ShadeGunner

English · Deutsch

A 16-color cyberpunk side-scroller set in the Blade Runner universe. As a Blade Runner you work your way from the outskirts to the Tyrell HQ, and you have to spot, scan and deactivate replicants among the passers-by – and live with the consequences of your decisions.

Built on the asciiplay render path: Bayer dithering against a fixed 16-color palette plus a CRT chain (curvature, scanlines, shadow mask, bloom, phosphor persistence). The scene is composed on the CPU, figures and sound are procedural, post-processing runs on the GPU. Python 3 + PyQt6. UI and in-game text are available in German and English (switchable in the settings).

Screenshots

Atmosphere first

The game is meant to be played calmly: walk through the city, take it in, have a few moments that feel like the film. The mechanics serve the mood – and the further you get, the denser and less readable the streets become, until the question is no longer who is a replicant but whether it matters.

• Own palette per quarter: every zone has its own 16 colors built around one complementary pair plus a few close shades for highlights on the figures (outskirts amber ↔ blue/violet, suburbs green/cyan ↔ pink, downtown teal ↔ signal red, harbor ash blue ↔ sodium, Tyrell gold ↔ deep blue).
• Dense streets: old ornate facades with retrofitted cables next to hyper-modern blocks, chalk-graffiti monoliths and ornamented columns, wrecks and trash in the outskirts (cleaner further in), bridges and overhanging buildings you walk underneath, pedestrian signal towers as free-standing objects (some right in front of the camera, slightly out of focus), cables strung across the street (single or in bundles), thin out-of-focus cables and lamps in the foreground, paper litter swirling in gusts, cyclists in small groups as pure scenery, a 60s sedan among the modern traffic, paper umbrellas with glowing shafts.
• CRT phosphor: near-white highlights smear a little longer, and fading trails get softer as they decay.

Core loop

Observe → pick a target → scan (limited charges) → tell confidence (Naive Bayes, calibrated against the zone's real replicant ratio) → aim/shoot (passers-by in the line of fire catch the bullet) → meet the quota, the exit opens → 1 of 3 upgrades. Killing civilians ⇒ suspicion (at 100 % the run is lost).

When you catch an eye reflex – by watching, scanning, under a police searchlight or in a blackout – the game's emblem (an eye in the scanner reticle) flashes up above that person. It marks the tell, not the truth: humans occasionally show a false reflex too.

• Zones: Outskirts → Suburbs → Downtown → Harbor → Tyrell.
• Variety: jumping (over barriers, barrels and bins – not over wrecks or parked cars – and dodging blows), traffic on two lanes, police searchlight (reveals eye reflexes), blackouts, bounty replicants, landing police spinners (the downdraft pushes everyone aside, then a ground check with a searchlight; the spinner blocks the median), Gaff's origami (one figure per zone: chicken, matchstick man, sheep, crane, unicorn; finding one = points + scanner refilled) and noodle bars in the White Dragon style (counter, patrons, cook, neon dragon; standing at the counter briefly refills one heart).
• Full streets – and everyone is part of the simulation: passers-by on the road, strollers on the rear sidewalk in front of the shops, and groups standing around talking. All of them can be observed and scanned; replicants hide in every kind. Difficulty EASY/NORMAL/HARD scales the crowd.
• Addressing and shouting (V): a short tap addresses the target ("You there! Stand still!"): humans raise their hands and answer, whoever has the STIMULUS tell just stares. Holding charges a shout to the crowd; on release, "LAPD! Everyone down!" rolls across the street as a visible wave, and each person reacts with their own moment of shock as it reaches them. Whoever has the STIMULUS tell stays motionless; the others take cover (the bullet passes over anyone crouching) or run. Every shout raises the street's unrest: more people run, replicants get nervous and bolt.
• No two vehicles look alike: body colors, accent colors (trim lines, two-tone roofs, skirts, racing stripes), underglow, brightness and lettering (Tyrell, Shimata, Pan Am, Off-World, Nexus 6, Eye Works …) are combined per vehicle – taxi roof signs, bus ad banners, bus route (e.g. "12 HADES") and truck lettering are random too. 32 variants per type.
• Traffic turns into a column: every quarter has more vehicles – and the denser the traffic, the slower it flows: stop-and-go, halted taxis, jam horns, usually 5–7 vehicles on screen downtown. And the slower and fuller it is, the quieter the engines. If you stand in a lane the driver honks and brakes – you only get run over if you dart in front of a car at the last second (truly dangerous up front, barely so in dense downtown traffic). Walk into a car from the side and you only get a brief bump (stun), no heart lost. Along the curb cars, taxis and trucks park (some with hazard lights); they are too tall to jump over and hide whoever is standing behind them.
• Steaming manholes: like in New York – manhole covers glowing in the crack and striped steam stacks that puff in bursts. In the steam you can barely see anything: whoever stands there is hard to observe.
• Own music per quarter: the outskirts with the title theme, then denser with each zone (arpeggios, choir, foghorn and harbor metal, Tyrell big and bright). Plus a beat-locked rhythm track – from a heartbeat in the suburbs to a driving sequencer in Tyrell – that grows louder with tension (aiming, unrest, flight, suspicion, ROY) and slowly fades again.
• Holographic ballerinas (Blade Runner 2049): giant dancers above the roofs and small ones on projector pedestals on the sidewalk – pirouette, seconde, arabesque with promenade, scanlines, dropouts, glitches; they go dark during a blackout.
• Syd Mead traffic: police spinner with a capsule cockpit and wheel pods, Deckard's sedan, metro-cab with a glass dome, Sebastian's armadillo truck, aerial limousine, a city bus full of passengers, a motorcycle with disc wheels.
• Finale: Tyrell is a long last sector. Toward the end the city empties – derelict blocks, shutters, ornate columns – until J. F. Sebastian's house (the Bradbury). ROY stands in front of it and waits until you come close. In the fight he only taunts you with lines from the film. Once he has beaten you down to one heart he lets go and stands defenseless: one shot is enough. If you don't shoot, he speaks – tears in rain – dies on his own, and a dove rises. The ending reflects which way you chose. The exit only opens once the quota is met and ROY is no longer standing.

Controls

Key	Action
A/D, W/S (arrows)	walk, depth (near/far)
Shift	sprint
Space	jump
move / click mouse	pick target
Q / Tab / wheel	cycle target
R / right mouse button	scan selected target
E / left mouse button	hold = aim, release = fire
C / right mouse button	cancel shot (lower weapon)
V / middle mouse button	tap = address target, hold + release = shout "LAPD! Everyone down!"
P pause · H help · F fullscreen · M sound · S settings (title/pause)

Running

pip install -r requirements.txt
python3 -m shadegunner            # or: tools/run.sh

Menu entry with icon (Linux, per user, no root): tools/install_desktop.sh (remove with --uninstall).

On first launch the soundtrack is generated once (~11 s) into ~/.cache/shadegunner/audio-v2/; after that it starts immediately. To disable: SHADEGUNNER_NOSOUND=1.

Windows

Download: a ready-to-run build is on the Releases page – unzip ShadeGunner-win.zip and start ShadeGunner\ShadeGunner.exe (no Python needed).

Or build it yourself, two ways:

1. From source – run install.bat once (installs PyQt6 and numpy), then start with tools\run.bat.
2. Standalone .exe (no Python needed, the way to go for Steam): tools\build_windows.bat builds dist\ShadeGunner\ShadeGunner.exe with PyInstaller. Ship this whole folder to Steam. Important: PyInstaller can produce a Windows .exe only on Windows – the build therefore has to run on a Windows machine (the spec shadegunner.spec is included).

On Windows the save lives under %APPDATA%\shadegunner\ and the sound cache under %LOCALAPPDATA%\shadegunner\.

Technical

• Render paths: the default is OpenGL 3.3 (GPU: Bayer dither + CRT chain). If OpenGL 3.3 is missing (VM, server, old/no GPU), the game switches automatically to a CPU fallback (dither + scanlines + vignette, ~25–30 fps). Can be forced with --software or SHADEGUNNER_SOFTWARE=1 (needs numpy).
• Internal (dither) resolution 640×360, upscaled by the CRT/display chain.
• One 16-color palette per zone (config.ZONE_LOOK); the HUD keeps noir16.
• The game itself is numpy-free; numpy is only used for sound generation (with a fallback without numpy).
• Settings (music, effects, fullscreen, resolution, scanlines, language, difficulty, renderer) live next to the save (%APPDATA%\shadegunner\settings.json or the XDG path). In windowed mode the game gets exactly the chosen resolution (centered); in fullscreen the screen resolution applies.
• Tests: python3 tests/test_sim.py (simulation, no GL).
• Test cheat: type giveall anywhere (immortal, exit always open); giveall1–giveall5 jumps straight into sector 1–5.

Tools

• tools/glshot.py – offscreen GPU render to PNG (--hud, --size=1920x1080, --lang=en, --at=bridge|sebastian|0.4, --roy, …)
• tools/playtest.py – end-to-end with the real GameWidget
• tools/autoplay.py – balancing bot
• tools/spritesheet.py – sprite overview
• tools/make_brand.py – icon (assets/icons/, PNG 16–512 + .ico), logo and GitHub social preview, generated from code through the game's own dither/CRT chain (the logo background is a real game scene)

License

MIT.