List of internal commands

This page is a list of internal commands usable in Internal scripting.

activateteleporter

activateteleporter

Not to be confused with activeteleporter.

Make the first spawned teleporter in the room do its actively-teleporting animation, and change it to be the flashy teleporting color. This will happen even if the teleporter is already white (activeteleporter).

It matters which one of activateteleporter or activeteleporter is run first, even if they happen on the same frame.

Touching the first spawned teleporter after this command is run will not overwrite your tsave.vvv in 2.2 and below (in 2.3 and later your telesave cannot be overwritten anyway), and a teleporter activity zone will not spawn.

Calling this command in a room with no teleporters will trigger undefined behavior in 2.2 and below, and do nothing in 2.3 and later.

activeteleporter

activeteleporter

Not to be confused with activateteleporter.

Make the first spawned teleporter in the room light up, although it will not do the pulsating animation that an activated teleporter usually does. If the first spawned teleporter is already doing the pulsating animation and is doing the flashy teleport color (activateteleporter), then this command will make it white, but it won't stop its animation.

It matters which one of activeteleporter or activateteleporter is run first, even if they happen on the same frame.

Touching the first spawned teleporter after this command is run will still overwrite your tsave.vvv in 2.2 and below (in 2.3 and later your telesave cannot be overwritten anyway), and a teleporter activity zone will still spawn. However, if this is run after activateteleporter, then it won't overwrite your tsave.vvv, and a teleporter activity zone will not spawn.

Calling this command in a room with no teleporters will trigger undefined behavior in 2.2 and below, and do nothing in 2.3 and later.

alarmoff

alarmoff

Turn the alarm off (see alarmon).

alarmon

alarmon

Turn the alarm on. More specifically, it periodically plays sound effect 19 (crashing.wav), every 20 frames, until it is turned off.

It is temporarily paused when either the ESC/ENTER/teleporter screen or "Game paused" screen is up.

The alarm is turned off when the player exits to the main menu, or when alarmoff is called.

altstates

altstates (<state>)

Note that altstates is plural, i.e. spelled with an S at the end.

Set the alt state to <state>. By default, the alt state is 0. Custom levels do not support alt states at all.

• <state>: The alt state to be set to. Different alt states will make different versions of rooms appear when you go to them in the main game map.
  • 1
    • the version of the trinkets room in the ship with the giant trinkets warp
    • the version of the Secret Lab spawn room with both obstructing pillars
  • 2
    • the version of the Secret Lab spawn room with one obstructing pillar destroyed

Note that the alternate version of Prize for the Reckless that removes the spikes to the trinket along with changing the roomname to "I Can't Believe You Got This Far" in No Death Mode or "Imagine Spikes There, if You Like" in Time Trials is not handled by alt states. Instead, the room is simply loaded differently if the game is in No Death Mode or in a Time Trial.

audiopause

audiopause (<state>)

This command was added in VVVVVV 2.3.

Force-enable or disable the audio pause, regardless of the audio pause state in game options. By default, this is off, i.e. allow audio to keep playing during unfocus pause.

• <state>: The state to set the audio pause to. Either on or off. Anything else has no effect.

This command is unused in the main game.

backgroundtext

backgroundtext

This command is intended to be used as a part of constructing a text box. See the section on text box construction for more info.

For the text box in memory, do not initiate an ACTION prompt when speak or speak_active is called.

befadein

befadein

Instantly undo a faded- or fading- in screen caused by fadeout, without the animation of fadein.

blackon

blackon

Turn off blackout mode (see blackout).

blackout

blackout

Turn on blackout mode.

In this mode, the screen will keep rendering on each frame whatever was rendered last on the screen. However things can still render on the screen and overwrite what's supposed to be frozen.

Most notably, text boxes will still appear, and in 2.2 and below, the "Game paused" screen will still render when the game is unfocused (but it no longer renders in 2.3 and later); but the text boxes always render on top no matter what. These text boxes include the activity zone prompts, the teleporter activity zone prompt and the teleporter "Game saved". As well, room text will always render onscreen.

The ESC screen brought up by pressing ESC, and pause screen and teleporter screen brought up by pressing ENTER will still render, but it seems that during their animations of being brought up or down, the background is a copy of the last ESC/ENTER/teleporter screen that was brought down. If an ESC/ENTER/teleporter screen hasn't been brought down, then it simply defaults to a solid black screen.

Additionally, the player's on-ground and on-roof flipping eligibility is unchanged while in this state. This means that if they are eligible to flip off the floor but not eligible to flip off of the ceiling at the time this command is run, they can always flip off of the floor, but never be able to flip off of the ceiling; and vice versa. Similarly, if they are neither eligible to flip off the floor or ceiling when this command is run, they will never be able to flip at all.

This mode is turned off when the player exits to the main menu, or when blackon is called.

bluecontrol

bluecontrol

Run Victoria's activity zone script, which also creates Victoria's activity zone when finished.

changeai

changeai (<crewmate>, <behavior>, [position])

Set the behavior of a crewmate.

• <crewmate>: The identifier of the createcrewman entity. See the section on createcrewman identifiers.
• <behavior>: Can be any of the behaviors from the following list:
  • followplayer
  • followred
  • followyellow
  • followgreen
  • followcyan
  • followblue
  • followpurple (this will actually follow the pink-colored entity)
  • faceleft
  • faceright
  • panic
  • followposition (requires field 3, "position", to specify position)

The behaviors prefixed with "follow" (other than followposition) will make the crewmate try to get close to the x-position of the target crewmate or player, and the crewmate will not try anything in regards to reaching the y-position of the target crewmate or player.

faceleft and faceright will do what their names say.

panic will make the crewmate periodically move back and forth, like in the main game cutscene where the game shows you where the lost crewmates are in their respective rooms, and they're pacing back and forth and being all worried.

followposition requires using the third field to specify the given position that the crewmate should follow.

• [position]: Required when the behavior is followposition, to specify the x-position the crewmate should try to move to. Otherwise unused.

Note that since the code for this behavior is reused from the behavior to follow another crewmate or the player, the crewmate will stop short of the targeted x-position, and the distance they are short by will vary, depending on pixel alignment, between 12 and 17 pixels inclusive if the target position is to the right of the crewmate, or between 32 and 37 pixels inclusive if the target position is to the left of the crewmate. Additionally, if the crewmate is already within 33 pixels inclusive of the target position to the right of them, or 35 pixels inclusive of the target position to the left of them, they will not move. However, even if they don't move, they will turn to face the target position if it is at least 6 pixels away in either direction from their x-coordinate.

changecolour

changecolour (<crewmate>, <color>)

Note that "colour" in changecolour is spelled with a U, a la British English and not without one a la American English.

Change the color (and identifier) of a createcrewman entity to another one. However, you cannot change the identifier of the player.

• <crewmate>: The identifier of the createcrewman entity. See the section on createcrewman identifiers.

• <color>: The color (and identifier) to change the crewmate to, but you cannot change the identifier of the player.

changecustommood

changecustommood (<custom crewmate>, <mood>)

Not to be confused with changemood.

This command is not spelled "customchangemood".

Change the mood of the first-placed rescuable crewmate edentity in the room.

• <custom crewmate>: The identifier of the rescuable crewmate. Can be any of the following:
  • red
  • yellow
  • green
  • cyan
  • blue
  • purple (this will actually target the pink-colored rescuable crewmate)
  • pink
  • player

If it's not any one of these, it will default to the player.

• <mood>: The mood to make the rescuable crewmate. 0 is happy, anything that is nonzero is sad. Usually people use 1 to make the rescuable crewmate sad.

changedir

changedir (<crewmate>, <direction>)

Change the direction variable of the given crewmate. If the direction is 0, the crewmate is facing left; otherwise, when the value is nonzero, they will be facing right, usually with a value of 1.

• <crewmate>: The identifier of the createcrewman entity. See the section on createcrewman identifiers.

• <direction>: The direction to make the crewmate face. 0 is left, anything that is nonzero is facing right. Usually people use 1 to face right.

changegravity

changegravity (<crewmate>)

Not to be confused with flipgravity.

Add 12 to the current sprite offset of the given crewmate. This is not functionally equivalent to changetile(<crewmate>,12), it's more like changetile(<crewmate>,<current sprite offset>+12).

• <crewmate>: The identifier of the createcrewman entity. See the section on createcrewman identifiers.

This command is unused in the main game.

changemood

changemood (<crewmate>, <mood>)

Not to be confused with changecustommood.

Change the mood of the given crewmate. More specifically, it changes the sprite offset depending on what you give for <mood>. This means this is functionally equivalent to changetile(<crewmate>,0) if you give 0 to <mood> and changetile(<crewmate>,144) if you give anything nonzero (usually 1) to it.

• <crewmate>: The identifier of the createcrewman entity. See the section on createcrewman identifiers.

• <mood>: The mood to make the crewmate. 0 is happy, anything that is nonzero is sad. Usually people use 1 to make the crewmate sad.

changeplayercolour

changeplayercolour (<color>)

Note that "colour" in changeplayercolour is spelled with a U, a la British English and not without one a la American English.

Set the color of the player.

• <color>: Can be any of the colors from the following list:
  • red
  • yellow
  • green
  • cyan (same effect as restoreplayercolour)
  • blue
  • purple (this is actually pink)
  • teleporter (rapidly cycles through random colors for flashy effect, actually unused in the main game, intended to be used before player teleports)

changerespawncolour

changerespawncolour (<color>)

This command was added in VVVVVV 2.4.

changetile

changetile (<crewmate>, <sprite offset>)

This name is not a typo in the command reference - the command has absolutely nothing to do with tiles, and everything to do with sprites.

Set the sprite offset of the given crewmate. Then, the final sprite rendered, the sprite number, will be the crewmate's animation offset plus the sprite offset given. However, the sprite offset is ignored if the player is currently dying.

The sprite number is fetched from each 32x32 box in sprites.png, or flipsprites.png if the game is in flip mode. The sprite to be fetched from sprites.png or flipsprites.png is obtained by dividing the sprite number by 12 while keeping an integer remainder - the non-remainder will then be the row, and the remainder will be the column.

Note that the final sprite (the animation offset plus the sprite offset) must be in the range of 0..191 inclusive; otherwise the game will try to fetch a nonexistent sprite, and then segfault. Except in 2.3 and later, where this segfault is fixed and doesn't happen, and instead the crewmate or player simply doesn't render at all.

• <crewmate>: The identifier of the createcrewman entity. See the section on createcrewman identifiers.

• <sprite offset>: The sprite offset to set the crewmate to. The final sprite will be the sprite offset plus the animation offset.

Here are the animation offsets for the various sprites:

Offset	Flipped	Direction	Animation
0	On the floor	Facing right	Standing still
1	On the floor	Facing right	Walking 1
2	On the floor	Facing right	Walking 2
3	On the floor	Facing left	Standing still
4	On the floor	Facing left	Walking 1
5	On the floor	Facing left	Walking 2
6	On the ceiling	Facing right	Standing still
7	On the ceiling	Facing right	Walking 1
8	On the ceiling	Facing right	Walking 2
9	On the ceiling	Facing left	Standing still
10	On the ceiling	Facing left	Walking 1
11	On the ceiling	Facing left	Walking 2

These are the death sprites, which will ignore the sprite offsets:

Offset	Flipped	Direction	Animation
12	On the floor	Facing right	Dying
13	On the floor	Facing left	Dying
14	On the ceiling	Facing right	Dying
15	On the ceiling	Facing left	Dying

clearteleportscript

clearteleportscript

Clear the teleport script. This restores the action that happens upon pressing ENTER at a teleporter to simply bringing up the teleporter screen, which would have been set by teleportscript.

This command is unused in the main game.

customposition

This command is intended to be used as a part of constructing a text box. See the section on text box construction for more info.

cutscene

cutscene

Make the black bars indicating a cutscene is in progress appear.

This command does not do a delay on its own. To do a delay, use untilbars.

endcutscene

endcutscene

Make the black bars prompted by cutscene disappear.

This command does not do a delay on its own. To do a delay, use untilbars.

flip

flip

Presses the ACTION button, causing the player to flip if eligible. This command also does 1 frame of delay.

If there is an ACTION prompt onscreen and the prompt is gamestate-based, this ACTION press will dismiss it. Script-based ACTION prompts cannot be dismissed because this command can't run at the same time as the prompt.

It is a common pitfall for this command to not work when placed right after an ACTION prompt. This is because the ACTION-down input frame from the player to dismiss the prompt is immediately followed by an ACTION-down input frame from this command with no intervening ACTION-up input frame, so this ACTION-down input frame gets treated like an ACTION hold instead of an ACTION press. The usual workaround is to put a delay(1) before this command.

flipme

flipme

This command is intended to be used as a part of constructing a text box. See the section on text box construction for more info.

Marks that the text box should be vertically repositioned if the player is in Flip Mode.

In 2.2 and below, the repositioning does not account for the height of the text box, so the Flip Mode position is wrong. In 2.3 and later, this is fixed and the repositioning now accounts for the height of the text box.

foundlab

This command is intended to be used as a part of constructing a text box. See the section on text box construction for more info.

foundlab2

This command is intended to be used as a part of constructing a text box. See the section on text box construction for more info.

foundtrinket

This command is intended to be used as a part of constructing a text box. See the section on text box construction for more info.

gotoroom

gotoroom (<x (0-indexed)>, <y (0-indexed)>)

Load the room with the given coordinates.

If the player is already in said room, the room is still reloaded.

If the coordinates given are outside the map, they are wrapped around to the other edge of the map. E.g. gotoroom(50,50) is equivalent to gotoroom(0,0) (assuming a map size of 20x20 or less), and in a 10x10 map, gotoroom(-10,-10) is equivalent to gotoroom(9,9).

• <x>: The x-coordinate of the room to load.
• <y>: The y-coordinate of the room to load.

hidecoordinates

hidecoordinates (<x (0-indexed)>, <y (0-indexed)>)

On the map, hides the room at the given coordinates. Note that re-entering this room (via a screen transition or gotoroom) will still show the room again on the map. showcoordinates is the opposite of this command.

In 2.2 and below, if the room number you end up indexing (which is roomx + roomy*20) is not in the range 0..399, undefined behavior will be triggered. In 2.3 and later, this undefined behavior is fixed.

• <x>: The x-coordinate of the room to hide.
• <y>: The y-coordinate of the room to hide.

hidesecretlab

hidesecretlab

On the map, hides the rooms corresponding to the Secret Lab in the main game. showsecretlab is the opposite of this command.

These rooms are (0-indexed):

• (16, 5)
• (17, 5)
• (18, 5)
• (17, 6)
• (18, 6)
• (19, 6)
• (19, 7)
• (19, 8)

hideship

hideship

On the map, hides the rooms corresponding to the Ship in the main game. showship is the opposite of this command.

These rooms are (0-indexed):

• (2, 10)
• (3, 10)
• (4, 10)
• (2, 11)
• (3, 11)
• (4, 11)

ifwarp

ifwarp (<x (1-indexed)>, <y (1-indexed)>, <warp background>, <script>)

Note that unlike gotoroom, room coordinates with this command are 1-indexed. That means for the top-left room of the map, you would use the coordinates (0,0) with gotoroom, but you would have to use the coordinates (1,1) for this command.

This command can also be used in simplified scripting.

Check if the warp background of the given room is a certain warp background, and if so, jump to the given script.

This command can be used in internal scripting without having to prefix either the command with custom or the script with custom_. You cannot jump to a main game script with this command, but you could jump to a custom script that jumps to a main game script.

In 2.2 and below, if the room number you end up indexing (which is just, without accounting for 1-indexing, roomx + roomy*20) is not in the range 0..399, undefined behavior will be triggered. In 2.3 and later, this undefined behavior is fixed.

• <x>: The x-coordinate of the room whose warp background you want to check, 1-indexed.
• <y>: The y-coordinate of the room whose warp background you want to check, 1-indexed.
• <warp background>: The warp background to check. There are four intended values:
  • 0: No warping
  • 1: Horizontal
  • 2: Vertical
  • 3: All sides

Additionally, you can set the warp dir of the room to any arbitrary integer with warpdir, and then check that arbitrary value with this command.

• <script>: The custom script to jump to, if the check succeeds.

position

This command is intended to be used as a part of constructing a text box. See the section on text box construction for more info.

setactivitycolour

setactivitycolour (<color>)

This command was added in VVVVVV 2.4.

setactivitytext

setactivitytext
<text>

This command was added in VVVVVV 2.4.

showcoordinates

showcoordinates (<x (0-indexed)>, <y (0-indexed)>)

On the map, reveals the room at the given coordinates. hidecoordinates is the opposite of this command.

In 2.2 and below, if the room number you end up indexing (which is roomx + roomy*20) is not in the range 0..399, undefined behavior will be triggered. In 2.3 and later, this undefined behavior is fixed.

• <x>: The x-coordinate of the room to show.
• <y>: The y-coordinate of the room to show.

showsecretlab

showsecretlab

On the map, reveals the rooms corresponding to the Secret Lab in the main game. hidesecretlab is the opposite of this command.

These rooms are (0-indexed):

• (16, 5)
• (17, 5)
• (18, 5)
• (17, 6)
• (18, 6)
• (19, 6)
• (19, 7)
• (19, 8)

showship

showship

On the map, reveals the rooms corresponding to the Ship in the main game. hideship is the opposite of this command.

These rooms are (0-indexed):

• (2, 10)
• (3, 10)
• (4, 10)
• (2, 11)
• (3, 11)
• (4, 11)

speak

This command is intended to be used as a part of constructing a text box. See the section on text box construction for more info.

speak_active

This command is intended to be used as a part of constructing a text box. See the section on text box construction for more info.

specialline

specialline (<case>)

This command is intended to be used as a part of constructing a text box. See the section on text box construction for more info.

Replaces text box lines with hardcoded strings. Used for two particular main game lines that want the name of a random unrescued crewmate.

• <case>: Can be 1 or 2; the command does nothing otherwise.
• 1: Sets the text box to be I'm worried about <random unrescued crewmate>, Doctor!.
• 2: If there are less than 5 rescued crewmates, two lines will be appended:

  to helping you find the
  rest of the crew!

  Else, to helping you find <random unrescued crewmate>! is appended.

squeak

squeak (<sound>)

Plays a sound corresponding to particular characters speaking/emoting.

• <sound>: Which sound to play.
  • player or cyan: Viridian squeaking. Equivalent to playef(11).
  • red: Vermilion squeaking. Equivalent to playef(16).
  • green: Verdigris squeaking. Equivalent to playef(12).
  • yellow: Vitellary squeaking. Equivalent to playef(14).
  • blue: Victoria squeaking. Equivalent to playef(13).
  • purple: Violet squeaking. Equivalent to playef(15).
  • cry: Sad characters squeaking. Equivalent to playef(2).
  • terminal: Terminals squeaking. Equivalent to playef(20).

text

This command is intended to be used as a part of constructing a text box. See the section on text box construction for more info.

tofloor

tofloor

Acts identically to flip if the player is currently flipped.

undovvvvvvman

undovvvvvvman

Undo the effects of vvvvvvman, returning the player character to their normal state.

vvvvvvman

vvvvvvman

Change the player character into the large character shown in the Secret Lab's introduction cutscene. Collision is very glitchy.

warpdir

warpdir (<x (1-indexed)>, <y (1-indexed)>, <warp background>)

Note that unlike gotoroom, room coordinates with this command are 1-indexed. That means for the top-left room of the map, you would use the coordinates (0,0) with gotoroom, but you would have to use the coordinates (1,1) for this command.

This command can also be used in simplified scripting.

Set the warp background of the given room, permanently for the given session. The changed warp background will not be preserved if you quicksave, quit, and load the level from the save again, but leaving the room and coming back will not reset its warp background to what it was originally. This means you can set the warp background of a certain room without having to be in it.

There is a bug with this command in versions 2.2 and below where if you are in a room with the Lab or Warp Zone tileset, and you set the warp background to none (e.g. make the room no longer warp anymore), instead of setting it to the Lab or stars-up background, it will set it to the stars-left background, always. But leaving and coming back will set the room's background to what it's supposed to be. In 2.3 and later, this bug is fixed.

In 2.2 and below, if the room number you end up indexing (which is just, without accounting for 1-indexing, roomx + roomy*20) is not in the range 0..399, undefined behavior will be triggered. In 2.3 and later, this undefined behavior is fixed.

• <x>: The x-coordinate of the room to target, 1-indexed.
• <y>: The y-coordinate of the room to target, 1-indexed.
• <warp background>: The warp background to set the room to. There are four intended values:
  • 0: No warping
  • 1: Horizontal
  • 2: Vertical
  • 3: All sides

All other values will still succeed in setting the warp dir to that value, and will make the room no longer warp, but the background will still be there.

yellowcontrol

yellowcontrol

Run Vitellary's activity zone script, which also creates Vitellary's activity zone when finished.