You may already know about many of the more standard console commands in Nerf ArenaBlast, such as god, fly, ghost, allammo, etc. But arguably the most powerful and versatile command is the summon command, which allows you to spawn any actor (basically any physical object) defined within the game's files, vanilla or not. This tutorial will teach you how to properly use the summon command.

Finding an Actor's Internal Name

You need to know what an actor's internal name is before you can actually summon it. Nerf ArenaBlast (or NAB for short) has names for every actor defined within its code - these are called "internal names" because the game uses these names internally, or behind-the-scenes, while the game is running. Internal names and in-game names are not the same thing, however - just because the game says you picked up a Wildfire doesn't mean the game calls it the Wildfire in its code.

So how do you find an internal name for an actor? The simplest way to do this is by starting up NerfEd, the tool used to create maps and other assets for NAB. You can find NerfEd in the folder you installed NAB in - it should be in the System folder. If your install of NAB is vanilla, however, NerfEd crashes if you try to start it up - the retail version of NerfEd is missing key files required for it to function. This tutorial will assume you have the NAB Community Pack installed, which is available for free from this site and not only repairs NerfEd, but also adds tons of new content. Click here to go to the download page for the Community Pack. If extra content isn't your thing, click here to go to another help page describing how to fix NerfEd, but you might have a hard time following along with the tutorial.

Now, we get into the real action. For tutorial purposes, I'll be looking for the internal name of the Patriot weapon from the Raj Arena 2 mutator. I do have to warn you, however, that changing any data could seriously mess with your game, so please be careful.

Once NerfEd loads, pay attention to the browser on the right of the screen. This is the asset browser, which allows you to inspect assets and place them into maps. (We won't be placing anything into maps in this tutorial.) If the drop-down box at the top is not set to "Classes" already, go ahead and change it. The asset browser works similarly to the navigation pane in Windows Explorer. (If you don't know how to use it, you're kind of beyond helping at this point.) We want to find the Patriot, which is a weapon; however, custom assets are not loaded in the asset browser by default. Instead, we have to manually load them.

At the bottom of the browser, click the "Load" button, and a Windows Explorer popup should appear, with the System folder in your Nerf installation opened. Now we have to find the file named "RajMutators2.u". The Unreal Engine (which powers NAB, Unreal and its expansions, and the original Unreal Tournament) uses files with the ".u" file extension to store game assets.

Anyway, once you've opened RajMutators2.u in NerfEd, the next step is to find the internal name for the Patriot weapon. NAB's weapon pickups are stored under Actor -> Inventory -> Weapon -> NerfWeapon. Thankfully, it's easy to determine which of the 20-or-so assets is the Patriot's - one of them should say "RM2Patriot". Select it and look at the bottom of the browser, above the buttons, and you should see the Patriot's internal name, which is RajMutators2.RM2Patriot. This full name is required to summon the item.

Now that you have the internal name of the actor, you simply need to summon it in game. To do so, just open the console (tilde ~ or TAB will do so) and type:

summon RajMutators2.RM2Patriot

Press enter and the item will have spawned in front of you! Note that summoning an item isn't the same as it spawning naturally, and as a result, certain classes (especially AI) may not behave as intended. However, most weapons, ammo, projectiles, and pickups should be fine, as well as a number of other actors.