Cracks knuckles

Here we go...

So! After finally being able to fire up bulletblues without having to wait about 45 minutes for the thing to load, I gave it a shot and I can only say that I'm pleasantly surprised Wolf! I'm going to break it down into three parts. The good, the bad and the ugly since I'm so attached to old FPSC review formatting that I can't do it otherwise. I'm looking at this through the lens of someone who doesn't have -that- many hours in GG (120 to be precise) and as someone who enjoys shooter games. So without further introductions...

The good!
Right off the bat I loved how it looked in-game (Not touching on the menus as you mentioned the quality is meh). The static lightmapper (lee, pls fix) did its wonders and it immersed me somewhat in the cyberpunk universe you tried setting out in the game. The levels were well constructed and I didn't have the need to really backtrack to figure out where I was going. There's plenty of weapons to go about so I didn't have to worry about ammunition when the rather unforgiving enemies began to shoot at me. The first level was a nice balance between shooting and platforming, something that I don't see often with GG titles. Overall I think you really sold me on how you design your levels, making me feel like it wasn't so much a Gameguru game looking past the inherent errors the engine comes with.

The bad!
Enemies. I swear the enemies hit me harder and faster than an otaku who's waifu has been insulted. I had to respawn several times, often due to an unfair death. You can claim git gud but if enemies can gnaw my 200HP away in under 10 seconds, there might be something wrong in that department. I also noticed them spawning, which brought me out of the bit of immersion I had. This is my only gripe in terms of bad things.

The ugly!
We all known GG has inherent problems. But to an extent, I do think some could be avoided. I saw you mentioned the enemies through the floor bug so I'll save you. However, there are some other problems I find to be in the ugly category, one of them being performance... I got a pretty decent rig (i5 6600 + GTX 1050Ti) yet I kept having 20/25 FPS with or without reshade enabled on highest settings. Moving it down to medium did give me some frames, but I shouldn't have to honestly. The lower FPS cause me to have issues navigating the platforming section which almost made me quit out of frustration. Aside from that, the highest settings did make me see some discrepancy in normal map quality. Especially the scaffolds in the first level had a very detailed one compared to the rest of the scene, which made the beams stand out like a sore thumb. There seemed to be a mix of several qualities going on at the same time, which made me go 'Ew' a few times. The last thing to mention is that after I loaded in level 2 the HUD was empty. Your graphics were there but the Health and Ammo numbers were gone.

Overall, it's a decent game, Wolf! I can see you put effort into it, and aside from the issues I had, I enjoyed it.

Hey Pek!

Haha! I was not expecting another review for this. Thank you. I can agree with all of your points but like to reply to some things you mentioned. Here goes:



Back then I just put that in as a nod to Bugsy but since then I feel that if I am making a 3d game, the player should be able to jump and climb.



There are a lot of things I could have designed better myself too. Also note that this is the older x9 version. I hope to have a lot of these errors resolved in future releases.



git gud scrub! Haha, no, I think its an inherent flaw with the old AI and how they kind of empty their clips immediately once they lock on to you. First I wanted to force the player to kind of move from cover to cover and take it slow but I noticed that the types who play a lot of online shooters just kinda breezed through not taking too much damage (like bugsy who played the video) while people who play single player shooters, especially modern ones where the player can take a few hits before he has to react had problems getting through the first level alone (I think you fall somewhere in the middle). None of this was communicated to the player, I've done this better in older releases with a similar scope.

For Acythian I want to have better AI with different firing rates and a bit of a learning curve so the player finds out how to tackle the enemies.

The FPS thing is true but I refuse to see that as my fault. I mean its pretty clear that the game looks dated and the only real effects it uses are default DNS shading and 2D decals. You also don't have that many polygons on screen at any given time. I could have removed some detail from the maps but I doubt that even that would have solved much. FPS is often kind of random in GG.



Hmm, absolutely yes. Its less the quality of the actual normalmap its more the way X9 GG rendered them with all these glissening little artifacts in them. Some thing outright look like plastic. By now my normalmapdesign is adapted to that but a lot of props in redacted aren't.
Take this screenshot by avenging eagle where there was no lightsource in one of his tunnel areas. The floor looks like its wet plastic due to howe it renders the NM.



The fabled memory issues. For a lot of players level 3 only showed up half =/ Including me. I am glad you could finish the game though and that you found some enjoyment out of it

Next one'll be better



-Wolf

I help rewrite your game , yes, I good, very good, I need more spped from my PC, your graphics old.

Sure thing, buddy.

Hello!

Funny enough, but I can no longer play my own game.
Now that I have a decent PC (finally) I want to record a playthrough of this on the highest settings for my YT channel, yet when I launch the game, nothing happens.

Has someone encountered this bug before and is there a fix for it? I have tried lowering settings in the setup.ini but so far no luck?

Edit Nevermind! I figured it out. Downloading the game again fixed it.

I'll now be uploading all three levels as videos and then I am finally completely done with this thing.









-Wolf