Implementing Developer Cheats

author: John Hartley 

 Posted on: 4/25/2025

Blog Entry Part 1: The Problem

John had to solve during this week of development

During development and testing, it became clear that manually testing things like health, ammo, and player invincibility was taking too long.
Without cheats, it was difficult to quickly simulate late-game scenarios or stress test mechanics.
The lack of quick debugging tools was slowing down development efficiency and making it harder to rapidly verify gameplay features like health management, damage systems, and ammo handling.
This conflicted with the team's goal of efficient iteration and rapid prototyping for gameplay balancing and bug fixing.

Blog Entry Part 2: Problem Solution

The solution was to implement a custom CheatManager class called MyCheatManager and hook it up properly through the MyPlayerController.
This allows the player to input commands through the in-game console (~ key) and instantly trigger useful debugging functions.
I implemented a toggleable God Mode, a Refill Health cheat that also updates the UI health bar, and a Refill Ammo cheat for the current weapon.
Connecting the HealthComponent’s events properly ensured that the health bar now refreshes instantly when health is refilled.
Overall, this setup dramatically improves our team's workflow by allowing developers to quickly simulate different gameplay states without needing to play through the entire level manually every time.
The custom cheats system gives the team a huge user experience benefit internally, allowing for faster testing, balancing, and debugging at every stage of development.