CHEAT FILES! Here on The CD we have the luxury to bring you each of the cheat programs written about in our Extended Play column this month. Here are the Filenames for each cheat. All cheats are located in the \CHEATS directory on this CD. PANZEDT.ZIP - Panzer General PGVW2.ZIP - Panzer General XCMALT.ZIP - X-COM XCOMAT.ZIP - X-COM: Terror from the Deep TIENWT.ZIP - Tie Fighter TME.ZIP - Tie Fighter WAREDIT.ZIP - Warcraft You'll need a copy of PKUNZIP to unzip these files. If you don't have a copy of PKUNZIP, the unzipped versions are located in subdirectories off of the \CHEATS directory. Below is a detailed list of what each of these utilities can do. You can also just read about it in the magazine. Extended Play by T. Liam McDonald If You Can't Win, Cheat Having problems with the Norway scenario in Panzer General? (Oh Bill?) Your men bitin' the dust in X-COM? Want to re-equip your aquanauts from Terror from the Deep? Or change a particularly prickly mission in TIE Fighter? No problem. Hackers and other game hobbyists have the tools for you to solve all these problems, with just a little effort (and maybe a little guilt). When I started writing this column, I knew I wanted to cover anything that added to gameplay, not just patches and add-ons, but cheat programs, editors, and "trainers." These are programs that allow you to hack into a game and actually change the game parameters for your benefit. You can change missions, give yourself extra money, add strength to depleted units, and change dozens of other things about your game. I've pulled a few shareware cheat utilities for some of the bigger games down from CompuServe, and they're right here on the CD-ROM version of the PC Gamer disk, in the CHEATS subdirectory, just waiting for you to crack into them and cheat your little hearts out. If you don't get the CD-ROM version of Gamer, you can find all of these programs in the GAMERS forum of CompuServe, and most likely in similar forums in other online services. And, time for the obvious, don't edit a file without backing it up first! None of these are guaranteed, and hex editing can cause crashes and other unpleasantries. Just practice safe hex, okay? And register your shareware. Panzer General: There are two good unit editors for the best wargame of 1994. Mark Edwards' Panzer General Save File Editor 2.0 was the first I picked up, and works by editing the parameters of a particular save game. It features a simple yet powerful interface for changing prestige points, the current turn number, and all unit numbers from strength to experience, kills, entrenchment, and everything else. You can print statistics or save them as a file: a useful feature for tracking your units. You'll find it in the PANZEDT subdirectory, and can run it by typing PANZEDT and following the instructions. (The save game being edited should be in the same directory as the PANZEDT.EXE file). Registration is $4. PGVIEW 2.0 (by Peter Donnelly and Stuart Gillespie) is a more powerful program in many ways, and features a mouse-drive Turbo Vision front end and some more features. A nifty equipment search and browse utility allows you to scan for data on all unit and equipment types. You have control over a few less statistics (such as "kills") than in PANZEDT, but the added features make it a very useful and well-executed tool. It's located in the PGVW2 subdirectory, and is run by typing PGVIEW. Registration is $10. X-COM: There are a mess of X-COM editors, but I picked the one that looked to be the most powerful and easiest to use. XALTER: XCOM Soldier Attribute Customizer 1.01, from Rod Hillis, allows you to change stamina, health, bravery, reactions, firing, throwing, strength, and other statistics for each of your men. Even psi ratings can be mucked about with. It's located in the XCMALT directory, and is run by typing XALTER. X-COM: Terror from the Deep: The XCOM2: Aquanaut Editor for Windows is a handy little tool for maxing out each man's stats. Aside from maxing them, you can generate new random values until you get what you like, or you can set them each individually with slider bars. Change ranks, missions, kills, and armor as well. A clean Windows interface make it a snap to use. It's located in the XCOM2 subdirectory and is executed by running XCOMCHT in Windows. It's even got it's own program icon. Nifty. TIE Fighter: Hacker David Jury has turned his attention towards TIE Fighter with his excellent pop-up cheat TIE Fighter Trainer. Placed in the same directory as the TIE Fighter executable, the TIENWT.EXE gives you hot keys which you can use in-flight to affect mission parameters such as weapons, shields, and damages, give full damage or full protection to any target, and does a host of other useful options. Found in the TIEN subdirectory. Just type TIENWT when starting a TIE Fighter sessions. Looks pretty clean, but may cause some crashes. Registration is $10. Sean Baker's TIE Fighter Mission Editor is not an in-game utility, but a mission editor that allows you to change individual missions by altering weapons loadout, craft, and other useful gob. (ed note: It's named TME.ZIP, it's located in the TME directory). Warcraft: Waredit is a command line executable that should be put in your save directory. The command line cheats it gives you are /GOLD (for 900 million gold), /LUMBER (for 900 million lumber), /MAP (to reveal the entire map), and /NET (to modify net games). Just type WAREDIT /GOLF /LUMBER, and so on. There's also a complete list of cheats included. You'll find it in the WAREDIT subdirectory.