Gub's Super Destroyer Arcade
AI disclosure: built using Claude Opus 5.5.The Stratagem Hero cabinet on your Super Destroyer becomes a full arcade: 10 games, chunky pixel art, 8-bit sound and an original menu march. There are five arcade games and the Super Destroyer Casino, where five games share one wallet. Only your screen and speakers change: no game files are replaced, and nothing is sent to other players.
This mod is lightly tested. If you run into a bug, please report it in the comments along with your HD2Runtime log (see "Reporting bugs" below).
Required mods
- Bingus Shared Loader (v15 or newer)
- HD2Runtime (0.28.0 or newer)
- Optional: CowboyBingus' Mod Options Menu (needs Bingus Shared Loader v18+) to change the settings in game. Without it the defaults below are used.
- Works with or without Super Citizen Edition. Without it the Stratagem Hero cabinet on your ship is switched off, so press the arcade key (Home) to open the arcade instead (see "How to use it").
What it does
Walk up to the Stratagem Hero cabinet and use it as normal. Instead of Stratagem Hero, the arcade menu fills the screen. Pick a game with up/down and press Space. Backspace takes you back to the menu from any game, and leaving the cabinet the usual way puts you back on the ship. Your best scores are saved for every game.The arcade
Hoverpack Hero. A Helldiver with a hoverpack, flying over a Super Earth city at night. Boost through the gaps between the pylons. Every pylon you pass is a point, and the pylons speed up as you go.Bug Hunt. A maze full of samples, with four Terminids on your tail. Grab every sample to liberate the sector. A stratagem beacon calls in an orbital strike, and for a few seconds the bugs panic and you can squash them (200 / 400 / 800 / 1600). Each bug hunts its own way:
- The Hunter comes straight at you.
- The Stalker cuts you off.
- The Bile Spewer flanks you.
- The Charger rushes in from far away.
Liberty Blocks. Falling bunker blocks for the Super Earth Engineering Corps. Fill a row to clear it, and four rows at once is a LIBERTY. The game shows where the piece will land and the next three pieces. The level goes up every 10 rows.
Liberty Sand. Falling blocks that crumble into sand when they land. The sand runs down and spreads out. Join one colour from the left wall to the right wall and that whole patch clears. You get a point per grain, times the level, and more for chains. White joins the yellow, blue and red at level 3.
When a menu opens, or you leave the cabinet mid-game, the game pauses and waits: press Space (or a direction) to continue.
The Super Destroyer Casino
All five casino games share one wallet. You start with 1,000 credits, and what you win at the slots you can bet at the roulette table. The wallet is saved. Go broke with nothing on a table and Super Earth reissues 1,000. A bet leaves the wallet the moment it goes down, so leave a game with chips on the table (Backspace or walking away from the cabinet) and they're gone, like walking away from a real table.Democratic Blackjack. The dealer stands on 17 (soft 17 too), blackjack pays 3:2 and you can double on your first two cards. Six-deck shoe, no splits.
Liberty Slots. A three-reel machine with one pay line (the middle row). The symbols are Super Earth, Hellbombs, Helldiver helmets, stratagem beacons, medals, samples and Terminids.
| On the pay line | Pays (times the bet) |
|---|---|
| 3 Super Earths (MANAGED DEMOCRACY!) | 250 |
| 3 Hellbombs | 80 |
| 3 helmets | 40 |
| 3 stratagem beacons | 20 |
| 3 medals | 12 |
| 3 samples | 8 |
| 3 Terminids | 4 |
| 2 Super Earths, anywhere on the line | 10 |
| 1 Super Earth | 1 (your bet back) |
| 3 pieces of gear in any mix, no Terminids | 1 (your bet back) |
Liberty Roulette. A single-zero wheel: the zero is Super Earth's own gold pocket. The wheel is a strip of pockets that spins under the pointer, with the last 14 results shown below it. Bets:
- Straight up on any number (0 to 36): 35:1.
- Dozens and columns: 2:1.
- Red or black, odd or even, 1-18 or 19-36: 1:1. The zero loses all of these.
Democracy Dice. Craps:
- Pass Line: on the come-out roll, 7 or 11 wins and 2, 3 or 12 loses. Anything else becomes the point, then the point wins and a 7 loses.
- Don't Pass Bar: the other side. On the come-out, 2 or 3 wins, 12 is a push, and 7 or 11 loses. Once there's a point, 7 wins and the point loses.
- Odds: behind a Pass Line bet once there is a point, up to 3x the Pass Line bet. Pays true odds: 2:1 on 4 or 10, 3:2 on 5 or 9, 6:5 on 6 or 8.
- One-roll bets: Field pays 1:1 on 3, 4, 9, 10 and 11, and 2:1 on 2 and 12. Any 7 pays 4:1. Any Craps (2, 3 or 12) pays 7:1.
Hellpod Plinko. Drop Hellpods through a pyramid of orbital defence pins. At each of the 12 rows a pod bounces left or right (even odds) and lands in one of 13 drop zones. Each zone pays the bet times its number: the edges pay big and the middle pays little. You can have up to 12 pods falling at once. Pick a risk level:
| Risk | Drop zones, edge to edge |
|---|---|
| Low | 9, 3, 1.6, 1.3, 1.1, 1, .5, 1, 1.1, 1.3, 1.6, 3, 9 |
| Medium | 30, 10, 4, 2, 1.1, .6, .3, .6, 1.1, 2, 4, 10, 30 |
| High | 150, 24, 8, 2, .7, .2, .2, .2, .7, 2, 8, 24, 150 |
Sound
The arcade makes its own 8-bit sound: two square waves, a triangle and noise, like the old consoles. The mod mixes it itself and plays it through Windows' standard audio output, so no game sound files are touched.- Sound effects in every game: hoverpack bursts, sample chomps, laser fire, asteroid booms, block thuds and line clears, card flips, chips, dice rattles, the roulette wheel clicking past each pocket, Plinko pings, and win and lose jingles.
- Music: Liberty March, an original march, plays on the arcade menu. Drop Zone is a quieter loop for the games, if you turn it on.
- The sound stops when you leave the cabinet or a menu opens over the arcade.
- If Windows won't open an audio output, the arcade just stays silent. The log says
arcade sound off: ...once.
Controls
Direction keys are W A S D, the arrow keys and I J K L, all at once. The real Stratagem Hero is still running under the arcade, and it hears WASD and the arrow keys, so those can start a round of it behind the arcade (you may hear it). I J K L moves exactly the same way and keeps Stratagem Hero quiet. Space, left click and the letter keys the games use don't wake it either.| Game | Keys |
|---|---|
| Menu | Up / down to choose, Space to play |
| Any game | Backspace: back to the menu |
| Hoverpack Hero | Space or left click: boost |
| Bug Hunt | Directions: move (you can turn early; it takes the turn at the next junction) |
| Orbital Defense | Left / right: turn. Up: thrust. Space: fire. Down: FTL jump |
| Liberty Blocks, Liberty Sand | Left / right: move. Up: turn. Down: soft drop. Space: slam |
| Democratic Blackjack | U / I: bet down / up (10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500). Space: deal. H: hit. J: stand. K: double |
| Liberty Slots | U / I (or down / up): bet down / up (10 to 500). Space: spin |
| Liberty Roulette, Democracy Dice | Directions: move over the table. Space: put a chip down, pick a chip from the rack (10 to 500), or press SPIN / ROLL, CLEAR, REBET |
| Hellpod Plinko | U / I: bet (10 to 500). Left / right: risk. Space: drop a pod (hold it to keep dropping) |
| Arcade key | Home (changeable in MODS): open or close the arcade without the cabinet |
How to use it
- Install with Arsenal and make sure the required mods are installed.
- On your Super Destroyer, use the Stratagem Hero cabinet. The arcade menu covers the screen. The log says
arcade you are at the Stratagem Hero cabinet. - Leave the cabinet the usual way. The log says
arcade closed (left the cabinet). - No Super Citizen Edition, or don't feel like walking? Press the arcade key (Home) anywhere: the arcade opens right where you stand. Press it again to close. Without Super Citizen Edition the cabinet is switched off, so this is your way in. (At a working cabinet, the key does nothing: leave the cabinet to close the arcade.)
- Optional: Escape > MODS > Destroyer Arcade to change the settings. Press APPLY (Tab).
| Setting | Default | Options |
|---|---|---|
| Arcade cabinet starts with | Arcade menu | Any one game, or Stratagem Hero (vanilla) |
| Direction keys | WASD, arrows and I J K L | Arrow keys only, I J K L only |
| Arcade key opens the arcade | On | Off = only the cabinet opens it (needs Super Citizen Edition) |
| Arcade key | Home | F8, Insert, End, Page Up |
| Draw on (troubleshooting) | UI world | Main world (try this if nothing shows up at the cabinet) |
| Hide the game when a menu opens | On | Off (only if the game hides itself at the cabinet with no menu open) |
| Game screen size | Fit the screen | Smaller |
| Sound effects | On | Off |
| Music | Arcade menu only | Menu and games, Off |
| Arcade volume | Medium | Low, High |
Quirks
- Steam build 25480438 only (the build HD2Runtime 0.28.1 supports). The mod checks the game's code and waits for HD2Runtime to confirm the game build before it looks for the cabinet. After a game update, the cabinet plays Stratagem Hero again and the log says why. The arcade key still opens the games, but then menus don't hide them: press it again to close.
- It only changes your screen. Teammates see you standing at the cabinet.
- When a menu opens over the game, the game pauses and hides until the menu closes. The log shows
arcade menu state ...lines. If the game hides at the cabinet with no menu open, send me those lines, then turn off "Hide the game when a menu opens" (or use I J K L, so Stratagem Hero underneath stays idle). - If nothing opens at the cabinet, look for
arcade cabinet in use by entity ...in the log and send me that line. - If the game doesn't show up at the cabinet but the log says
opened, set "Draw on" to "Main world" and use the cabinet again. - The game reads its keys only while it's on screen and Helldivers 2 is the active window.
- When you open the arcade with the arcade key (away from the cabinet), the game still gets your keys too: WASD walks your Helldiver around and Space may make it jump. Stand still and use I J K L to move in the games, and your Helldiver stays put.
- Scores and credits are saved in
GubDestroyerArcade.save, next to your Bingus logs. Delete the file to reset them. - If something keeps going wrong, the mod switches itself off for the session and gives you Stratagem Hero back. The log says
arcade stopped for this session. - Coming from an earlier test build: the start setting now opens the arcade menu by default, and the Blackjack credits carry over into the shared casino wallet.
Reporting bugs
Leave a comment describing what happened and paste your HD2Runtime log (the lines starting witharcade are the important ones). To copy it, open PowerShell and run:
Code:
Get-Content "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\CowboyBingus\Helldivers2\Logs\HD2Runtime.log" | Set-ClipboardCredits
- Gub: concept and testing.
- Built with Claude Opus 5.5.
- Cabinet, player and menu detection use the game offsets from Ship Station Hotkeys by CowboyBingus (Zero-Clause BSD). This mod only reads them: it never calls game code.
- Drawing on the game's screen follows Know Your Constellation by CowboyBingus (Zero-Clause BSD).
- HD2Runtime by Skyeshade. Bingus Shared Loader and Mod Options Menu by CowboyBingus.
- The arcade games are original takes on arcade classics (Flappy Bird, Pac-Man, Asteroids, Tetris, Sandtris). The mazes, art and names are original, and everything is drawn in code.
