[SPOILER] KS Cheat option

not that it's of much relevance to this thread (), but with I made a reference to the former forum member (and admin) FastRecords, who originally posted this on the now broken forum. Because he used to sign his posts with that smiley.

If the users want to take the cheap and easy way out, that's up to them. If it's in a spoiler tag it shouldn't be removed, period. The mods are way hypersensitive over this.

If they want to take the cheap and easy way out, they can look in the world.ini file. Having it immediately accessible on the forum just makes it so that someone learning of the cheat for the first time will just find it here before they have the opportunity to decide whether to actually play through to get the cheat, or to do the world.ini dealy. (Think about it. If you learn about a cheat, and you have the chance to 1) go open another program and play through a level to get it, or 2) click on some text to see the cheat instantly, which would you choose? Even though you'd probably regret it afterwards if you chose the second.)

If you use the cheat too much, the game simply isn't fun anymore.

Hmm.. define "fun".  I use this cheat quite frequently, simply because it allows me to turn any level into Environmental, my most favorite type of levels. That's "fun" for me.

By "fun" I mean "playing according to the intentions of the level's author", presuming that the level in question is designed to incite some sort of enjoyment in the player, and that it is reasonably successful in that regard. (I mean, like, if you're playing a really badly designed level or part of a level, the cheating might allow one to skip to more enjoyable parts.) This doesn't preclude enjoyment derived from a play style contrary to the intents of the author.

Let me explain why I removed the cheat from the spoiler.

Even today there are new people here that haven't played knytt stories yet. Clicking and opening a spoiler is tempting and very easy. Revealing this cheat (which basically can destroy your game) is not good to just be posted on the forum. If you want to do some effort, like getting in the level editor to find it, sure, go ahead. Atleast, for this much effort, knowing the game a little bit is required. Enough for you to decide that you actually want to do this or not.

If you just click the spoiler, read it and then think: oh wow... and you won't play it normally even for the first time, the gameplay basically got ruined that much that you don't like Knytt Stories.

I don't mind telling you how to teleport anywhere but not the part on how to get frozen.

I think everyone overestimates the effect of cheats on gameplay.  If a game in my possession has cheats, I probably know about them, but they don't ruin my experience; I mess around with them for a while, then when I get tired of them, I go back to playing the game normally with absolutely no ill effects.
In any case, posting a topic advertising a "cheat option" and telling them to go play a level to find it is going to be downright annoying to most people.
The fact that you're willing to tell them to look in the World.ini file, and yet not give out the code itself, is just weird, to be honest.  You don't need to know the game to do that - the worlds are in the aptly named Worlds folder, with folder names corresponding to their names, and the World.ini for TEC is tiny.
I've seriously never heard of a cheat code "ruining the gameplay so much that you don't like the game anymore."

I must say I also agree with minmay here. =/

I suppose you must take into account the players that can't beat hard levels.

This all depends on how you see the cheat; as a right or as a privilege. That is, if you think every player has the right to know and use the cheat, or if it's a privilege that must be earned by beating the level.

The cheat was originally concealed in such a way that, to get it by the rules (as it were), you had to be good enough/experienced enough at/with KS to obtain it. However, it's so easy to get by cheating that it's pointless to act as if it's restricted in any meaningful anyway.

I think it should be available, but not advertised. Just giving the cheat openly to new players, so that they cheat their way past the tutorial and then through every level that they get, on impulse, is a bad thing. (I don't mean to say this would happen on every level, but a newb with a cheat might just use it as soon as they get frustrated with anything.) KS has some unusual features, like wallswims and void screens, that are extremely easy to get at with the cheat. (I didn't get the cheat until I was good enough at the game to get at it honestly, but I know that I would've used it excessively if I had it.)

That is to say, I don't think it's a good idea for just anyone to have the cheat unless they understand the implications of the cheat, but I don't see any way to restrict it as such.

I frankly think that if people see that the cheat ruins the game, don't use the cheat? It's like watching a TV show or listening to a radio programme you find offensive, if you don't like it, don't tune into it. Same thing with the cheat. I know that I would very rarely use it myself.

I frankly think that if people see that the cheat ruins the game, don't use the cheat? It's like watching a TV show or listening to a radio programme you find offensive, if you don't like it, don't tune into it. Same thing with the cheat. I know that I would very rarely use it myself.

A human brain simply doesn't work like that. If you read how to do it before you read what it actually can do, and you come in a hard situation, cheating is easier so you automatically choose that way.

I actually have detected myself in this manner too.


This is exactly what will happen to playing Knytt Stories. Using the cheat can be more fun because you can skip the parts you don't like (which are the harder parts) and thus you don't get enough satisfaction from playing some levels, and Knytt Stories will become boring rather soon. I do agree that the good levels might not want the player to cheat because they're not too hard, but there certainly are levels where even I would cheat through certain parts.

You really should say that your human brain doesn't work like that.

After I learned about the Knytt Stories cheat (I found it the fair way, by the way), I basically thought "hm, that's sort of cool, I guess."  I played around with it for maybe 10 seconds and then pretty much never used it again.  There are plenty of levels around with areas that are horribly annoying and perhaps even highly luck-based, but I've never cheated through them.  Incidentally, when I learned of the teleport cheat, I didn't even bother trying it out, but that's neither here nor there.

Age of Empires 3 is a pretty good, fun game.  A lot of people think it's crap, but it's pretty good in my opinion.  It, like CnC, is an RTS game.  After finishing the campaign on Easy (I didn't even notice you could change the difficulty of it at that time, so that's my excuse  ), I learned of the cheat codes, which were pretty cool honestly, but all I did with them was mess around a bit in Skirmish.  I never touched them when it came to beating the campaign again on Hard (which was pretty easy but whatever).  And later, when the first expansion arrived, which was actually somewhat difficult, I still didn't touch them.

If you actually ruin your game experience because you know of a cheat code, you just need an excercise in willpower!  It's easier than trying to properly obfuscate the cheat, in any case.

Actually you know what, if theres another official version of ks i vote the cheat gets taken out. its causing too much trouble and there are few if any good reasons to use it.

I think that the cheat should still stay in the game. If you really want to play the game and its levels the way they're supposed to be played, all you need to do is just avoid using the cheat.