Arma 3: Cheats

Cheats offer various different functionalities which are not meant to be easily accessible. Use cheats with care! To enter a cheat press: ⇧ Shift + NUM - and enter one of the cheat codes below. Capitalisation does not matter.

Cheats

ENDMISSION

Ends the mission.

CAMPAIGN

Unlocks all campaign missions. This must be entered in the appropriate campaign screen.

MISSIONS

Unlocks all single player missions. This must be entered in the appropriate single missions screen.

SAVEGAME

Saves the game in your current mission. Can be useful as a quicksave function.

TOPOGRAPHY

Generates selected map in EMF vector format. The file is (not) always created at the root directory of the C: drive (Windows 7 with UAC might put the file in Virtualstore, "C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Virtualstore"). (German Users: Enter TOPOGRAPHZ instead). This function is deprecated and was replaced with diag_exportTerrainSVG.

Example Export Procedure

1. Run Arma 3 as administrator
   • Open your Arma 3 main folder
   • Locate arma3.exe
   • Right click on it and select Run as administrator. The reason for it is that .emf file will be saved at c:\<worldname>.emf location, and on Windows 7, for example, most apps do not have rights to write in that location. Running Arma 3 as administrator should resolve this
2. Select desired map
   • Open Eden Editor with the map you want to export
3. Enter required cheat
   • Press and hold ⇧ Shift
   • Tap NUM - on the while still holding ⇧ Shift
   • Release both keys then blindly type TOPOGRAPHY. If everything done correctly, a small message will flash saying that topography is activated. German users might need to type TOPOGRAPHZ instead, since they use QWERTZ layout instead of QWERTY
4. Locate exported file
   • Go to c:\ and check for <worldname>.emf file. If you had activation message and no file saved, something is wrong with write file permission to this location, you will have to troubleshoot it on your own
5. Finish exporting
   • Close the game for it to release the file
   • Copy the resulting .emf file into some location where any user can write to the disk
   • Copy EmfToPng.exe file to the same location. This file can be found in Visitor 3 folder in the Arma 3 Tools package. If you don’t have it, it is available on steam as free download (Library -> Tools)
6. Convert exported map to .png
   • At this point you can just drag your resulting .emf file over the converter .exe to start default conversion. However if you prefer to do it with different zoom, you can do it via command line, for instructions run EmfToPng.exe without params
7. Done!
   • If everything went ok, you would have <worldname>.png file created next to <woldname>.emf file

1.44

EXPORTNOGRID

Does what the TOPOGRAPHY cheat does, but generates a grid-less map in EMF format XXNAMEXX_nogrid.emf. See the following for more on map topography export KK's How to Export Topography

GETALLGEAR

Entering this cheat will execute statement defined by onCheat property in description.ext. For example:

// description.ext
onCheat = "hint str _this";

The _this variable will contain "GETALLGEAR" text. Currently this is the only cheat that can activate onCheat event handler.

FLUSH

Flush all video memory to cure performance issue caused by textures being placed in the AGP memory

In Arma 3, up until 2.18 this had no effect.

2.18

SUPERFLUSH

Flush all video memory and as much system memory as possible. Empties all caches. Tries to free as much memory as possible.

2.18

ENDLOAD

Forcefully ends a scripted loading screen.

FREEZE

⚠

Disabled in retail version!

Instantaneous "freezing" the game. For debugging of freeze dump creation process.

CRASH

⚠

Disabled in retail version!

Forced game crash. For debugging of crash dump creation process.

FPS

Allows to artificially limit FPS for testing. Every time the FPS cheat is entered, it cycles through the following list (message shown):

• Limit FPS 60 - 1st time cheat entered
• Limit FPS 40 - 2nd time cheat entered
• Limit FPS 20 - 3rd time cheat entered
• Limit FPS 0 - 4th time cheat entered (FPS and counter reset)