Cheats & debug tools

JA2 shipped with a full set of developer cheats, and 1.13 kept them alive and extended them. They are genuinely useful: mod makers use them to test items and quests, bug hunters use them to reproduce problems, and sometimes a cheat is the only way to unstick a campaign that a bug has wedged. And of course you can just use them to mess around.

This page explains how to turn cheats on in current 1.13 builds, what the most useful cheat keys and debug tools do, and what the side effects are. The complete key-by-key cheat list lives on the hotkeys reference.

Cheats leave a paper trail — and can wreck a campaign

Activating cheats writes a permanent "Cheat Used" entry into your laptop History log, and the money cheats show up as anonymous deposits in your Finances ledger. Beyond the bookkeeping, cheat keys let you put the game into states normal play never reaches (spawned enemies and monsters, arrested squads, mercs transformed into bloodcats...). Save to a fresh slot before experimenting, so you can always return to an untouched savegame.

Turning cheats on

Current 1.13 builds: Ctrl+G

On the tactical screen, press Ctrl+G. The game asks "Activate cheats?" — confirm with Yes and a "Cheat level TWO reached" message appears. All cheat keys are now available. Press Ctrl+G again and confirm "Deactivate cheats?" to switch them off.

This replaces the old typed cheat code: the confirmation prompt was added to 1.13 by Flugente, so you can no longer trigger cheats by accident while fumbling key combinations.

Cheats are disabled entirely in multiplayer games: networked sessions force the cheat level to zero and the Ctrl+G prompt does not appear.

The classic codes: GABBI and IGUANA

In vanilla JA2 (v1.12) and older 1.13 versions you enabled cheats on the tactical screen by holding Ctrl and typing a code word:

Code	Version
Ctrl + type GABBI	English version
Ctrl + type IGUANA	German version

That is why the community still calls them "the GABBI cheats". If the typed code refuses to work on an old install, a classic gotcha is the stuck Alt key: after switching away from a windowed game with Alt+Tab and back again, the game still considers Alt held down — tap Alt once before typing the code.

Always on: CHEAT_MODE in the INI

Ja2_Options.INI has a switch in its [Troubleshooting Settings] section that starts the game with cheats already enabled:

; Default setting for cheats.

CHEAT_MODE = FALSE

Set it to TRUE and every campaign starts at the maximum cheat level, no key code needed. See Ja2_Options.INI tour for how to edit the file safely.

Cheat levels

Internally the source code distinguishes three tiers — information cheats, cheater cheats and debug cheats (Ja2/Cheats.h). Both activation methods above set the maximum level, so as a player you get everything at once; the lower tiers only matter for special debug builds of the exe, which start with cheats partially or fully enabled.

What the cheat keys do

The full list — including the sillier entries like turning a merc into a bloodcat — is in the hotkeys reference. These are the ones people actually reach for, all on the tactical screen unless noted:

Key	Effect
Ctrl+Shift+G	Toggle GOD MODE on/off.
Alt+E	Reveal all items and characters (enemies and NPCs) in the sector.
Alt+T	Teleport the selected merc to the cursor location.
Ctrl+U	Restore health and energy of all your characters.
Alt+O	Kill all enemies in the current sector.
Alt+Enter	Abort the enemy's turn (handy when a turn hangs).
Alt+.	Spawn an item by item ID on the selected merc (or on the ground if there is no space).
Alt+G	Hire a merc by profile ID: an "Enter ProfileID" box pops up.
Alt+B	Add an enemy soldier beneath the cursor.
F11	Open the Quest Debug System screen (see below).
Ctrl+T (map screen)	In travel mode, teleport the selected squad to the sector under the cursor.
+ (laptop)	Increase funds by $100,000.
= (laptop)	Increase funds by $10,000.

A few notes:

• Item IDs for Alt+. are the <uiIndex> numbers from Items.xml — see XML files. Ctrl+Alt+. spawns the same item again without retyping the ID.
• The r9389 hotkey sheet describes Alt+G as adding a random merc; in current builds the game asks for a specific profile ID instead.
• Some item-creation keys (Ctrl+W, Alt+W) delete whatever the merc is holding in the primary hand — see the warnings on the hotkeys page.

Cheat options in the Options screen

While cheats are active, the in-game Options screen gains a --Cheat Mode Options-- group. It currently holds one entry, Force Bobby Ray Shipments, which makes all pending Bobby Ray's orders arrive at once.

Debug tools

Version and settings overlay: V

This one works without cheats. Press V on the tactical screen and the message log prints the exact game version and build, the difficulty level, your Bobby Ray quality/quantity settings, the item progress speed, the gun option (Tons of Guns or reduced), the game style, and — in single-player games — your current and maximum campaign progress percentage. Include this output when you report a bug; it answers the "which version are you running?" question in one keypress.

Quest Debug System: F11

With cheats enabled, F11 on the tactical screen opens the Quest Debug System, a developer screen for the quest scripting engine. It can list every quest and its status (not started / in progress / done), show and change the "facts" the scripts run on, inspect NPC record logs and inventories, give items to NPCs, place mercs or items at a grid location, and advance the game day.

It exists for testing quest scripts, and it is the bluntest instrument on this page: changing quest facts mid-campaign can leave scripts in states they were never written for. Treat it as a last resort for a quest that a bug has left permanently stuck.

Debug info in soldier tooltips

Two settings in Ja2_Options.INI turn the enemy tooltips into a debug readout:

• SOLDIER_TOOLTIP_DETAIL_LEVEL = 4 — the "Debug" tooltip level: like the Full level but also shows APs, health and other information meant for modders.
• SOLDIER_TOOLTIP_DEBUG_AI = TRUE — adds AI debug information to the tooltip.

Last-resort unsticking

The [Troubleshooting Settings] section of Ja2_Options.INI bundles a few emergency tools alongside CHEAT_MODE:

Setting	What it does
DEAD_LOCK_DELAY	Aborts an enemy's AI routine if it is stuck for this many seconds (default 30). Don't set it too low or enemies become useless.
ENABLE_EMERGENCY_BUTTON_NUMLOCK_TO_SKIP_STRATEGIC_EVENTS	When TRUE, press and hold Num Lock to skip global strategic events — an escape hatch when one of them crashes the game.
AUTO_SAVE_ON_ASSERTION_FAILURE	Tries to save automatically when an assertion failure occurs; submit that savegame with your bug report.
AUTO_SAVE_EVERY_N_HOURS	Automatic save every N game hours (0 disables).

Two keyboard escapes complement these. With cheats enabled, Alt+Enter aborts a hung enemy turn (it ends the AI deadlock and resets the attack-busy counter). Even without cheats, Ctrl+Enter during the enemy's turn releases a stuck interface lock — it was deliberately taken out of cheat mode in the source so that any player can use it when the game locks up.

For crashes and startup problems that no cheat can fix, see Troubleshooting.

Sources

• JA2_113_Hotkeys.pdf — the official r9389 (2022) hotkey sheet: GABBI/IGUANA activation keys, the full cheat key list, the V overlay
• Ja2_Options.INI from the 1.13 game directory on GitHub — [Troubleshooting Settings] (CHEAT_MODE, DEAD_LOCK_DELAY, NumLock emergency button, auto-save settings) and the soldier tooltip debug settings
• The 1.13 source code — Ja2/Cheats.h (cheat levels), Tactical/Turn Based Input.cpp (Ctrl+G activation prompt, cheat key handlers, History log entry), Strategic/Game Init.cpp (CHEAT_MODE startup behavior, multiplayer lockout), Ja2/GameSettings.cpp (DisplayGameSettings, INI reading), Ja2/Options Screen.cpp and i18n/_EnglishText.cpp (Cheat Mode Options group, exact in-game strings), Strategic/Quest Debug System.cpp (Quest Debug screen), Laptop/laptop.cpp (money cheats as anonymous deposits)
• JA2 V1.13 GABBI Cheats on GOG download — Bear's Pit thread: language-dependent classic codes and the stuck Alt key gotcha (wanne/RoWa21)
• Cheat Codes on the Jagged Alliance fandom wiki — the vanilla (v1.12) GABBI activation method
• "ja2_and_1_13_hot_keys" page from the old JA2 v1.13 pbworks wiki — cross-check of the GABBI/IGUANA activation