Terminal

The terminal screen in-game when first loaded.

The terminal, also referred to in the game as the Vs Dave Developer Console, is a secret interactive program within Vs. Dave and Bambi used to access bonus songs and text snippets about the game's lore and characters. It was first introduced in the 3.0a release and was modified and expanded in the 3.0b update. Its most important purpose in gameplay is to unlock Exploitation.

Description

The terminal is designed and structured like a command line interface, especially Windows command prompt. Similar to the software, the terminal is a black screen with white Fixedsys text containing a header at the top that reads "Vs Dave Developer Console[Version 1.0.00001.1234] All Rights Reserved.". Beneath it is a text input area where the player can type any text; pressing any key input plays a sound. Ominous-sounding ambiance plays in the background as well. The header text is erased if the player uses clear, though the screen will scroll downward if inputs exceed the length of the viewport.

The terminal's code is primarily contained within the file TerminalState.hx, which can be viewed along with the rest of the Vs. Dave 3.0 source code on GitHub.[1]

Usage

The terminal is accessible after beating Story mode. Unlocking it requires pressing the 7 key four times: first in the Story menu, which unlocks the joke week; then in Supernovae, which takes you to Cheating; then in Cheating, which takes you to Unfairness; lastly in Unfairness, which takes you to the terminal. After the terminal has been discovered, another method of access will unlock for the player, where it will then also be found in the Console menu in Freeplay under the "ENTER TERMINAL" option.

Internally in the game's code, inputs are identified as commands (a certain prefixed word) and arguments (specifications to be used for commands). Each command has a certain number of arguments it can accept. The commands are as follows:

• admin:
  • admin grant keyword.dat: Triggers various game events. In 3.0a, it had 8 keywords; in 3.0b, one was removed, reducing it to 7. Using an argument other than "grant" returns the error message "Invalid Parameter".
• characters: Returns a list of 8 character names prefixed by the ".dat" file extension.
• clear: Wipes the contents of the screen.
• help: Returns a list of valid commands and their functions.
• open keyword: Returns a snippet of text. Replaced texts in 3.0b. It has 33 keywords initially available to the player and 7 additional keywords unlocked after using the vault command, totaling to 40.
• texts keyword (3.0a): Functionally identical to open. It had 14 keywords.[2] Was replaced by open in 3.0b.
• vault free p.r.a.e.m reflection: Unlocks 7 additional keywords for the open command. Free, p.r.a.e.m, and reflection can be typed in any order.

In total, there are 49 possible inputs in 3.0b and 22 in 3.0a.

Commands

admin grant

admin grant gives administrator permissions to various characters. The 8 keywords are as follows:

• admin grant dave.dat:
• admin grant bambi.dat:
• admin grant tristan.dat:
• admin grant expunged.dat: Aggressively spams the terminal screen with glitching effects and messages from Expunged gloating and mocking the player before crashing the game. Reopening it will reveal that the game has been altered significantly, replacing the program title with Vs. Expunged. The only option given to the player is to play the newly-unlocked Exploitation, which they must beat in order to reverse the changes.
• admin grant moldy.dat:
• admin grant exbungo.dat:
• admin grant recurser.dat (3.0a):
• admin grant boyfriend.dat:

open

open holds the bulk of Vs. Dave's story and character information, its contents of which are often informally referred to in the community as the "3.0(b) lore" (as separate from 3.0a, which lacked many of the current keywords with the most significant lore implications). It is highly heterogeneous in subject matter and in-universe authors. It shares 8 keywords with admin grant:

• open dave:
  • Forever lost and adrift.
    Trying to change his destiny.
    Despite this, it pulls him by a lead.
    It doesn't matter to him though.
    He has a child to feed.
• open bambi:
  • (3.0b)
    A forgotten GOD.
    The truth will never be known.
    The extent of his POWERs won't ever unfold.
  • (3.0a)
    A forgotten god.
    The truth will never be known.
    The extent of his powers won't ever unfold.
• open tristan:
  • The key to defeating the one whose name shall not be stated.
    A heart of gold that will never become faded.
• open moldy:
  • Let me show you my DS family!
• open recurser:
  • (3.0b)
    A being of chaos that wants to spread ORDER.
    Despite this, his sanity is at the border.
  • (3.0a)
    A being of chaos that wants to spread order.
    Despite this, his sanity is at the border.
• open exbungo:
  • [FAT AND UGLY.]
• open expunged:
  • (3.0b)
    [FILE DELETED]
    [FUCK YOU!]
  • (3.0a)
    The End. They weren't created by a beast.
    They were created by the one who wanted power the leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
    [DATA DELETED]
    [FUCK YOU!]
• open boyfriend:
  • (3.0b)
    LOG [REDACTED]
    A multiversal constant, for some reason. Must dive into further research.
  • (3.0a)
    LOG -1:
    Beep skeedoop bop! Skeep leep. Skadeep!

Another 14 keywords are numbers consisting of logs written by Dave across the span of several years:

• open 1: