User:M.Knight/sandbox

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Radirgy
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Title screen

Developer: Milestone
Music: Kou Hayashi, Daisuke Nagata
Release date: AC : Oct 2005 ; GC : JP : 25 May 2006 , US: Cancelled ; PS2 : 25 May 2006, Wii : MSC 1 : JP, US ; MSC 2 : JP ; X360 : Sakura Flamingo Archives : JP.
Previous game: Chaos Field
Next game: Karous


Radirgy ( ラジルギ ), also known as Radio Allergy, is a vertical shmup from 2005 developed by Milestone. This Milestone's first foray into the cel-shaded style that will define their shmups' visual identity from that point onward.


Gameplay Overview

  • Vertical game
  • 1 player only
  • 8-direction movement and 3 buttons
  • Player starts with 3 lives
  • Default extends are at 8 and 20 million points
  • No loops, a full run lasts around 30 minutes

Controls

  • A (Hold): Shoot
  • B (Hold): Slash
  • C : Activate the ABS Net and become temporarily invincible. Requires a gauge to be full
  • Not holding A nor B : Deploy a shield

Note : Preemptively holding the C button in order to instantly activate the ABS Net as soon as it becomes ready will not work. Activating the ABS Net requires a fresh C press after it becomes ready.

Interface

- Top left green radio reception signal : Score multiplier

- Top left battery : Player HP

- Top left horizontal green gauge : Score multiplier gauge

- Top right white number : Player score

- Bottom left blue gauge : ABS Net gauge

- Top right red gauge : (Mid)boss HP. Only appears during (mid)boss fights

Unlockable Secrets

Display additional score information

When playing the game, it is possible to activate an additional text display on the top right of the screen that will appear whenever an enemy is killed or a point item is collected.

When killing an enemy or collecting a floating point item, this scoring indicator shows the base point value, the current multiplier, and the final value. When collecting a ground item, it will also show the total number of ground items collected up until that point. The multiplier will always be 1 for those specific items, so the base and final values will be identical.

Depending on the version and port, the method to display the indicator differs :

  • Arcade : Press Start while holding C
  • GC : Press Z
  • DC : Press Start while holding X
  • Wii : Press Start while holding X

<Please check all of that stuff>

Mecha configuration

Before starting each run, the player can mix-and-match two parameters for the mecha :

- Shot type. 3 different shots types are available : Wide shot, 123 laser, Bubble shot. More details in (weapons) - Speed. 3 speeds can be chosen from, each being assigned a number of stars to denote the speed level : Slow **, Normal ***, Fast *****

The mecha color will reflect which one of the 9 combinations is used. Once chosen, the combination of shot type and speed cannot be switched during the run, even when using a Continue.

Life system

The player starts with 3 lives, each represented by a green rectangle inside the battery in the HUD.

The mecha can freely move over enemies as there is no collision damage in this game. However, it will lose a life when its brown backpack hits a bullet, a laser, or a flame.

If the player collects an extend while the battery is already at the maximum, the battery will increase in size to accommodate the new life. If the battery has been previously partially emptied due to prior damage, then the extend will only refill one unit of the current battery. Since there are two extends, the battery can thus go up to 5 units in size.

One noticeable influence of this mechanic is on a late-game item that can fully refill the life battery. (refer to Scoring->ground item and Milestone logo for more details) If the battery was at its default size of 3, the player is guaranteed to have 3 lives after collecting it, but a battery size of 4 or 5 could increase the life refill potential of this item even more. This can allow the player to tackle the last section of the game with more resources if they collected extends before losing any lives.

There is no point bonus for remaining lives nor for battery size through the game. Losing a life does not inflict any scoring or power penalty, and it spawns several point items around the player as well as an ABS Net recharge item in order to assist with recovery.

Weapons

Shot : Holding the shot button will make the player mecha continuously fire. There are three different shot types the player is asked to choose from before starting a run :

Shot type / Description Wide shot / A standard wide shot with medium power and a large range. 123 Laser / A powerful laser with a narrower range. The twin lasers in the center of the attack are piercing, while the lasers on the side will lock on to enemies they hit and keep damaging it until it's destroyed, leaves the screen, or gets too far away from the player Bubble shot / A more unconventional weapon that mixes multiple types of bubbles. The middle bubbles will travel upwards and slow down whenever they touch an enemy, inflicting continuous damage while they overlap. The side bubbles move diagonally upwards and then explode. It is also possible to use an external rapid-fire for this shot type in order to increase the frequency at which bubbles are fired, thus increasing the overall player DPS. [VIDEO SHOWCASE : ]

Sword : The mecha is equipped with a sword. Its range is much more limited than the shot, but it can inflict powerful damage on the enemies it hits. While holding the dedicated button, the mecha will keep swinging the sword, with very short cooldowns between two swings.

Power-up system : The shot and sword start at a default power level, and both weapons' power (and range in the case of the shot) can be increased 6 times by collecting dedicated items from specific containers.

When taking a hit, or when using a Continue, no power-down penalty is incurred. If the shot and sword are used at the same time, the individual power (and width in the case of the shot) is reduced.

Shield : When the player doesn't shoot nor slash for a second, the mecha will deploy a shield in front of it. The shield will cancel bullets that touch it (but not flames nor lasers). If the player directly touches an enemy with the shield, said enemy will receive continuous contact damage from it.

ABS Net : A disc-shaped force field that surrounds the player mecha and temporarily makes it invincible.

Activating the ABS Net requires the ABS Net gauge to be full. When the ABS Net is active, it will cancel the bullets and auto-collect the items inside its radius.

At the end of the ABS Net's duration, two things will happen : A full screen bullet cancel will occur, and every on-screen item will be auto-collected.

The ABS Net gauge is immediately emptied when an ABS Net is activated, but said gauge can be recharged even when the ABS Net is currently active. This means it is possible to chain multiple ABS Net uses one after the other, provided that it is fully recharged in time.

Hazard types

Hazards in this game can be classified into 4 different categories, depending notably on the possible ways to cancel them.


Bullet type / Can damage player on contact / Can be cancelled with shot and sword / Can be cancelled by shield / Can be cancelled by ABSNet

Solid bullets

Most of the bullet types in the game belong to this category. Those are usually round (but wave-shaped blue bullets also count) and will inflict damage on the player when a collision occurs. The shield and ABSNet can cancel

Y N Y Y

Destructible bullets

Y Y Y Y

Harmless bullets

N Y Y Y

Non-cancellable hazards

Y N N N

Items

Radirgy features many item types which can all help the player in a way or another.

Depending on the item type, the method to spawn them will be different. The most common scenario is the regular point item that spawns when killing every enemy in a wave or hitting big enemies in specific spots. Some will appear when destroying specific item carriers, while others require the use of item juggling. Once spawned, items will slowly fall off the screen until they are interacted with or leave the playfield. Transitioning from a level to another will also not migrate the onscreen items to the next stage, and as such, any leftover uncollected item will be discarded.

The game has a juggling mechanic that allows the player to keep some item types on screen by hitting them with the sword. This pushes the item upwards and also has a chance to randomly change it into another item. Items that change due to juggling can only mutate into one of the other item types that can also be juggled.

Table with : image / description / Behavior when slashed

- Power up / Spawns from item carriers. Increases the power and width of the shot (and sword?) / Collected - Automatic shield / Spawns from item carried once the mecha is full powered. Brings up a shield in front of the player mech even if its shooting. Warning : shield will be automatically retracted once duration is over even if the player isn't firing. In this case, the mecha can redeploy the shield as usual, but only after it has retracted it and waited the usual shield deployment duration. [VIDEO SHOWCASE : ] / Collected - 1UP / Spawns at the top of the screen when the extends thresholds are reached. This item can also very rarely spawn from an item carrier. / Collected - ABS Net recharge / Fully recharges the ABS Net gauge when collected. Whenever the player is hit, this item will always spawn among the released items, but it can be juggled into something else / Juggled - Point item (small and big) / Item that spawns when fully killing an enemy wave or destroying one of a big enemy's weakspots. The item starts out small and has a base value of 500 points when collected in this state. The most likely item this can transform into when juggled is its bigger variant, worth 3000 points instead / Juggled - Multiplier boost / Fills 25% of the multiplier gauge, boosting the current multiplier to the next possible value / Juggled - Bullet converter / Rare item that transforms every single on-screen bullet into a small point item when picked up. Lasers are not converted into items / Juggled - Floor objects / Square items left by destroyed ground structures. There are 255 items in the game and their value increases the more of them you collect (see scoring-> ground items and milestone logo) / Nothing - Milestone logo / Special logo that can be triggered once in stage 5 under specific circumstances (see scoring-> ground items and milestone logo). When picked up, it will grant a 1 million point bonus (which can be multiplied) and will refill the player's HP bar / Nothing

Additionally, the following pill items are automatically collected. Instead of moving towards the player mecha, they will directly rush towards the respective gauges they fill.

image / name / description - Blue pill / Increases the ABS Net gauge. Blue pills are spawned when killing enemies, inflicting damage on larger enemies and destroying their weak spots. <Check if sword gives more or not> Canceling destroyable bullets with the shot or sword will also generate blue pills. - Green pill / Increases the multiplier gauge. Green pills are spawned when canceling bullets with the ABS Net and the shield. Additionally, contact damage inflicted on enemies by touching them with the shield will also generate green pills. The rate at which this contact damage pill generation occurs is faster if an ABS Net is also active at the same time.

Scoring

Radirgy's scoring was designed with heavy inspiration from caravan shmup scoring<ref>shmuplations interview<ref> and its focus on quickly killing enemy waves. The scoring system also adds several layers of complexity with its multiplier, gauges and item management.

Enemy wave quick-killing

Caravan shmups traditionally feature a dynamic wave spawning system in which an enemy wave being fully destroyed or leaving the screen is what will trigger the next wave's spawn. Radirgy also follows this system, with the additional twist that several sets of enemy waves are simultaneously active and independent from one another, instead of a single set like it usually is the case.

Typically, stages in Radirgy have one set of large enemies, where killing the current large enemies will spawn the next ones, and several sets of small enemy waves. Since focusing on one enemy wave can come at the cost of the other waves, juggling the destruction of all the enemy waves is one important aspect of the scoring.

Multiplier

Radirgy features a multiplier system. The vast majority of points the player can get are subject to a multiplier that goes from x1 to x16, in increments of powers of 2. This means the multiplier goes from x1 to x2 to x4 to x8 and then x16. Ground items are one of the few things that aren't affected by the multiplier, but other enemy kills or point item collections can have their value multiplied.

The multiplier is set to x1 at the beginning of each stage, and the multiplier gauge will be empty. Whenever the player collects green pills, the multiplier gauge will fill. When the gauge reaches specific thresholds inside this gauge, the multiplier will increase. The radio signal strength indicator in the HUD will also change to reflect the current multiplier.

Multiplier / number of pills needed / battery icon / visual when killing an enemy

x1 x2 x4 x8 x16

When not being fed green pills, the gauge will gradually decrease over time. The player thus has to regularly generate green pills at a high enough rate to prevent the multiplier loss. The story dialogues that occur before and after (mid)bosses will freeze the multiplier decrease but will still let it increase.

Losing a life will not impact the multiplier nor incur any direct scoring penalty.

Big enemies weak spots

In order to more easily ensure enemy wave quick-killing and multiplier increase, routinely using the ABSNet is essential, either to provide the invincibility that makes it safer to move across the screen and kill waves quickly, or to generate green pills by canceling bullets.

In both cases, the efficiency of pill collection can be optimized by targeting bigger enemies' weak spots. These spots can provide green pills when the shield or ABS Net is used on top of them, and blue pills plus a small point item when destroyed. In some cases, destroying a weak spot can also prevent the enemy from shooting some bullets. A destroyed weak spot will emit white smoke clouds.

[VIDEO SHOWCASE : ]

Enemy waves and bosses in the game are air-based. However, there are also ground turrets that the player can destroy. Whenever one of those are destroyed, a blue square-shaped item with a picture inside will appear in its place. Collecting it will give the player some additional points.

Most of these turrets are fixed ground objects that simply move alongside the scrolling, but the stage 5 trains also count as such. Each of their cabins is considered as a turret and will give a floor item when destroyed.

There are 255 turrets like this in the game, and thus 255 icons. The point value for each item collected depends on the total number of items that have already been collected. The formula for ground items' value is as follows :

Point value = n * {20+10*(n-1)} / 2

Where n is the total number of items collected. The ground items' point value is also unaffected by the multiplier.

If the player collects more than 97% of ground items, a Milestone logo can be collected in stage 5. In order to uncover the logo, the player has to shoot a hidden spot on the ground, located in the second half of the stage, between the two train tracks when they split and go their own ways. The secret spot is only vulnerable to shots so letting go of the sword when attacking it will uncover it much faster.

[Image : Logo location]

The Milestone logo is worth 1 million points and unlike the regular ground items, its value can be affected by the multiplier for a maximum of 16 million points.

Bullet conversion

This advanced strategy exploits the bullet converter item in order to change bullet-heavy sections into lucrative sources of points. When picking up this item, every bullet on screen gets changed into a point item, and these items can also be juggled in order to change one or several of them into another bullet converter item, thus perpetuating the cycle of converting enemy bullets into point items.

This strategy can provide a noticeable amount of points, especially against bosses and midbosses with heavier bullet patterns. On the other hand, there are several reasons why the strategy in general is advanced and risky :

  • The bullet converter item's random chance of spawning when slashing an item is very low, thus requiring good luck to trigger one. Having access to more items on screen at the same time can boost the chance to have a converter item spawn, though the odds are still low. Besides, bullet converters are one-time-use items, which means a new one needs to be spawned for every single conversion.
  • During extended uses of the conversion trick (such as during boss fights), using the ABS Net causes all the spawned items to be collected, which ends the bullet conversion streak. This means the player will have to avoid using the ABS Net through this scoring trick and dodge bullets that would have been canceled by an ABS Net activation otherwise. As a side-effect, the player will have to regularly spawn and collect multiplier-increasing items to maintain a high multiplier and maximize the value of the point items that this scoring trick will generate.
  • Under some circumstances, having too many items on screen at once can result in the game freezing or crashing [VIDEO SHOWCASE : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjoA49A6yFY ]


Game Modes

All of the ports of the game feature a standard Arcade Mode. On top of that, some of the ports provide one of the additional modes : Manpuku and Owakari. These port-exclusive modes feature similar enemy waves and bosses but provide some tweaks to the mechanics.

In both modes, the two extends from Arcade Mode are not available. However the Milestone logo can still be triggered and refill the player's battery.

Another shared change is that a remixed version of the soundtrack will play instead of the Arcade OST.

Manpuku

Available on : GC

Manpuku mode's main change is that the multiplier is no longer capped to x16. It instead goes up to x256, once again in powers of 2, from x2 to x4 to x8 to x16 to x32 to x64 to x128 and then x256.

In order to reflect this new cap, the radio signal strength logo can turn red when the multiplier reaches values that are exclusive to this mode.

Owakari

Available on : PS2

Owakari Mode increases the general difficulty of the game by increasing the speed at which enemy bullets are fired. Some enemies will also replace the bullets they usually fire by bigger ones.

Misc tips and info

  • Before starting a run, the player will be given the option to display story dialogues or completely disable them. If the story dialogues are enabled, the player can either let them play out or can press buttons to go through them faster. These will occur at the beginning of each stage, and before each (mid)boss.

One quirk of this feature is that if the story segments are disabled entirely, the bonus enemies that spawn after midbosses are quick-killed will also get disabled. And since story dialogue popups freeze the multiplier gauge's decrease, the multiplier will instead keep falling with no enemies in sight to recharge it, up until the regular enemy spawns in the later half of the stage are triggered.

[VIDEO SHOWCASE : ]

  • Bosses from stage 1 to 4 have an antenna on top of them. Destroying the antenna will cause all boss parts to be destroyed.

List of superplay materials

Please refer to https://shmups.wiki/library/List_of_superplay_materials#Milestone

Video References

Arcade

jin itaria run : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHYFvxoIM0o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BpeHIh4kQ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S6wH_sbMV8

superplay DVD : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyRLsL-uucg

Manpuku

superplay dvd : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EJRhm2zdWo

Owakari superplay DVD : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IrsKnazthg


References

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