Butterfly Samurai is a vertical-scrolling shooter coded by Lancer-X. Five eldritch ghosts have invaded the realm, summoned by a demon, and it is your duty to destroy them.
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Butterfly Samurai is a basic scrolling shooter. Use the arrow keys to move around, and hold Z to fire. There are, however, some other things a prospective player should know about.
Arrow keys- Move your player around
Left Shift- Hold to focus weapon
Z- Hold to attack
X- Toggle weapon aiming configuration
L- Gives 3 extra lives at the cost of a boutonniere
S- Slows down the game 10% permanently at the cost of a boutonniere (stackable) (player remains at full speed)
F- Slows down the game 90% temporarily at the cost of a boutonniere (player remains at full speed)
W- Charges katana to 100% instantly at the cost of a boutonniere
P- Pauses the game
Escape- Exits the game
While enemy bullets typically have to strike you in the centre to hurt you, there is plenty of room for error for hitting the enemies with your own attacks. Do not be too concerned about accuracy.
Your katana has two different modes of attack--normal and focused. Hold down SHIFT to focus your attack. Focused attacks are typically more accurate and damaging than unfocused attacks, but cover less area and slow you down while you are using them.
You can either aim your attacks in front of you (the default), or alternatively you can launch spreading attacks which are less damaging but cover more area. Press X to switch between these different configurations.
When spirits are destroyed, their bullets will evaporate. If you are near these bullets when that occurs, some of the expended energy will be channelled into your blade. As your blade powers up, your attacks become more potent.
Note that attacking with the blade will cause some of the stored energy inside it to be released.
You can drastically improve the power of your katana's shots by upgrading it. When your katana is fully charged, you will occasionally flash white with energy. If you wait a certain amount of time during this process without attacking nor being hit, you will expend about half the energy in your blade and upgrade its power level to do more damage.
You have a number of extra lives. Each time you get hit, your life will be restored with one of these until you have none left.
You begin the game with a single boutonniere, and can obtain more later. At any time you can invoke the magic inside one of them with a key press to bring about one of the following effects:
L- Grants you up to three extra lives (to a maximum of nine)
S- Slows down everything but the player slightly for the rest of the game
F- Drastically slows down everything but the player for a short duration
W- Charges up your weapon to full charge
The boutonniere is lost when you invoke the magic.
You are awarded additional boutonniere for each eldritch ghost you vanquish, and for every 500 spirits you destroy.
There are a total of six stages in the game. You will advance to the next stage upon destroying the eldritch ghost of the stage you are on.
You may press 'P' to pause the game at any time, and press another key to resume.
SDL and SDL_Image are both licensed under the GNU LGPL. LibPNG and zlib are licensed under a different, non-restrictive license. MinGW permits programs compiled with it to be licensed as per the creator's will.
Butterfly Samurai at the moment does not carry a license. At the moment the source is also unavailable.
There are no technical restrictions as to why Butterfly Samurai could not be ported to other platforms that have GCC, SDL and OpenGL. However this has not been done at this stage.