Editing Terminal (3.5) (section)

== Differences from 3.0 ==

While much is uncertain about its exact contents, there are many key things that have been both shown and stated about it across several months:

* The terminal is planned to be redesigned around being a puzzle that behaves "like an actual terminal" by requiring the player to move files, mount and unmount virtual drives to discover content, and path to hard drives to view their contents.[https://bsky.app/profile/mtm101.bsky.social/post/3l75zjc22qu2z][https://bsky.app/profile/mtm101.bsky.social/post/3l75zkzrshw2r] If implemented as described, 3.5 will completely change how the terminal works.
** There will be multiple puzzles. One early puzzle has been described (due to being so early on that spoiling it is insignificant) as requiring the player to mount [[Dave]]'s hard drive and path to it in order to view his logs.[https://bsky.app/profile/mtm101.bsky.social/post/3l75zo22wwr25]
** The virtual drive system was devised specifically to address the ambiguity of who created the files present in 3.0, as some are clearly authored by Dave while others are not and are nigh impossible to identify.[https://bsky.app/profile/mtm101.bsky.social/post/3l762fkilp72l] This indicates that, if implemented, the terminal will feature one or more additional drives belonging to characters whose present identities are unknown. A separate post also describes this as intending to clear up "''whose'' terminal you were on"[https://bsky.app/profile/mtm101.bsky.social/post/3l75zkzrshw2r], which may or may not be indicating that several terminals will be present.
* The more realistic terminal behavior is based heavily on MS-DOS.[https://bsky.app/profile/mtm101.bsky.social/post/3la67umpzkd23]  In addition to changing the text display from a Fixedsys font to a modifiable bitmap spritesheet containing [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437 Code Page 437][https://bsky.app/profile/mtm101.bsky.social/post/3lafgcjerts2k], [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_C%2B%2B Turbo C++] was listed as a potential inspiration for the display of text files.[https://bsky.app/profile/mtm101.bsky.social/post/3la6a4kej3o2n] This was first stated on November 4th, 2024 and showcased in [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfiOPH1AfCo the Terminal OST video] released on March 7th, 2025 on the official Vs. Dave YouTube channel. In the second track, the terminal is a glitchy mess of colors and glyphs (including box-drawing characters typical of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text-based_user_interface TUIs]) bearing resemblance to the payload of the MS-DOS virus [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvhhRaCPe6U crash.com].
** These point to the new terminal having a completely overhauled UI system as well as multiple substates, whereas the 3.0 terminal only has an alternate state for [[Expunged]] being granted admin.
* As mentioned, the Terminal's music and sound has been remade. TheAmbience has been replaced by '''The Terminal''', and expungedGrantedAccess + iTrollYou have been replaced by '''[HAHA! GET HACKED!!!]'''. It is unknown whether other sounds, such as the keypress sounds, will also be changed.
** ''The Terminal'' is an original composition by MissingTextureMan101 made to replace TheAmbience due to it containing the now-retconned song Recursed, of which it is a heavily slowed version. When sped up, ''The Terminal'' can be more clearly heard to contain a variation of the House leitmotif.
** ''[HAHA! GET HACKED!!!]'' samples raw data audio from a debug build of 3.5 with its best segments spliced together.[https://bsky.app/profile/mtm101.bsky.social/post/3ljtuh5s37c2s]
* The header text and text entry have changed. The title in every image provided thus far has read '''Vs Dave Developer Console [Version 2.0.0.0]''' and has removed the "All Rights Reserved." beneath it. The caret symbol has also been replaced with '''C:\>''', further indicative of the changes to the Terminal to feature hard drives.
* The commands themselves have changed. Very few changes have been publicly shown, and they are highly likely to change on release.
** '''help''' has the same syntax, but in the showcased images of the Terminal so far only lists the commands '''help''', '''clear''', '''admin''', and a new command '''colortest''', which displays all possible colors that the system can render. Colortest may or may not be a debug command for development purposes only. 
** The help text itself has changed for some commands. Help has become "''Shows this help menu, pass a command name for more information.''" and admin has become "''View the admin list and manage admins''." Clear is the same.
* Error handling and display have changed. This difference was first showcased in the Terminal OST video. In the background of track 1, which is a screenshot of presumably another development version of the Terminal, using the help command with an invalid number of arguments now returns an error rendered in red text, the provided text reading "Too many arguments! (Expected 1 or 0; Got: 2!)".[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfiOPH1AfCo] It can probably be assumed that this error handling will newly extend to all commands in contrast to 3.0 only having invalid argument number handling for admin. This is additionally the first instance of multicolor text output being shown in the Terminal and the first instance of a blinking text cursor.
* The default color of text has changed from pure white ('''#ffffff''') to light gray ('''#b9b9b9''').
[[File:VsDaveTerminal.png|thumb|C# prototype Terminal showcasing new files, commands, and UI|600px]]
* At least some of the changes described thus far are based on a C# prototype of the "new" Terminal created by MissingTextureMan101 several years ago titled '''VsDaveTerminal.exe''', intended to be ported to Haxe and expanded on.[https://bsky.app/profile/mtm101.bsky.social/post/3l75zrre7na2h] One screenshot of this C# Terminal was shown, albeit clarified that none of its contents are canon anymore (specifically the file sizes and file structure). This in mind, this non-canon version of the Terminal still implies significant changes will come to the kinds of files accessible in the 3.5 Terminal and even perhaps new commands that can be - or at least, at one time could've been - used to interact with them more robustly. It also suggests that file sizes and structure have significant enough lore ramifications for them to be important to clarify not to treat in this screenshot as canonical.
** Ignoring any analysis of the file structure, this screenshot very explicitly confirms that the Vs. Dave universe in itself is digital, and that the 3.5 Terminal ''potentially'' will greatly expand its file contents to contain most, if not all important and discrete entities in its universe. It appears to feature locations and the timeline itself.
** Three potential-or-retconned commands include '''dir''', '''diag''', and '''send'''. Dir displays a named list of files in the current directory with their file sizes as well as the total size on the disk. '''Diag''' appears to perform a diagnostic check on files for errors and warnings, and skips files if they are determined unnecessary for diagnosis; this command can also output text in blue. '''Send''' is described as sending character files to "bookmarked coordinates", in this example being "arbys", rendering its resulting text in green. The behavior of '''open''' is also changed, allowing one to navigate to subfolders.
** '''madden.dat''', '''bf.dat''', and '''gf.dat''' have been added as new possible character files.