I don't know if it's me forgetting how fast targets in shooting range can pop out, but during the sequence 3 and 4 I had to deal with three or even four targets at the same time.

Can it be a difficulty level of the game that determine how hard it will be at the shooting range or anything else (a glitch or CPU speed)?

Yes, the GOG/ScummVM version includes a original code bug fix so the targets will be faster in Normal and Hard difficulty -- they will appear according to their preset interval settings in the code.

In Easy mode we kept the original behavior with the original bug (which may have been kept as a feature!) so the targets will be as slow as they were at the original release (the first target may take up to around 20 seconds to appear).

In both cases the intervals for the targets to appear are not affected by CPU speed (ie. they will behave the same in a fast CPU or an older CPU).

Thank you for clarifying the information. I play at Medium difficulty. I totally forgot how hard the shooting range may be at Hard difficulty.

It was a very long time ago when I played Blade Runner how it was intended. :)

Is a good result at the shooting range required at some point in the game, or can it be ignored? (easy difficulty)

No, it's more of a mini-game thing, basically and a safe way to practice the shooting mechanic of the game.

A little fun detail is that if you get a better score than Steele, but not by too much, she will try to best your score the next time she'll be at the Police HQ.

To get a good score in the shooting range, these are the basic rules:
- Shoot enemy targets only after they have rotated to reveal they have a gun.
- You will be penalized if you shoot a target that has not rotated, even if they are an enemy.
- Don't shoot innocents (targets with babies, or without guns)
- Don't get shot.
- Don't allow enemies to flee.
- If you shot an enemy, but they seemingly re-appear shortly after as activated, you need to re-shoot them. Those are some of the bonus targets.
- Don't leave an area before the announcer says that it is complete.

There's no definitive best score, because some targets are "bonus" and those are somewhat randomized. But anything above 80 is a really high score. Some runs may allow you to get a score above the 90s. Admittedly this is way easier in Easy mode.

In Easy mode you get infinite money and enemies (not in the Shooting Range) have lower health. McCoy will need less clues to reach certain conclusions too.
In Normal and Hard mode enemies get more health.

Also gun "kick-back" (which is simulated as mouse pointer jitter) gets worse with game difficulty.

If you're playing in the restored content mode, then we implemented a couple of Quality of Life fixes for the Easy mode -- the two notorious puzzles (Moraji and rat bridge) should be somewhat easier to solve.

Also in the restored content mode, in Hard difficulty, you won't be allowed access to a particular area in Act 4 before you make a certain phone call. This is mainly because I wanted to restore the cut dialogue there but didn't want to do this for every difficulty.

I cannot yet speak for upcoming stuff that will be affected by game difficulty (because the restored content version is still work in progress), but the main idea should follow the above. Easy gets easier enemies (and puzzles), hard may be a bit more challenging.

It's gonna get better? Opa!

Stay healthy,
zz

You too stay health, and thanks for the kind words and the feedback on the restored content version. Those help us working on such projects, even if we don't take the time to always say it.

It's going to get more restored content, for sure. I want to think that people will find it better, too :) but any feedback and suggestions for improvement are very welcome.

It's taking longer than I originally estimated, due to real life issues and some severe case of coding burn-out, which I'm hopeful will pass soon.

The new Restored Content version is great!. Your work has filled in some annoying holes in the story via dialog ("St. Bernard") and cut-scene restorations, and hints at further undreamed-of depths to the game. What's not to love?

There has probably been an extended discussion here about why Westwood Studios discarded all this original production material and how it came to you. Is there a thread I should look for to learn about this?

When I was into the original game, I kept notes on the variables for each new game I started; the replicant tally, certain conversational branchings, clues that only show up in specific situations, and et cetera. Like McCoy's missing spinner, they're around here somewhere ...

This Restored version makes me want to reevaluate and maybe revisit that project. I've noticed Izo has more to say (it seems that Izo might have once had a larger role in the game), and some dialogs with Guzza (one of the key factors in my notes) are different.

I've been avoiding non-productive question branches, as I learned to back in the day, but I see now that I should go through all of those ostensible dead ends to see what other fascinating changes you have wrought with your mighty stylus!

Can't wait!

I don't think we've had an extended discussion about this. For what we gather it was due to time constraints. Louis Castle has said repeatedly that this was the main factor that they had to deal with and led to some quick decisions towards the end. The original Designers Cut option in KIA is also very under-used so maybe some of this stuff were to go under that, but they never got around to implementing this. As is, the Designers Cut is mostly confusing for the user, I'd expect.

A similar case was the severe lossy compression of the character models. They intended to get it more optimized so the models would look more well defined, rather than the blotches that some models ended up as -- which was also something that made a negative impression even at the time. I think I've seen some promotional material with McCoy, where the model looks way better -- and McCoy's is one of the better ones even in the released version (while Bullet Bob, Mama Isabella and others don't look so good.

I intend to contact L. Castle, D. Leary and any other developers I can find (and get a response from) of the original game to ask for their feedback and opinion on the cut content restoration, but I wanted to have progressed further into the work first. In general though, the feedback we got from them so far has been positive (for the ScummVM Blade Runner engine re-implementation) but they also wrote that it's not easy to remember specific details from all those years ago.

Anyway, I guess a more appropriate thread here about the Restored Content would be:
https://www.gog.com/forum/blade_runner/restored_content

Back to the OP, I too am very happy that the shooting range is finally a challenge. It was trivial in the original game and therefore boring.