Creating new cheat codes

[6AVedaant]

On the Auto Eroticar website, there are ads for a variety of vehicles like Presidente, Banshee, etc, with phone numbers for buying.

I thought as an Easter egg, if I could add those phone numbers in form of cheat codes which spawns the car and deducts the amount from player, but I don't know how to, please help.

[6AVedaant]

Anyone?

[Callistonian]

This is a great idea! I especially like it because it's simple enough to be done with a few basic .sco edits. Fair warning: if anyone else replies to this thread, they will tell you to do this in some high level language using a script hook program. This whole thing can probably done in like 5 lines of Lua. But alas, I play on CE so I have no experience writing hooked scripts for this game. Instead, I will do this in pseudo-assembly because it makes me feel like Chris Sawyer.

 

The file common/data/cdimages/script.img/spcellphonecalling.sco (which can be extracted with openIV and edited with SCO Toolbox) contains the code which links phone numbers to cheats. The phone numbers are referenced as literal strings and hash keys (for some reason). The cheats are called with the native function ACTIVATE_CHEAT. The cheats appear to be hard coded. I'm aware of a few mods that change or add cheats, but they target the game's code, and we don't need to worry about that anyway. All you would need to do is 1) add a new phone number as both a string and a hash and a new effects function in the same style as the others, or just overwrite the existing code for one of the cheats, 2) replace the ACTIVATE_CHEAT calls with some code drops from other script files like CREATE_CAR (see roman1.sco) and ADD_SCORE with an if/else to check if the player has enough money (see foodserver.sco), 3) edit american.gxt using openIV or a GXT editor to edit the website text (in the AUTOERT table) and possibly add text if you want to tell the player what's going on in your script using PRINT_HELP (adding to the MAIN table saves you from having to LOAD_ADDITONAL_TEXT).

 

More Resources:

- List of native functions

- List of cheats

- List of vehicles sold at Auto Eroticar

 

If you want to activate the phone prior to roman2.sco, you can push 1 to the global variable 91[40].

 

P.S. Where would you want the cars to spawn? Having them spawn right in front of the player like with a cheat might be tricky and also pretty lame imo. If you spawn them at Auto Eroticar they won't be available until Alderney is unlocked (btw, global variable 9932[0] unlocks the islands, .sco scripting is great!). I also had the idea of spawning the cars at the docks either in East Hook or Charge Island so the player has access from the start of the story, but then it sort of implies that the cars are new imports, not used (Auto Eroticar is clearly meant to be a used car dealership). It sucks they don't have a location in Broker or Dukes.

[Callistonian]

P.P.S. What prices do you think for the cars? Not all of the listings on Auto Eroticar's website have prices. This is what I came up with by looking up MSRPs for similar real world vehicles and then adjusting for the year and mileage.

 

    - 2004 Presidente - $18,999
    - 2001 Turismo - $130,995
    - 2003 Feltzer - not for sale as the number is used in gerry3_phonegirl.sco script
    - 2001 Banshee - $83,999
    - 2003 Intruder - $42,999
    - 2001 Schafter - $33,999
    - 2006 PMP600 - $62,995

 

I've also been trying to figure out how to offer more vehicles than this. It sucks we can't edit the webpages themselves (at least, I don't know any way to edit those files). Maybe posters on buildings or something which could be simple texture edits? Or perhaps another page on the Auto Eroticar website could be repurposed with just a list of numbers.

[6AVedaant]

Thanks for the help, yes i dont want them to spawn in front of the player, instead they should spawn in either AutoEroticar (which would be locked till Three Leaf Clover) or on the docks, and regarding the prices, the one you posted looks good.....

I just wanted to increase the immersion by adding such things, its a shame Rockstar didnt think of this....

[6AVedaant]

P.S. even if the money function doesnt work, im good without it even, my intention is to just make it like an easter egg kinda thing.... But ill see, if it works, its well and good.

[Callistonian]

I'll see if I can do a switch for whether or not the player has  unlocked Alderney, and if so spawn at the dealership, if not spawn at one of the docks. I'll even try to add a radar blip for the spawn location, although I've never done anything with blips before - should be interesting. For the other vehicles I want to sell, I'm going to see if I can find a texture somewhere on the Auto Eroticar building or maybe one of their advertisements or something and convert it into more listings, that way I can add pictures. But I'll do that after I get the main script to work and I'll post it as a mod.

 

It is indeed a shame Rockstar didn't add this. I've seen many people write essays on how R* intentionally made money feel pointless in this game as part of the "American dream is a lie" theme, but when you look through their files it's pretty obvious that they just didn't have time to implement a lot of stuff they wanted to. They invested a lot of time in mini games like bowling but didn't make it possible to buy safe houses... *shakes head*.