Developer: Bugsy
A SPECIAL THANKS TO:
Wolf- Moral support, so much else I cant even list it, models that ended up getting removed, police cars, etc.
EAI- 3DS MAX version of his hands
SmallG- for always doing my script requests
cybernescence- for the winzone script and loading screens feature
Disturbing13- Giving me the NightCity Streets
and anyone who ever made a car model for old FPSC

Storyline: This game focuses on Carlton Eaves, Katsu Kleiner and Isaac Preston. Katsu is a cybernetically enhanced ex-soldier, and Isaac is skilled traceur and chemist. Carlton Eaves is a Pharmacist, and has proven himself quite the snitch already. His trial is very soon, and he will most testify information that will incriminate and convict one of Isaac's cooks; Nnijah Stone. Isaac employs Kleiner's assistance to make sure that Eaves will not appear in court.

Description: A lesson in the intricacies of GameGuru! This game was quite frustrating to build in many ways, and a joy in others. It has sucked at least 300 hours of my time up, but I am pretty happy with the final product. What you'll find here is 2 Levels- one very open ended, and one very linear, that will test your abilities in combat. Ready your twitch reflexes, and call upon the abilities you've learned from playing Mirror's Edge and Counter Strike, as you will need them in this challenging adventure!

Important Gameplay Tips
Aim for the head
Take cover ALWAYS
Advance slowly
Look for ammo boxes
Health regenerates, but you will die fast if you play like Call of Duty













If you're feeling generous, REALLY liked the game, or are swelling with christmas spirit and like to support indie artists, please some money to my cause. I spend a lot of time on this, and it's often to the detriment of other endeavours. It will always be free though, and contributing helps me put food on the table, buy my family christmas presents, and buys me COOL GUNS to animate and put in Kshatriya Origins.

Another way to express your generosity is by yes-voting the original Kshatriya Prologue on Steam Greenlight! That was an investment that I really hope to someday see a return on

Me gusta!!



I'll pen you a full review within the next few days!



-Wolf

Will try this tonight,hope its as good as it looks .

EDIT just had a quick try,Help i need more lives . Will get back to this later tonight,like it so far though.

Dave

this game is NOT easy! BUT If enough people complain that you run out of lives too soon (Remember- QUICKSAVE) I will rebuild and up it to 5 lives. no more though, don't be a WUSS

@Bugsy this is a awesome game man. the AI was very challenging but no need for more lives I just save a lot lol. I think the full game would be worth buying. I hope your other game on steam gets the green light. I don't why it is taking so long for good free game to get the green light on top the fact you had to pay $100 fee. I voted for it not to long when you first put it up.

thank you so much buddy! I'm glad you enjoyed it. quicksaves are important, but it's not that hard to just up the lives if i get enough complaints. I understand sometimes its hard to remember to quicksave, and i never wanted this game to be TOO punishing, but I also dont want it to be easy. Soon, the WIP thread for the next one will be up! more levels and more setpieces!

Not complaining about the lives,just joking.to many lives would spoil it.

Dave

Well I do hope you give it another try! This time a little more carefully
you seem to have a very good computer, are you getting a decent framerate? I average about 60 in level 1 and 80 in level 2

Sorting a 3D print at the moment.will play again later.i will check Fps at same time .i built comp a bit at a time .quite cheap if you do it your self.

Dave

forgot to mention that I already completed the level and got to the boat. the performance was great over 60 fps.

HEY FORGOT TO MENTION GAME GURU SUCKS!
no, (yes) in all actuality, there were TWO LEVELS in this game, but because I RENAMED THE EXECUTABLE to the name of the game, the game decided to just, not load level 1 because that just makes perfect sense

SO IF YOU HAVE THE GAME: rename the .exe file to bloxtest
IF NOT: i will be reuploading it. TRULY LIVID about such a stupid hiccup costing me another several gigabytes of bandwidth.

EDIT- just because I have to upload again, I will be rebuilding and giving the player 5 lives, so its less punishing. I am EMBARASSED and ASHAMED. I was extremely excited with this game, and I CANT BELIEVE that such a change would cause a GAME BREAKING GLITCH.

lol nothing to be ashamed about man. I still had fun playing it. but I was a bit lost when I seen the trailer lol. I was like all well maybe that level is for the next version.lol I find this very funny and should to. just laugh out Bugsy it will be okay guru has it's flaws and we all are trying to work around them.

also they way the standalone works is what ever level you save it from in the editor that is the level that will come first and in the win zone by (if use) you put the name of the next level.

I beg you to either rename it and try it again, or download this slightly easier version with 5 lives. Just for once I wanted to release a game that just worked out of the box and I was so sure after several tests that it wasnt trash but of course the first 20 people who've played this immediately think its garbage and have no idea what the hell is going on because the level 1 loading screen was loading level 2. Consider how something like this is downright embarrassing for me having just spent, in all honesty, closer to 500 hours on this project in the past months.



to further entice you, here are some 3440x1440 screenshots provided by astech: (Scaled to 1000 width)







To anyone reviewing this game, I'm really sorry about this. I hope you give it another try. The first post was updated with new download as well.

I've given this a quick go, it would have been longer, but I'll get into that. First things first FPS is good, my main gripe with GG games, squashed instantly Very nice. I like games to run fluidly

I'm no FPS shooter master, or even close, but really the difficulty is crazy imo. I don't quick save, never do in games, unless I come up to a point that is giving me issues. I'm still used to GG games with no save at all though, so kinda forget you can ;p Still, I was dead in no time and hey, great I get to suffer the long GG loading screen again

It was difficult to know exactly what was what weapon wise as the HUD seemed to be not displaying ammo or even health? I also found enemies dropped weapons but for the life of me I couldn't pick them up, not quite sure what was happening there.

I didn't really get far at all, and was killed on both attempts at an early stage. There was no feeling of being a sharp shooting assassin at all, as the enemy could kill me in seconds, while I was trying to get in a head shot or just shooting wildly in order to survive. Neither really worked, the AI are obviously far better than me. None of this was helped by the fact I didn't know if I had unlimited ammo or just a few rounds.

Very good though, I like it, but no way would I spend much time with it at that level of difficulty. I expect a game to ease me into things a little, this simply drops you into the fray with no warm up period at all. Get the HUD displaying stuff properly, so I know I how much ammo I have and so can judge how many shots I can waste. Reduce the AI's robotic level of accuracy a little, it really is too much to be fun. With those tweaks I can see this being a great game. Otherwise, at this level of difficulty, most people will have had enough after a couple of loading screens. That would be a shame, as this looks really good and if I didn't die within seconds each encounter, I would have been prepared to put some time into getting through it.

I know from my own games, after continued play testing you can become really good at a game and do not realise that people starting from scratch will quickly be overcome, unless they remember every NPC and even then, in this case they can still kill you in seconds. A game should not be too easy, but making it insanely hard is also not a great idea.

Great, but too hard for me and although I'm nowhere near the game player I was 20 years ago, I'm not that bad. Really nice though otherwise

IF you downloaded the old version, I BEG YOU TO PLEASE TRY IT AGAIN with the new version, or rename your .exe to bloxtest and try again (youll only have 3 lives but huds will work)

if you redownload, you have 5 lives and also the game starts on level 1 instead of level 2, which starts off with a slower pace, allowing you to get a feel for traversing the environment and using weapons. I cannot stress enough, if you only played one level without HUDS, and it was a purple shootout scene at night, THAT IS LEVEL 2. PLEASE. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE redownload, or do the hotfix and try again, and do not let the broken B.S. that i originally uploaded taint your view of this game. I worked too damn long and hard on this to see the public opinion of it destroyed because the first 20 players downloaded the "renamed" version ;(

Ah! Don't worry. The AAA industry has launch issues all the time!



-Wolf

yeah, but this is a free 2 level indie game. the (MOST LIKELY) majority of people who are going to download it have downloaded it already, and it has made a bad impression on them, meaning that they are FAR less likely to even bother spending the time downloading the updated working version.

Downloaded, voted, donated, re-downloaded - anything else left to do?

Ah, playing!

YAY! sorry for the shaky start I really hope you enjoy. thank you so much for the donation

after waiting for the loading screen, I got an error:

I will try again and if I get error again, I'll try running on my 64bit Windows 10.

try running in compatibility mode for windows 7. this game was created in windows 7 for windows 7.

I don't think it's windows issue, i run windows 64 bit and it's running fine for me. Getting on average 150fps, dropping to about 90fps when AI is near.

I agree with what the others have said, about the difficulty. It's not just that it's difficult, it's just that most of the enemies will kill you in two shots and at certain points you have up to four of them attacking you at once, which make sit nigh on impossible. Rather than adding lives, try doubling the player health, and reduce the AI's accuracy a little, that should give us a chance.

somehow i tend to want to believe you're not taking cover or playing carefully enough. enemies will take 5 and even 7 seconds to react to you if you are not totally exposed I.E. crouched behind stuff slinking in the shadows. I also probably feel this way because i know where they're gonna be. Perhaps next time I won't use my FPS buddies as beta testers. I guess I kinda artifically ramped up the difficulty to compensate for the fact that the game is 2 levels long. I guess I also seriously misjudged the average skill level at counterstrike around here.





since it's released, here's a walkthrough for anyone having difficulty finding cover or flushing enemies out. the next one will (hopefully) have grenades so it'll be even easier, but to be perfectly honest, I don't want to look at a health bar and see a number above 100. I like realism, and feel like there's a certain hardcore aspect to games where the player has just as much health as the enemies do. I may just have to seriously turn down their accuracy on the next episode, but if you play slow and stay crouched with a wall on at least once side of you, and remember to stop advancing when the screen is red, you should be able to run through it.

EDIT- while i'm kinda pissed this game is too hard for everyone, I'm glad everyone seems to have good fps rates. even for me it's just barely tolerable, but im a 150+ fps kinda guy

See that's the problem, for me they don't take 7 seconds to attack, and line of sight seems to do nothing for cover, most of the time they're running around the corner to come get me before i've even seen them.

Maybe it's the difference between processors and graphics cards between players? I have noticed that AI takes longer to react on my older machines than it does on my main PC.

thats interesting. perhaps ai will work more normal across the board when they update it for this supposed "building editor" that's coming.

I tried to turn down the accuracy of the uzi in the gunspec to like 80000 but they still hit me within 2 seconds after they start shooting, and 3 opening fire on me at once still can take me from 100 health to zero in a matter of seconds, so IDK how im gonna go about changing the accuracy in this next one.

just play like it's Call of Duty with Counter Strike guns on veteran mode and you'll probably do ok. shoot every red barrel you see as well! here I was worried my games were too easy!!! look how wrong you can be.

I kind of wish more people had played running around so I could have canvased the community opinion on difficulty a bit better. thanks for the feedback. I hope there's at least one person around here that didn't think this was too hard. good rule of thumb is that if you can't see their gun, they wont shoot you. I promise my next game will be way easier.

The accuracy in the gunspec is more for the player weapons as far as i know. If i remember right there should be an accuracy setting in the properties of each character.

Overall it's very well put together, i quite enjoyed playing it. You might want to look into adding a custom HUD to giv e it a more individual look though.

They navigate their cluttered environment surprisingly well, don't they? I'm just pointing this out because everyone is always all over GG's AI.

So now its time for another pedantic and lengthy Wolf-Review that is usually only red by the one who made the game.
So here is a TL;DR Version:

Kshatriya Wetwork is fine work that furthers GG's catalogue of possibilities by adding dense city levels that don't lag [i]Boiling Point on release date!
Its delightfully challenging so try to play it like a tactical shooter, even though the game is designed in a way that strongly suggests that its and action game.
It has flaws, sure, but its good strongly outweighs its bad. I recommend this to fans of FPS games who are not too pampered by AAA graphics and difficulty levels and any and all GG Users.[/i]

The Review

Foreword: Seeing how I've known Bugsy for years now and consider him a friend, I'll be a lot more critical and maybe blunt in this review than I'd be to a stranger simply because I am aware of Bugsy's artistic capabilities... and I know the WUSS can handle it
As the first post suggests, I have also been helping out with some elements of this game like the music, menu screens and a few models. I have however not been working on the game itself so I try to review this as objective as possible.

The game opens with one sweat title screen! I mean, the tasteful simplicity, the choice of colours. An utmost excellent introduction to a shooter game!!
I wonder what marvelous creature has bestowed this heavenly artwork upon us? ....Could it be...me?
Heeey! "....as objective as possible"
All jokes aside, I find the initial presentation of the game to be quite well done. Except for the longest loading screen ever!
So when you play this game, I recommend making some tea or coffee while it loads. You'll need the little pick me up to survive.

We then start as Katsu Riker in a dimly lit back alley. The atmosphere of the game got me right away and so did the labyrinthian level design. Narrative is furthered by a voice over complete with delightful overacting! "gooooons"
Knowing Bugsy, it came as no surprise to me that we are going to be greeted with some plattforming pretty early on in the game, and there it was!
There was also an enemy around the first AS Val that wasn't there in the beta. He killed me! He was the only enemy who managed that.
May the medal of honour be awarded to him posthumously. (which translates to after he finished his plate of humus. ...wait? What are you doing with that knife??)

The climbing part was pretty self explanatory to me altough I did need to spam the jump key on some ledges to get across. While I didn't feel lost I have a feeling like a lot of players will have a bit of a hard time finding the way across.

Some incredibly outdated models aside (usually designed by yours truely ) the following transitions from outdoor to indoor levels. The staircases, rooms and vistas are short but some of the best atmospheric work I have seen from you. The whole level feels incredibly well thought out and "alive".
(I also felt like a bunch of well placed ambient noises would have brought this home a little better but before we start messing around with that, we first have to figure out what is always eating up Bugsy's Memorycap in these levels.) An assassination sequence happens (where I never tested if the game prevents me from proceeding if I don't shoot him?) and then we are down for some real combat. Here I will digress a little:

I've heard the word "counterstrike" been thrown around a little....and I've always hated that game.
I can see the appeal of it as an online game but as someone who has always been a huge fan of narrative, atmosphere and having the illusion of actually controlling a character rather than a floating camera...that game did nothing for me. ...And the big CSS fans I knew at the time where usually the beanie wearing stuck up type. Might be just my surroundings though and that was over a decade ago. Don't get me wrong, I can get behind a dull and sterile game! I love the ARMA series! But CSS is just ugly. Even worse, it doesnt feel like a shooter. More like I fly a drone with arms attached to it. The whole gameplay is also entirely removed from even remotely attempting to simulate combat. It has its own rules entirely. (The way people strafe hectically back and forth in this game, the frantic swapping of weapons... its not for me.) I'm also convinced that if you removed all textures from its maps and replace all guns with a box, most of this games player base would not even mind.
Ahem! Enough of my little tantrum here. My point being: Counter Strike and its mechanics are the absolute worst choice to influence a single player game.

When I played the beta, I approached the combat like this was an action game. Having watched Bugsy's videos on it and the general design of it also suggests this. However, this time I played it like I usually approach a shooter. Keep in mind that I'm an FPS Veteran, preferring games with a pseudo-realistic approach. Some might think that this is ahedonic but whatever. I didn't like crysis until I've set my own goals: Highest difficulty and I won't allow myself to die. If I did, I'd shut the game off for 2 days. I had ten times the fun approaching it from a tactical and "what would I do if I where in the situation" rather than sprinting around blowing up enemy strongholds.

My point being: I played this like it was Ghost Recon rather than CoD or *shudder* CS. I didn't die once.
I'm convinced that Bugsy didn't intend it to be played so slow but it worked surprisingly well. The ambient soundtracks where really fitting and the enemies where blending in eerieely well in the high contrast look of the game (more on that below). I had fun just swooping from cover to cover and scanning my environments, often retreating (adding a lot of weight to your sprinting animations!!). This added a lot of minutes to the play time as well. I recommend anyone to try it this way. Just roleplay like you're actually in that situation

Level 2, where I play as Isaac Preston, listening to my own voice work ^_^ was a blast too, but I found level 1 more interesting. The final vista with the sea and the boat is really cool! This map had a lot of stuff that needed some retexturing though. More on that is also below:

The Gameplay

Pretty solid with a decent challenge! Too challenging for some. I would also recommend nerving the Uzi enemies as they where always getting me when I was playing the Beta. I can get behind the character having more health but I found this to be more fun as a slow and cautious burn rather than a romp. And I know that I'm in the minority with this.
Oh Ubisoft, why did you not continue this series like you started!
Navigating and climbing was fun and a special kudos to Lee for giving us enjoyable FPS controls. I know that this is easy to mess up when coding an engine.
For a GG game, it plays spectacularly! But even otherwise: This feels like a pretty solid shooter game. There is almost none of the GG sluggishness left.

The Visuals

Kshatriya Wetwork has some spectacular level design. Leading this in, out and arround city levels that just feel big and alive. the first level really impressed me by how it was leading me around the place.Bugsy, I hope to see this skill of yours to be polished even more in future games. You got it!
I can see that you tried your best with GG's current rendering engine and you had a lot of success but also a lot of rough edges with the visuals. I think there are some things about this engine and differences to FPSC that we need to talk about in depht.
The game would have benefited from less contrast. There is always a lot of noise on the screen and way too many pitch black pixels. I know its not easy to get a look right in GG but we both know that it can be done. I feel like the high-contrast techniques from FPSC don't look too hot in GG anymore and you shouldn't worsen it by having the contrast up too far via native settings.
Asset wise, there are a ton of winners, like your custom guns, your buildings and just the way you use them but also some stinkers dragging down the overall impression. (a lot of textures aren't all that they promised and the bus...oh the bus texture )
I feel like I should have been more clear about this when I tested the beta that I could maybe do a thing or two about that and unifying the look a bit more. Don't assume that your game looks bad in any way, it really does not! I am merely pointing out things that might be improved.
Same with the normalmaps but we all know that GG just hates these when they are lightmapped.
I was very content with how this game looked and felt!


The Sound

The ambience of the game was pretty fitting but I felt like there could have been more. Bugsy gave me a good reason for not having too much ambient shenanigans around, and I dig that, but the feeling remains. I was also not a fan of how the guns all just played this "click" sound when reloading. I think you're not all too concerned with this, but to me that is a major flaw.
Enemy guns don't have much of a punch and the sound of this games combat is very dull in general. I know that there is little you could do about that at the time.

This game was extremely well optimized and had a solid framerate for a Game Guru game!

In Conclusion

Kshatriya Wetwork is an immensly well crafted game with only a few rough edges holding it back from being a GG game changer.
I recommend it to FPS Fans and all GG users. It delivers a lot of action, sounds and sights despite being (too) short.
Seeing how the GG BOTB is not yet defined, I am still going to award you the BOTB-M Badge simply because after Ops:Hong Kong, Kshatriya Prologue, Kshatriya Challenges File 001 and File 002 as well as this ...it is about time!

You'll also find a special atmosphere in this game that really sells you the oppressive cyberpunk future aesthetic it is going for. I believe the unusual look of it, compared to most studio games, helps with that.

(I'd also consider this here a BOTB game, however, I'll wait with listing it as such until we, the mods, have a coherent summary of what the new GG BOTB is and how its different from the FPSC one. This is currently in the works) Anywaysies! Say hello to your new badge!



-Wolf

managed to load the game on my Win10 64bit OS, phew!! loading time took blooming ages, other than that, wow, impressed. I had a job getting on that roof, got killed then had to start the level all over again.... For me, I prefer some tough AI to fight against, I don't like too easy. So I did quite well hiding behind stuff. I liked the feel of the game, atmos, the music is great (which I could have done with at the loading screen or some other info while waiting).
Need to give it another go later before giving it a further review but seems pretty good so far, really hard but I'm up for a challenge. Camera control was a bit weird/jerky but might be my PC graphics card.

curious why you wouldnt limit a game to 60fps? vsync would balance out the AI a lot because they definitely do improve the faster the game is running - almost never get a shot off at low fps and turn a pistol into a machine gun at high fps... it makes a big difference.

haven't played it personally as i have too much to download already on my terrible internet but the screenshots look good and im impressed you managed to get it running at such a good speed in the first place

I am having great fun playing this,maybe the enemies could spawn a little earlier so you can see them a little sooner.one apeard and killed me with a couple of shots . when i started level 2 i only had 1 life,is that correct. runs fine on windows 10 64 pro for me.(great game by the way,well done).
Edit (Voted on steam)
Dave

he was in the beta, he only spawned if you jumped to the roof across from the aircon on the very first roof you go on.


sorry you feel like that. counterstrike source/CSGO is the best/ THE DE FACTO fps to me. it's a dream to control, perfectly balanced, and the maps are the perfect mixture of detailed where they need to be and navigable where it's important. Enemies are always readable, but never do i look around the map like "This is CRAP" like i do in games like crossfire. I absolutely cant stand "getting shot then immediately bleeding to death in real life" simulators like arma where the head bobs to a sea-sick level whenever the character so much as takes a step, and aiming down the sights, the gun darts every which way about the screen. the mere thought makes me want to not play. Instead of something "Realistic" I want something challenging. the one thing I wanted to avoid is that feeling when you play the Call of Duty story mode on Recruit mode, run into the center of the room, and miraculously survive the whole time while 5 people at point blank range unload their magazines at you. I wanted to be sure that even one enemy could kill you no problem if you didn't attack him carefully. I was going for "medium bot difficulty" but it's clear that a lot more balance will be needed, or perhaps some sort of difficulty selection (press U to have 400 health) hahah


Hello new badge!!! thanks, glad to see an accolade for this! I promise the next one will be VBOTB good if this ones already worth my second badge. I appreciate your big review.


I hate games capped to 60fps. for me, this game hits around 80fps even in firefights, and that's a good rate to me. If this game could run at 150 FPS, i'd play it there, despite the increased difficulty. I'd just hate to see someone with a beastlike machine still only be able toget a maximum of 60 FPS in one of my games, I'd literally consider that a failure.


I increased the lives to 5. there should be no reason (unless you died 4 times on level 1) that you start level 2 with 1 life. If you just randomly started with one life, then I just want to give gameguru credit for being the ONLY game engine able to edit the core game files post-upload for the sole purposes of pissing me off


thank you!!!

I thought the start was , well weird. The level issue explains that I'll rename the exe later and give it another go, but with the difficulty as is, I doubt I'll get too far, although having the HUD working may help me out a little. As said above lives are not really the issue. I lost all 3 of mine to the same dudes. They literally kill you in a couple of seconds in a stream of fire. As said, people complain about AI being terrible, but for me killing you in 3 shots or so is not the answer. You can change the accuracy in the editor as Wolf mentioned, you can do the same for the player as well. You may want to lower their damage capabilities instead or both of course. Perhaps you could add a difficulty level as well?

Just remember, not all of us are in our early twenties(or younger) with super fast reactions, some of us are older When I was into games big time and a little younger, I would have had no problems getting through I'm sure, but now I've both lost some reaction speed and also patience. I mean I had the patience of a saint back then, Ghouls and Ghosts? Wanted to beat it? Sure, make sure it's on professional difficulty and then not only do you have to beat it, you have to beat it twice :/ Same with R-Type on the Master System, in fact it was done fairly often back then. Most modern players of today would be pretty disgusted, I mean imagine playing say, Bioshock, getting through it all, then it saying "Ahha, you don't really think it would be THAT easy do you? NO! Start over!". Some games even had items hidden around the levels you HAD to collect to finish or you would end up cycling round all the levels over and over. Yes I was amazingly patient back then with games, now I can lose interest merely having to replay a section more than a couple of times.

You can increase your players health without it going over 100 as well. Check out my HUD video on Youtube, or on these forums. The trick is to increase the health, but display the numbers yourself I go through all the code to get it working in the video and I think I put the script up on the thread (not sure now, but it's not very long anyway). I can't remember either if I put a lid on the health either, if not it's real easy to add

I'm just going to come out and say it, being able to take more than 5 rounds in rapid succession and still be standing is not something I will likely be putting in any of my games. I guess I'm just a "3 shot kill" kind of guy, and the way I saw it, if you're a cyberbadass then the cops are too, so you should have the same health. I can't even play battlefield3 or 4 because I think the number of 7.62 rounds you have to pump into each soldier (in multiplayer) for them to fall down is downright ridiculous.

Explain a little better how I can change enemy accuracy in the editor, please? I must be blind but I dont see it

some more useful hints: (I do hope you give it another go.)
-if you respawn at a checkpoint that's too close to enemies, immediately sprint backwards.
-if enemies begin damaging you, immediately sprint backwards to cover
-if more than one person or at maxiumum two people are shooting at you at a time, you're moving too fast and should immediately sprint backwards to get a better position
-that first shot is the most accurate. short controlled bursts; fire from cover; go for the head.

Maybe giving some chance to the player to win the abilityto be strongest, does not decrease the enemies level, but increase the possibility for the gamer being strongest, so don't die en two seconds.
I means making firts level easy and more "ok, lets go and looking what we can to do to be strongest, so we can say, ok! I'm ready for the next level (perhaps medium level or so?), in another words, increasing the difficuly thru each level.

I have not play your game yet (waiting for best specs in few time), but I can see you already have some training field, that's a good point to win experience, and perhaps some money to buy better guns, or some bulletproof vest.
Sorry but I'm more happy with mixed games styles, than just killing and killing without rest, (a coffee time for example. LOL)

3com

that was a bit all over the place from an english standpoint, I think i understand what you mean...
unfortunately your computer with its graphics card and CPU is not good enough to run my game to the best of my knowledge. if you manage to get it to work, i'm surprised.

Yah, that's the point, but this is going to be solve next week. Teorically tomorrow Amazon give me the new card (gtx 1060), so I can have my desktop next week or so.

As aside note, my point is instead of decrease the accuracy or something like that, increase the possibilities for the player bypass the issue, ie: if player has some bulletproof vest, so decrease the damage qty, so player has more chance; is at the end of the player to get the bulletproof vest, before try next level.

3com

im thinking of just using less enemies probably. It will have to be like that for reshade to not take too many frames. that way frame rates will be higher and the story starts to get a lot less grounded when the protagonist routinely mows down 3 dozen trained armed assailants.

For those who like really challenging game experiences, I may release level 3 separately some day as a "can you beat it?" thing

Might be the case.they are on me like a flash.or should I say rash.i am enjoying the game though.

Dave

I played the re-download. once again this is awesome went through it with no problems had fun playing it. it keep me on my toes and I was playing it like I play battlefield just taking my time. the AI is great but then again I never had a problem with guru AI and it beats fpsc AI by far. this game is different and has Bugsy style written all over it.

thanks man I'm really glad you liked!!!

Alright, downloaded and played through.

The first run ended with me staring upwards after getting the hint to do so and with my first attempt to get higher, I jumped out of the designed map and took a beautiful strill around it to study how the illusion of the city was created. Impressive work on that, though.

The sond one was mire successful and lead me to finally beating the demo version's levels.

And here is the review, broken down by areas:


Level Design:

Top-Notch. Really impressive, how you build and maintain the illusion of a huge dystopian city surrounding you. There are some places where the player could use a little bit more guidance, but that is a matter of taste.


Game Design:

Jesus! With 100+ fps throughout the map, those enemies really gave me a run for my money. I got killed twice and then started to act really carefully in order to avoid getting shot. Your gunplay is really good (way above solid) and with the current AI limitations at hands, it is impressive how the Bots chase you and hunt you down if you let your guard down. The objectives are clear, and there is not a minute of boring walking around / backtracking. That makes it short, but entertaining.
Balancing is good.



Art Design:

I had a consistent feeling of a rotten NeoTokyo. some Props didn't exactly match the rest of the scene, there was sometimes too much disturbance, but overall a good job.



Visuals:

That's the only area where I was somehow dissapointed.
Two reasons for that:

There are lots of lights, colorful lights, but it lacks decent shadows severly. There were many scenes where I thought "Hell, here should be a shadow casted by XYZ (insert nearby object)" - but there wasn't. The lightpainting could be better.
Even when objects match, the level of detail and texture resolutions vary too much to make it consistent in many scenes. When a wall, a door in it and a vent shaft nearby have totally different levels of details, it disturbs.


Sound:

Not much to say. As not everyone can take a pot of $$$ and hire John J Dick or Dave Fennoy, the narration was ok. It could have used more ambient, though.


Story:

I had the feeling that something bigger is going on than the simple task at hands, and that's a good sign.


OVERALL CONCLUSION:

This is the demo of the currently best *) and most convincing shooter game made in GameGuru. It may have shortcomings due to budget and engine limitations, but offers good gunplay with nice animations, tough foes and excellent level design.

I would give it a 7.5 / 10 in its current state, with much potential to go higher.


*) I haven't had my hands on Wolfs latest creation yet.

wow!!! thank you so much for the charming review!!! I promise the next one will be even better!



I think this is a gameguru thing, in FPSC, you could place lights in shadows, and it would usually nicely bring out a colour in the shadow, but not totally get rid of it, but in GG, lights will cancel other light's shadows. on level 1 if you go the no-combat way you'll notice i bring out some nice colour in the skybridge shadows. also, theres no directly visible lightsource in that skybox



Be still my beating heart this is excellent to hear

I kinda agree with DVader, I get quite impatient as I get older having to restart the level again and again. Played this again last night and just saved more often got a little further, however I got lost on the rooftops and ended up not really knowing where I supposed to go next ha.... oh well, try again later....

How do I quick save(ime such a plank ) Also remember you have done what a lot of people talk about here and never get finished.still enjoying it ,although the loading times are harendos .

Dave

It was more the fact that they shot at you so fast that you were dead in no time, not so much the amount of hits as how fast they hit you. It may even be a GG issue, you may not be seeing the same at your end. They seemed really fast to me and I've seen a couple of issues with the last update and anim speeds. Also, the enemies seemed to be able to take a lot of damage in comparison to me, unless I head shot them. I also don't quite see the logic of saying you can't take many hits, but then you can run away and regain all your health immediately Either your going the realistic route or you aren't. I don't mind health regen, it makes things a bit more manageable and you don't have to keep looking for health packs, but then again I also don't mind taking either more hits or just not getting shot by the enemies quite as rapidly.

I've checked the settings for accuracy and you are correct, it's only for weapons, not enemies. There is a fire rate option, which as I say might be lowered a little It's your game of course, I'm just giving suggestions. As I said, if you could add in a difficulty setting, then that would make it more approachable for more people. Although that is easier said than done, other than changing the players stats, as there are quite a few options there, but enemies are still not that configurable, at least using the standard scripts or any that use the AI commands.

It could also be the fact I played the bugged version, so I will download the new one with more lives to give me a better chance and try it again.

Edit - Okay, had a go on the full game now. I enjoyed it and although I died a couple of times in the second level, managed to get all the way to the end. I still find the difficulty to be a little stacked in the AI's favour for my tastes, but that is just a personal preference. Very good though, as I've said above, smooth with only a few parts that slowed when AI spawned in. I also noticed a familiar sound effect towards the end ;p It took a while to figure out exactly where to go on the first level, the initial part to climb up was a little tricky to navigate and I almost gave up, before finally managing to jump on. It was the first thing I tried, but a few attempts with no luck made me move on, it was just lucky I re-tried it after investigating all of the map again and suddenly managed to jump on. Perhaps make that a little less tricksy

I definitely recommend giving this a go, very impressive Game Guru title.

I'm glad you finally got through it!



totally not true. I'm not going for realistic so much as I am believable. I'm not trying to make a "get shot and bleed out in an open field" simulator like arma, but i'm not making halo 5 either.

The goal was to make it kind of feel like going on a big kill streak in counter strike, and anyone who plays counter strike knows that 9/10 times, exposing yourself to 4 shooters at once usually means death, unless you have a good position and take at least one or two of them down before they get a chance to really start firing/rushing you.

I wasn't trying to make a run and gun shooter, but just a shooting game that requires a little bit of thought. I think of enemies as puzzles that require quick reaction time rather than cannon fodder to make the game cooler, and gave the player regenerating health so that there would be less "looking for healthpacks" that killed the pacing like in BLACK. I hate having to stop advancing and comb back over the last half of the level looking for health because i dont have enough health to advance without insta-dying.



I think any situation in which the player has 12 goons protecting their target, or 20 cops moving in on their lab, is one that is stacked in the larger force's favour.



In the next game, I think i'm just going to give the player a VERY high number of lives. I don't want the game to be punishing, but I want the game to be challenging even for seasoned veterans. I don't want a game in which "running and gunning" or "circle strafing" is the preferred method for eliminating enemies. In reality, making one dumb move in front of an armed enemy is totally fatal, and I want to capture that. I don't want to create an experience where the player is completely unafraid to take a bullet.

Bugsy,

I've tried the demo yesterday, really outstanding work
I did not come very far though, killed two enemies, lost one live near the stairs and shot him while i was on the roof.
Picked up a very nice weapon that laid waiting to be picked up with ammo, but then i didn't know where to go next.
This something i will find out next.

It runs really smooth so far, good framerate and a nice dark ambience.

There is a little glitch however which i spotted, don't know if this has to do with the range or another setting, have a look at the video.

that is an occlusion issue. i forgot to turn off occlusion on the fences.

to continue, either go get the key on the box near where the second guy spawned and use it to unlock the gate that leads to the street, or go up higher on the roofs and look for a way into the buildings across the big wire.

@Earthling: You can also watch that part in Bugsys Video above

With so many different opinions being thrown around I can't wait to see how the difficulty in my game will be perceived tomorrow



I think that kills a lot of newer shooters (I touched on this in my review). Many of them have great animations and mechanics, but you just don't notice them if you can just rush through the levels willy-nilly.



-Wolf

Whoops, missed that completely

Now i have watched the video and noticed that i missed something else.
I did as Bugsy said and found my way to the entrance on the roof and gone down the stairs.
But i missed that guy in the appartment en was shot near the bus on the street.

Already very curious to see how your game is Wolf.