Violet Raystorm

Violet-RS

Violet Raystorm is a Gradius-Inspired game by The Great Metaphor, Facade, and Delta. But mostly Meta.

Violet Raystorm was made in 2023 and is protected under Creative Commons 4.0. See LICANCE file included in the game for more details.

Violet Raystorm is open-source, however the source is not saved as a text file, and can only be reasonably loaded with the tic8. Still, the source code can be found here, complete with some glitchy HTML artifacts that I don't know how to fix: Violet Raystorm Source.<https: codeberg.org="" tgmgames="" violet-rs=""> </https:>

Story

It's the year 20XX. Planet Raven is under attack from the Buredian Empire. You, the pilot of a the M-366, must go and destroy The K.O.S., a biomechanical supercomputer that is leading the Buredian Army.

Yeah that's all you get for the plot. It's a Gradius Clone programmed on the TIC-80. Did you expect a long, drawn-out plot?

Controls

Violet Raystorm can be played with with either a controler or gamepad (although I haven't tested it with gamepad):

* Arrow Keys: move

* z: shoot

* x: Redeam currently selected powerup

Powerups and scoring.

Similar to Gradius if you've played it, collecting a powerup increments the powerup gauge in the bottom left, and pressing the powerup button redeams the currently selected powerup. The powerups are:

•  B. Bomb
• S. Spread (Slower than the default gun but also shoots upwards. replaces laser)
• L. Laser (Pierces through most enemies, and does extra damage to enemies it can't pierce. replaces spread)
• O. Option (Dramatically increases firepower. Can be selected multiple times.)
• S. Shield (tanks 1 hit and then dissapears. Despite the sprite, it covers your entire ship, like in some of the early Gradius Games. Can be selected multiple times, if it's lost.)

Unlike Gradius, powerups are dropped when you kill 3 enemies of the same type in a row. Your progress towards your next powerup can be seen in in the top left corner of the screen, besides your score. When a powerup drops, it also gives a score bonus. Carefully choosing where to move, when to shoot, and what powerups to use is vital for getting to full power and getting an optimal score.

There's no lives in Violet Raystorm, you just lose score and all your powerups if you die. You lose more score than you can get in a single checkpoint, but for a casual playthrough just focus on beating the game first.

Progression

Every time you enter a new level, you gain the option to skip straight to that level next time you play. Levels 1-5 are the first loop, levels 6-11 are the second.

If, for whatever reason, you want to reset your progress, use the tic-80 command `folder` to open the working directory, open `.local/`, and delete the save file. Tic80 save files don't have names you'd expect, but instead hash digests of either the code or the save-id. Unless other platforms have different hashing algorythms, the file should be called `307d3473e797fe713c5f53ff3b457c9a`

PLEASE NOTE: Due to limitations of the TIC-80, The desktop version of Violet Raystorm can not save score or progress. Please download the game if you want your progress to be saved.