Black Shades - Psychic Bodyguard Action

ilmmad

Black Shades

In Black Shades you are a psychic bodyguard who protects the VIP. That's right, psychic, not "psychotic." Now that we have the deeply involved backstory out of the way, let's talk a bit more about this game. According to the main site:

Black Shades was one of the winners of the UDevGame 2002 contest, out of about 40 contestants. David Rosen aimed for a much simpler graphical style than in GLFighters and Lugaru in order to complete the game within the deadline. In Black Shades you control a psychic bodyguard, and try to protect the VIP (dressed in white) from a horde of zombies, snipers and other assorted would-be assassins.

Yes, this game can easily be seen as rather ugly. Yes, everything is triangular polygons. Yes, this game is awesome.

As a psychic bodyguard, there are a few powers that you are in possession of, powers that elevate you from the level of this guy:

To this guy:

You can, for instance, slow down time to help aim. Or, if you really feel like taking things to the world of the supernatural, leave your body to fly around highlighting disguised assassins. But of course, the power you will notice most is that your psychic visions allow you to see the line-of-sight of any assassins with guns, helping you out a bit.

Still, the power you will take advantage of time after time if the power to restart the level, because you suck. How is this level restart explained?

If you die or your VIP is killed.. the level restarts. If you are are interested in the theory behind this: you are a psychic bodyguard, so you can see small distances into the future. The failure only occurred in a possible future which you are now going to try and avoid.

Yes, you are motherfucking Nicholas Cage

What sets Black Shades apart from the rest of the FPS crowd is the intense feeling you will experience while protecting your VIP by shooting, stabbing, punching, tackling and disarming your way to safety. Unable to kill a shooter? Quickly tackle your client out of harm's way. Out of ammo? Walk right up to an assailant and take his weapon, or knock him out and pick it up from his body. Attacked by zombies? Well, the only advice I can give here is knock them down and go for the head!

Controls
WASD = walk
shift = run
mouse = look
control = crouch/zoom
click = fire (while aiming) or smash (while running) or pick up gun (while crouching over a body and not aiming) or disarm (while not aiming)
q = aim or un-aim (important for picking up guns)
r = reload
e = psychic aim (Slow-mo)
z = toggle soul release
space = dive (while running forwards)

This is not a game to be played by those will short tempers and no patience. You will, over and over again, have mere seconds left on the clock when suddenly this douchebag right here:

Cuts the fuck out of your client and starts you on a murderous rampage.

Black Shades is based around score, so even if you haven't beaten it (I'm not sure if you can) post your highest score here. It doesn't matter if this was only the peak, and afterwards you lost scads of points because you accidentally slit up a few civilians. We accept that here. It happens.

Downloads:
Windows
Mac OS Classic
Mac OS X
Linux

Lord Yod

This sounds awesome.

Voranth

This game is rad. Simple yet entertaining.

ilmmad

6425 highscore, up to the level with the 1:30 time limit. I've gotten as far as one with a 1:00 zombie stage, but stopped there.

Voranth

Wow, these sniper rifle guys keep kicking my ass.

6290, up to the second sniper rifle stage. Those guys are jerks.

ilmmad

Voranth wrote: »

Wow, these sniper rifle guys keep kicking my ass.

6290, up to the second sniper rifle stage. Those guys are jerks.

You know duck aims with the rifle right?

Thor1590

I was doing pretty alright until they made me use hand grenades.

ilmmad

Thor1590 wrote: »

I was doing pretty alright until they made me use hand grenades.

Walk up to someone and click to disarm them.

Sagaxus

So the 60 second zombie level is basically the worst thing ever.

Edit: Shazam! Finally beat it.

ilmmad

Sagaxus wrote: »

So the 60 second zombie level is basically the worst thing ever.

Edit: Shazam! Finally beat it.

Score?

Sagaxus

3950. I don't know if that's good or bad or what.

ilmmad

Sagaxus wrote: »

3950. I don't know if that's good or bad or what.

Don't ask me I don't have a clue.

Nimble Cat

Cool game, can't hit shit though. Damn those controls are hard.

vegeta_666

Very cool game, got a bit far until the 1:30 minute mission where you have the Magnum, then, my score dropped to 1000-some so I think I'll try again later.

ilmmad

6455. For now my standard is "up to the 1:30 level"

Peewi

This game sounds interesting. Downloading now.

ilmmad

8005!

Sueve

game is fun

played like 6 years ago on mac classic

oh damn

bamjo

This game is addictive. It's also fucking hard.

It started out great. I was blasting dudes, tackling shit.

Then the game threw zombies at me. I was like, "Alright game, we'll go with it." I went to town with my shotgun.

Then game said, "That's too easy man, here's a knife." And I was like, "Aw dude, for real?" but I made it through.

I said, "What now game, is that all you got?" Game just looked at me, and handed me a pile of grenades.
Then game sent swarms of guys at me and Mr. White Pajamas. I blew up the VIP so many times I lost count.

You win game... you win.

ilmmad

10066, up to the mission after the 1:30 one, which I did in one shot.. Tackling zombies then putting a round in their head is great. Also so is disarming all the snipers in the third mission.

ilmmad

10600, up to the mission after the 1:30 one, which I managed to do with zero restarts. Tackling zombies then putting a round in their head is great. Also so is disarming all the snipers in the third mission.

Smasher

Hmm... completed the game, but it doesn't count punching someone out as incapacitating them so it doesn't give you points for it. 5090. Now to see if I can actually get a decent score.

gunwarrior

Jeez, i couldn't get past the 2nd knife level, too many damn snipers and then come the knifers while you try to run back... i love the slow-mo though

Bill Cosby

AHHHHHHH how the hell do you do the minute zombie level where you have a handgun. I cant even manage to get more than 20 seconds in.

gunwarrior

Bill Cosby wrote: »

AHHHHHHH how the hell do you do the minute zombie level where you have a handgun. I cant even manage to get more than 20 seconds in.

the zombs take 2 shots to down, 3 shots to kill I think, head shots should bring em down perminently in 2 hits... i think. Make good use of the slow-mo power and double tap to keep em' back. That was my strategy anyway

gunwarrior

Also, can we put the contols in the OP? I went through like 15 levels before finding out you can tackle and 20 before i found out how to mellee them. How do you disarm and use this "soul release" thing?

Edit: Ah, its in the readme. Still you should put it in there for easy reference.

Fig-D

Controls:
WASD = walk
shift = run
mouse = look
control = crouch/zoom
click = fire (while aiming) or smash (while running) or pick up gun (while crouching over a body and not aiming) or disarm (while not aiming)
q = aim or un-aim (important for picking up guns)
r = reload
e = psychic aim
z = toggle soul release
space = dive (while running forwards)

High Score of 10615 and I know I can do better.

Organichu

Wow, this is tremendously difficult.

I still haven't gotten past the first level. I don't think I'm making adequate use of the 'move your soul' feature... I try to use it but then... blargh. Someone always runs from behind and knifes the fucker.

Lork

16805

I remember this from a few years ago. Such a great concept; somebody needs to make a full game out of this, with save support and hundreds of levels.

Smasher

One tip: Anybody in the street is your enemy and should be killed immediately. If they haven't pulled out a weapon yet, they're just about to.

vegeta_666

Smasher wrote: »

One tip: Anybody in the street is your enemy and should be killed immediately. If they haven't pulled out a weapon yet, they're just about to.

Killing random civilians reduces your score I think.

Sagaxus

Here's a better tip: In case you haven't noticed, normal people do not cross the street. Bust a cap on any jaywalkers because they just want to kill Whitey.

Smasher

That's what I was referring to; I meant street as opposed to the sidewalk.

Sagaxus

Smasher wrote: »

That's what I was referring to; I meant street as opposed to the sidewalk.

I totally knew that...

Umm... Repeatedly tackling Whitey is fun and useful.

ilmmad

You can enable debug by finding the Black Shades folder (C:\Program Files) and editing config so show fps is 1. Tab will toggle third person, f will force push.

But yeah the best way to juice your score is to disarm everyone. Then shoot them. Except for people with knives; shoot them from he get go because the knife won't let you disarm, and there is a bonus for killing people with knives.

Sushisource

This looks fucking sweet trying right now

EDIT: OH GOD MY EYES. Anyone know how to change the resolution?
Edit2: NM Found a config file

Frem

Any Linux users managed to compile this? It seems that the author forgot to mention a few dependencies in the readme.

$ make
g++ -o ./objs/blackshades ./objs/Camera.o ./objs/Decals.o ./objs/Fog.o ./objs/Frustum.o ./objs/GameDraw.o ./objs/GameInitDispose.o ./objs/GameLoop.o ./objs/GameTick.o ./objs/Globals.o ./objs/MacInput.o ./objs/Main.o ./objs/Maths.o ./objs/Models.o ./objs/Person.o ./objs/Quaternions.o ./objs/Serialize.o ./objs/Skeleton.o ./objs/Sprites.o ./objs/Support.o ./objs/TGALoader.o ./objs/Text.o ./objs/Timer.o -L/usr/lib -lSDL -lGL -lGLU -lopenal -lalut  -lvorbisfile -lvorbis
./objs/Decals.o: In function `Decals::LoadCraterTexture(char*)':
/home/james/games/blackshades/Source/Decals.cpp:290: undefined reference to `loadTexture(char const*, unsigned int, unsigned int, bool)'
./objs/Decals.o: In function `Decals::LoadBloodTexture(char*, int)':
/home/james/games/blackshades/Source/Decals.cpp:285: undefined reference to `loadTexture(char const*, unsigned int, unsigned int, bool)'
./objs/Decals.o: In function `Decals::LoadBulletHoleTexture(char*)':
/home/james/games/blackshades/Source/Decals.cpp:280: undefined reference to `loadTexture(char const*, unsigned int, unsigned int, bool)'
./objs/GameInitDispose.o: In function `LoadPersonSpriteTexture(char*, unsigned int*)':
/home/james/games/blackshades/Source/GameInitDispose.cpp:1349: undefined reference to `loadTexture(char const*, unsigned int, unsigned int, bool)'
./objs/Sprites.o: In function `Sprites::LoadBulletTexture(char*)':
/home/james/games/blackshades/Source/Sprites.cpp:118: undefined reference to `loadTexture(char const*, unsigned int, unsigned int, bool)'
./objs/Sprites.o:/home/james/games/blackshades/Source/Sprites.cpp:113: more undefined references to `loadTexture(char const*, unsigned int, unsigned int, bool)' follow
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [objs/blackshades] Error 1

Organichu

IT'S SO DIFFICULT

Organichu

DAMNIT.

I got to the Zombie level. I was doing pretty danged good force pushing everyone... but I just couldn't finish. Again and again.

I want to delete it. I want to.

Smasher

Does anyone else have enemies randomly disappear for a second or two? They're still there and I can shoot them, but it makes it difficult when I'm trying to snipe them and they vanish.

Gorilla Salad

The game is pretty fun.