DOS Games Discussion

Hi all,

I'm in the process of adding support for God of Thunder to Camoto and I have come across a few command-line parameters which could be useful for modding, but I'm not sure how they work.

Does anyone know how to use the parameters /HELA and /SAVEGAME?

I think /SAVEGAME could be particularly useful if it allows you to immediately resume a saved game, because then it will be much easier to test a level mid-design without having to play through from the start. (The editor could alter the savegame to bring up the level you are currently designing, ready to test.)

Also, does anyone know if there's a way to warp to a given screen, apart from walking there holding "1" in /VOLSTAGG mode? Or what the "K" key does in /VOLSTAGG mode?

Well I've worked out /SAVEGAME. You need to run _G1.EXE (or _G2.EXE for episode 2, etc.) and give that the filename. Like "_G1 /SAVEGAME:SAVEGAM3.GOT".

I don't think /HELA does anything, because it doesn't appear in _G1.EXE, _G2.EXE and _G3.EXE.

I haven't figured out yet what the "K" does in /VOLSTAGG. But I do think the "B" does also something.

Good point. If /HELA does something it must only affect the menu screen.

Holding down the "3" key in /VOLSTAGG also does something (apparently the border colour changes) but I don't know what it actually does either.

Couldn't there be some diffs between the versions....?
Shareware/full version? Also there seems to be a 1.0 and 1.1 version.

BTW, game is freeware now.

http://www.dosgames.com/dl.php?filename ... otfree.zip
More shareware/full versions@
http://www.classicdosgames.com/game/God_of_Thunder.html

It's possible there's a difference between the versions, but the way the game works, GOT.EXE handles the main menu and episode selection, then it launches _G1.EXE, _G2.EXE or _G3.EXE depending on the selected episode. "/HELA" appears in GOT.EXE but not any of the others, so if it does anything at all, it only affects the main menu part of the game - unless as you say, it does something in one of the shareware or other versions.

My guess is it's something mundane like resetting the high scores to defaults or something like that.

There is another thingy that comes in mind ....

Can be a diff between real MsDos and dosbox, depending on what you play it.

Whilst dosbox is become almost perfect to play dosgames it does NOT has all commands implemented from MsDos ....
Can be a missing internal command com string, mayhaps...........

Dosbox's debug utility can be very helpful to track down such things, but if you never used it it *could* be a bit complicated in the beginning.
You can find more about dosbox's debug @ www.vogons.org/index.php
A lot of info in 'general' and 'dev' subs.

Nah this is a string in GOT.EXE in the middle of all the other valid command line parameters, so it's definitely an option you can specify when you run GOT.EXE. The DOSBox debugger is good, but for stuff like this you really need a disassembler to figure it out for sure. I don't think the payoff would be worth it in this case though, since it won't affect gameplay (because it's not in _G1.EXE etc.)

I was hoping someone might know, but it's probably going to be quicker to try asking the developers since they are still around!

Wild guess (without trying the game): since /Volstagg had the function to allow you to replenish mana, perhaps /Hela could be something to replenish health with a keypress?

Also according to Wikipedia, the Marvel comics character 'Hela' was a goddess of death, so it might be a command to kill all enemies or yourself in the level, something that is also useful for testing. e.g. the 'K' keypress could be activated by /Hela parameter.

Interesting. Well the game already lets you kill yourself to restart the level by pressing "D", but as above, the /HELA option only appears in the .exe file that handles the main menu. The three game .exe files (one for each episode) do not have /HELA listed anywhere in the file, so it would appear there is no code that checks for this option.

However some investigation reveals that if you start GOT.EXE with the /HELA option, it does pass it along to _G*.EXE so perhaps it is simply an option that was used during development and later removed?

Malvineous wrote:..... so perhaps it is simply an option that was used during development and later removed?

Indeed, happens more that devs don't fully clean up their code. Time is money etcetera .....

By the way, if you create a file called DYSIN.GOT in your God of Thunder directory the game will think it's an image and it will show it at the very beginning of the game.