; from os import popen as po
    cmd = self.textarea.get(1.0,tk.END).split(nl) # get text
    cmd = cmd[int(self.textarea.index(tk.INSERT).split(".")[0]) - 1] # get line cursor is at
    f = po(cmd.split(nl)[0]) # call shell
    self.textarea.insert(tk.INSERT, nl + f.read().rstrip() + " " + nl) # update editor
    self.textarea.bind('<Control-t>', self.find_file)


This is slightly abbreviated, but basically what I added to make the feature possible. I've since added the ability to background processes with & (which first indicates the desire to background, and then is passed to the shell).

"...sometimes (as with Minecraft, Mozilla and LibreOffice) corporate software already is programmable or has debug or cheat modes."Adding a cheat mode doesn't have to require redesigning the entire program. It just takes thinking about what would allow the user to transcend the usual boundaries and assumptions of the program they're using -- to create an interesting and perhaps useful new window into the program itself.

As for snippets of code, particularly shell code and quick scripts, how can those have a cheat mode? In my opinion, if you're running a line of easy-to-edit shell code or a few lines of Python, you're in "cheat mode" already. Though for applications substantial enough to consider adding a feature, it's worth thinking about what sort of code you could use within the running application -- partly to make it more useful, and partly for the sake of education and encouraging the next generation of coders.

leafpad cheatmode.txt & # (I haven't added font sizes to the editor yet; this will make it easier to proofread) &

Long live rms, and happy hacking.

Licence: Creative Commons CC0 1.0 (public domain)

Recent Techrights' Posts

[Video] Richard Stallman's Talk in Sweden, Attended by Nearly 700 People, is Now Online
The Web page is in Swedish, but the talk is in English
 
Confirmed: Very Close Friend of Bill Gates and Microsoft's Biggest Patent Troll Nathan Myhrvold Flew the Lolita Express (a Gateway to Pedophilia), According to Bill Gates-Sponsored Seattle Times
There is no speculation or any "conspiracy theories" here;' those are verified facts
Gemini Links 25/10/2025: "The Highest Leader of The Global Civil Society Community", SSL Certificates Causing Bitrot
Links for the day
Links 25/10/2025: Target Layoffs and "Shutdown Sparks 85% Increase in US Government Cyberattacks"
Links for the day
"Big Data" Was a Big Lie
Remember "Big Data"? Remember "Data Scientists"...?
statCounter Has Been Broken for a Long Time
Considering the huge proportion of Web requests that come from LLM bots (more so this past year or two), statCounter may struggle to justify the operating costs
Techrights Anniversary Party on November 7th
Let us know if you need any accommodation-related arrangements
Trends That Must Alarm Microsoft and Mozilla
Expect Firefox to no longer be supported by various sites in the US
Why Microsoft Became the Layoffs Leader
The corporate media is projecting or signalling its own dishonesty when it tells us that Microsoft is a very "valuable" company while the data shows Microsoft is also a "market leader" in layoffs
Speaking for Ourselves and Letting the Facts Speak for Themselves
we've already published over 50,000 pages
For Second Time in a Day The Register MS Takes Money From Private Companies to Sell a Ponzi Scheme
Do not have empathy for those who have zero empathy towards you
IBM is Misleading IBM Shareholders
IBM is still all about vapourware and buzzwords
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 24, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, October 24, 2025
The Serial Slopper Starts Up - or Restarts - His Plagiarism Machine (LLMs)
Serial Sloppers like these don't belong in news sites. That's why he got sacked by BetaNews.
Links 24/10/2025: Esperanto Music History, Anxiety, and New Portals
Links for the day
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity.com, Linux Journal, and Pet Slopfarms of Google News
Why does Google News still advance these fake sites to the top of search results?
Links 24/10/2025: Inequality Grows, Billion-Dollar Scam Center Industry
Links for the day
Links 24/10/2025: "Independent Media in Cambodia is Collapsing" and Serious F5 Breach
Links for the day
Coping With the Site Going More Mainstream
Fame is no laughing matter
They Never 'Put Down' Corporations
There are "pests" that are traded in Wall Street
21 Pages in Less Than 7 Hours is No Joking Matter
We've become a lot more effective and efficient
Correct Information is a Valued Asset in the Age of Slopfarms and Public Relations (PR) or Spin
Publishing suppressed facts is never easy
The Register MS Continues to Bag Money to Promote a Ponzi Scheme, Even Money From China
Today in the front page
analytics.usa.gov: The Only Supported Version of Windows (This Past Week) is Only Used by About 13.9% of People in the US, the Home Base of Windows
Even Vista 7 is still used more
Rust is Very Secure
If only Rust itself is secure
Who Will be Held Accountable for Breaking Ubuntu by Imposing Rust on Otherwise-Functional Programs, in Effect Replacing GNU With Proprietary Microsoft (GitHub)?
they're practical people who merely point out that a bunch of buffoons not only ruin Ubuntu but also every future distro based on Ubuntu
Generation Chaff - Phase VIII: In Summary
Like "Science" with a capital "S", what we see here commercial interests usurping everything
Generation Chaff - Phase VII: Curtailing Alternative Media
There was always an obligation - a collective duty of sorts - to uphold independent journalism
Generation Chaff - Phase VI: Centralisation of Information (X, Cheetok/Fentanylware)
Would you trust information when controlled by such people?
Generation Chaff - Phase V: Censorship of Dissent (Painted as Harassment or Terrorism)
Censorship is all around us now
Generation Chaff - Phase IV: Apps Only Few Companies Decide On
Tools are being collectively confiscated, under the premise or false prospect of "security"
Generation Chaff - Phase III: Slop and Plagiarism
A lot of the current so-called 'economy' is built upon false valuations
Generation Chaff - Phase II: "Cloud", Blockchains and Other Hype
For those of us who turned down those propositions there was a struggle; we needed to justify not having skinnerboxes or "social" accounts in some site run by a private company
Generation Chaff - Phase I: Social Control Media
IRC predates the Web
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 23, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 23, 2025
More Clues Shed on Collapse of Microsoft XBox
XBox is basically circling down the drain as Microsoft implements 2-3 waves of layoffs each month
'Vibe Coding' Doesn't Work
In a lot of ways, so-called 'Vibe Coding' is already considered vapourware or a passing fad promoted in the media by managers who try to justify mass layoffs, especially ridding companies of "very expensive" software engineers
Links 24/10/2025: Microsoft's Killing of XBox Connected to Revenue/Profit Problems, "How Elon Musk Ruined Twitter"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 24/10/2025: 86,400 Seconds and "Society's Task"
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Google News and Slopfarms That Relay Nonsense From LLMs
Google News, which once prioritised or used to care about provenance and quality, is feeding slopfarms
Links 23/10/2025: More Health Concerns Over Dumb Chatbots (LLMs) and "Talking Cars" as Latest Buzz
Links for the day
Gemini Links 23/10/2025: Daylight Savings Time and Duration Shorthand
Links for the day
Links 23/10/2025: LLM 'Hallucinations' (Defects) in Practical Code 'Generation', China Becomes More Economically and Technologically Independent
Links for the day
Why We Support Richard Stallman and You Probably Should Too
It's not about being "Richard Stallman fan", it is about maintaining the right to hold positions (on technology) like his
Linux Foundation Uses LLM Slop to Promote Microsoft in Linux.com (Again), Rendering It a Linux-Hostile Slopfarm
Openwashing with slop by "Linux.com Editorial Staff", which basically seems to be a bot
Some Large German Media Covers Richard Stallman's Talks in Germany Earlier This Week
LLM-based chatbots are just "bullshit generators" (as he has long called them)
Links 23/10/2025: Windows TCO Galore and "The Internet Is Going to Break Again"
Links for the day
Trouble in Red Hat/IBM and a Retreat to Ponzi Economics in Search of Wall Street Market Heist
Would you invest your life savings in this kind of crap?
Who Asked Software in the Public Interest (SPI) for a Refund? ($100,000, Resulting in Losses of $267,201 in 12 Months, Highest-Ever Losses)
The IRS does not reveal who or what's tied to this refund (or the cause/reason)
Social engineering attack: Debian voted to trick you on binary blobs
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Techrights Will Always Stand for Women's Rights
We even invest money - personal savings that it - in our principles
Certified Lawyers Should Know Better (Than to Intimidate Us With Man Who Drives on Motorcycle Through a Really Bad Storm Between Distant Cities, Then Collects Photos of Our Home)
Mentioning someone was in prison for bad things isn't a crime, it's a public service
The "AI" (Slop) Bubble is Already Imploding
"ChatGPT Usage Has Peaked and Is Now Declining, New Data Finds"
The So-called "Sexy" Buckets (AI, Quantum) Cannot Save IBM From Reality, Shares Tank
"No matter how much financial hocus-pocus they use to reclassify revenues to land in the "sexy" buckets (AI, Quantum), it still smells old and musty - just like this company."
Paul Krugman is Wrong About the Scope of Mass Layoffs in the United States
A few years ago society was accelerating its journey towards feudalism, boosted by COVID-19
Links 23/10/2025: Proprietary Blunders and CISA's Latest Disclosure of Holes
Links for the day
Gemini Links 23/10/2025: Fast Past (F1), 99.9% Uptime
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 22, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 22, 2025