Find your game.prefs file in:
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Local Settings\Application Data\Gas Powered Games\SupremeCommander
debug = {
enable_debug_facilities = true
}
Just put it right at the beginning or end of the file, no need to tuck it into the other "debug" sections you may find. Now when you're running supcom, you can bring up the console with the ~ key (just under esc), and enter commands like AI_Instabuild. Debug hotkeys are also enabled, like alt-F2 for a unit creation menu. you can check out the hotkeys in \Supreme Commander\lua\keymap\defaultKeyMap.lua.
[need console info here.]
By default, you will find supreme commander in this folder: C:\Program Files\THQ\Gas Powered Games\Supreme Commander
I've installed mine to "C:\SupCom\Supreme Commander", so if you see me refer to that, just replace it with your own path.
All the SupCom game data is packed into .scd files in the \Supreme Commander\gamedata\ folder. SCD files are just renamed zip files. Use a tool like WinRar or 7Zip to read and write them.
For tinkering with mods, you will want to unpack the SCD you'll be dealing with into a "shadow" folder. "Shadowing" is how you can replace SupCom data with your own data, without messing up the original. Open lua.scd and extract it to a new folder within the Supreme Commander folder, so it looks like this: \Supreme Commander\shadow\lua\
Now you need to tell SupCom to use the shadow data instead of the original SCD files. The simplest way to do this is to set a data path with a command line switch. (more data path info in this thread on GPG forums)
Copy the shortcut you use to start SupCom, and rename the new one to "SupCom Shadow". Right click on shortcut and go to "properties". Add this to the "target":
/data ../shadow;../gamedata/*.scd;..
Your target should now look something like this: "C:\SupCom\Supreme Commander\bin\SupremeCommander.exe" /data ../shadow;../gamedata/*.scd;..
To test if this all works, and to make sure you can tell at a glance whether you're running standard SupCom or your shadowed version, test a very simple UI mod.
Lua is the language supcom uses for moddable stuff. You can open .lua files with any text editor.
Open "\Supreme Commander\shadow\lua\modules\ui\menus\main.lua"
Around line number 77 in that file, you will find the text for the main menu heading in the game:
local menuTop = {
title = '<LOC _Main_Menu>Main Menu',
Change everything inside the single quotes to 'SHADOWED' so it looks like this:
title = 'SHADOWED',
Save the file, and launch Supreme Commander. The main menu, which normally looks like this:
Should now look like this:
You are now set up for modding anything in the /lua/ folders. This works for all the other folders you'll find in SCD files, the same way. Tinker all you want, and if you break something completely, just delete the whole folder and extract a fresh version from the original SCD.
NOTE: You will have to re-do this every time you update supcom with a patch. After patching, delete everything in your shadow folder, and re-extract it from the original SCD files.