Today, our favorite action hero officially turns 25 years old! It’s been an absolutely wild ride for Sam. From blasting through the sands of ancient Egypt in a genre defining first-person shooter, to tackling top-down indie spin-offs and stepping directly into virtual reality, Se
Today, our favorite action hero officially turns 25 years old!
It’s been an absolutely wild ride for Sam. From blasting through the sands of ancient Egypt in a genre defining first-person shooter, to tackling top-down indie spin-offs and stepping directly into virtual reality, Serious Sam has taken many forms over the last quarter-century. But no matter what field you drop him into, he has always stayed true to himself: bringing total, unfiltered mayhem.
Here is to 25 years of chaos, and to many more adventures ahead.
We’ll be celebrating this anniversary throughout the year with various updates and surprises, starting today.
As part of the celebration, we’re sharing something special: an old, dusty sketchbook from the very first Serious Sam game. You can find it right now in the installation folders of The First Encounter and The Second Encounter, under the name “Serious Sam Sketchbook.”
BUT WAIT, THERE IS MORE!
Next week, we will be pushing live Community Items for Serious Sam TFE & TSE! After seeing how much you loved Serious Sam 2's community items, we figured Sam's 25th birthday is the perfect reason to give the games that started it all the same treatment. Get ready to collect badass Steam Trading Cards, Animated Avatar Profile Frames, sweet Profile Backgrounds, and more!
Thank you everyone for the ongoing support for Serious Sam through all the 25 years of mayhem!
Hi everyone! As many of you must have found out by now, one of the craziest members of our community recently released a brand-new Serious Sam: The First Encounter mod which updates our original Serious baby with state-of-the-art technology - Ray Tracing. I remember vividly seein
Hi everyone! As many of you must have found out by now, one of the craziest members of our community recently released a brand-new Serious Sam: The First Encounter mod which updates our original Serious baby with state-of-the-art technology - Ray Tracing.
I remember vividly seeing the mod in one of our community Discord servers a long time ago. Back then, Sultim was about halfway through, and very excited about the stuff he learned while making it. We were instantly impressed and could barely wait for the mod to finally drop, and here we are. Serious Sam: The First Encounter can be played with Ray Tracing. I bet you thought you’d say that out loud. Come on, do it. Say it out loud.
Sultim has spent an insane amount of time on this project, and it definitely shows. That’s why we simply had to send our community master, the artist currently known as THE LAW, on another mission – to interview a superstar modder in the making. Make sure to check out that interview below.
Much love! Danny
BASEMENT CHATS WITH YASEN
Good day, dear readers! Today, I am joined by the guy everyone talks about, the master of Ray Tracing – Sultim! We chat about his latest mod, what motivated him to make it, and how it all came together.
⚪ Hi Sultim. Glad to have you here in the basement. Please introduce yourself to the audience. How long have you been a Serious Sam fan and when did you first start modding for it?
Hello, I'm Sultim and I've finished my bachelor's degree in Software Engineering this Summer. Not sure what to say more about myself, I think this is the most appropriate introduction currently.
I've been a Serious Sam player since 2013, I think, but back then I didn't understand what the game is even about. It was just another game. Over time, I was experimenting with game engines and tried to make my own, of course. And only after figuring out that games are really complex systems, I tried to find a game I could clone for fun. That's how I've returned to Serious Sam because on the surface level it seems like it's a simplistic game. However, after experimenting with trying to clone it, I've found a lot of obstacles. For example, the core gameplay of my clone wasn’t as engaging as the original.
After that, I've been more involved in graphics programming and, like other beginners, started with OpenGL. I was in my second year of university, and we were given a task for a semester to make a finished project with a requirements specification, planning, etc. So, I've chosen to make a very simple game engine. At the end of that semester, it had graphics in OpenGL, a very coarse physics engine that works on triangles and spheres... But anyway, it was finished in a way that it did have an example game (which was set in Egypt). And since then I started to look at Serious Engine 1 more closely as it’s been open-source since 2016.
In January 2020, when I had 2 weeks of holidays, I decided to make a Vulkan port for Serious Engine 1. At the time, I and my friend had a one-year project which was based on Vulkan API, so it was another chance to improve my limited knowledge of Vulkan back then. After 2 weeks it was ready. Seeing this code now is devastating. But it just works. What I remember is that it was really hard to get it to work at the start, I had numerous issues because of my poor knowledge of Serious Engine 1 architecture, WinAPI, Vulkan, C++, etc. I couldn't see The Second Encounter anymore after that - I really tired from it throughout these 2 weeks. The grand idea of that Vulkan port was making a ray tracing port, after seeing Quake 2 RTX. But I didn't have a ray-tracing GPU, nor a strong knowledge of APIs and SE1.
⚪ Ray tracing is a relatively new graphical development. How challenging was getting this technology to compile on a nearly twenty-year-old engine? Did you have to perform significant code rewrites for it?
The initial compilation was quite challenging. Introducing Vulkan API wasn't hard – it was already there. But the problems were related to the fact that ray-tracing extensions require the application to be 64-bit. SE1 was initially 32-bit. So, SE1 had to be ported to 64-bit. Fortunately, there was an open-sourced x64 Linux port of SE1! That was a great relief because SE1 has some places not prepared for x64, like some pointers, which are assumed to be 4 bytes long, but with x64 they can be 8 bytes.
The project itself has roots in September of 2020 when the 4th year of my education started. Since it's the final year, all the students must make another one-year project, namely "Graduation thesis". So, after much deliberation, I've finally chosen to make a library that should help to port games to path tracing and I've started to make a research of the subject, concepts of path tracing, light physics, what are the current hardware limitations, etc.
I really needed a ray-tracing GPU to test so I decided to buy an RTX3070 which was released at the end of October 2020. Buying one was a pain in the ass. At the release hour, I was sitting for 2 hours straight and reloading the online store page to get just anything. The first time I tried to order an available GPU, it just disappeared in front of me. But I got one eventually.
The development of the library started in November 2020 and I started to sort out the old graphics engine of Serious Engine 1. Of course, the old graphics engine was really optimized for rasterization. And it wasn't possible to make a few changes to it to make it work with ray–tracing primitives. More grand changes must've been introduced to the engine. Almost every day I was assembling piece by piece the library. And I got something working in Serious Engine 1 itself by the middle of January 2021.
After that it seemed to me that with enough passion I'll be able to release Serious Sam: Ray Traced in May 2021. But now we all know how that went.
Each component of Serious Engine 1 had to have been reworked; dynamic geometry, static geometry, static movable geometry, particles, water, light sources... The main problem is the lack of game resources and meta-information: like, what light sources are not "natural" (like torches), what geometry can't be visible (in Oasis, in Moon Mountains, and others there was overlapping geometry that should not be visible from one side, but visible from another), what are the water polygons, the lack of normal maps, roughness, metallicity, emission maps (SE1 uses up to 3 textures per polygon, and each of them should have additional 2 PBR textures, it increases the load on GPU to fetch that data), etc etc.
With all that, path tracing is limited with current generation GPUs -- only a very limited amount of rays can be cast per pixel, around 4-7. Offline path tracers are using thousands of rays per pixel! So because of maintaining the real-time-ness (very few rays per pixel), there's a lot of noise on raw ray-traced images. So there are denoising techniques that are designed specifically for such cases: they require only 1 sample per pixel, one of them is A-SVGF, which was used in my library and consequently, in Serious Sam: Ray Traced.
Another kind of problem is how to draw particles and other semi-transparent geometry, and since with ray tracing it would cost another few rays, I've decided to draw them with classic rasterization but using ray traced depth buffer, so semi-transparent geometry can be hidden by ray-traced geometry.
⚪ Where else have you spent time reworking engine aspects? Did you have to perform case-by-case fixes in certain levels or were your changes global?
There are a ton of such fixes on each level. Testers really helped with that - they've pointed out most such inconsistencies. Like no lights in cutscenes or Sewers which were too dark (so the flashlight angle is wider there), invisible Gnaars are hard to see, etc. The fresh point of view is very useful because after 10 months of development one gets too used to everything in a project. I would say the most time-consuming part is level tweaking.
⚪ Testers are always lifesavers! So now the most important question is, was your thesis graded and what grade did you receive?
I've finished my studies successfully and got an "Excellent" grade (which means 5 on the scale from 2 to 5 [it's the Russian academic grading system]) for my thesis and its defence. It was challenging to make this thesis, to create such a library, to make the ray tracing port of SE1, but it was enjoyable, in a way that it was genuinely exciting to develop it, and also interesting and funny to see the people's reactions, to read their comments.
⚪ Congratulations, you really deserve it. When you first told me about the mod I was absolutely sure it's one of those mods that would never see the light of day, but you proved me wrong and did a great job! What are your plans for the future now that you have graduated?
My current plans are to rest a bit from such intense work, because I was thinking and developing it almost every day, especially after graduation when there were almost no distractions.
For the future, I really don't know. There are several ways for me, and until November it's very uncertain. I don't know, maybe there'll be another port. We'll see.
⚪ Thank you for this interview Sultim, I really appreciate you taking the time to be here with us. As always, please take the stage to share whatever you wish with our Serious community! As for you my dear readers, I’ll see you soon in the next episode where we are going to interview one of the biggest Serious Sam fans in Russia “Samson”
Oh, god, never underestimate the power of open-sourced projects.
Sure, it's a bit of a bummer that Serious Sam 4 has been delayed until September. We were all looking forward to blowing up headless extra dimensional monsters with a shotgun, just like any red-blooded PC gamer should be. Fortunately, GOG is offering Serious Sam: The First Encoun
Sure, it's a bit of a bummer that Serious Sam 4 has been delayed until September. We were all looking forward to blowing up headless extra dimensional monsters with a shotgun, just like any red-blooded PC gamer should be. Fortunately, GOG is offering Serious Sam: The First Encounter as a free game giveaway now, and the offer is good for 48 hours.
Serious Sam: The First Encounter is actually the first half of the first Serious Sam FPS game, and it provides an introduction to Sam 'Serious' Stone and his time-traveling quest to ventilate as many headless, earth destroying mutants as possible. Honestly? There's not a whole lot to know: monsters have invaded our universe, Sam is really good at fighting them, and some Earth scientists send him back in time to use a relic called the 'Time Lock' to ban them from our version of reality, permanently.
That's pretext enough to send Sam - that is, you - into a series of absurd faceoffs with gangs of ridiculous beasts, many of whom do not have heads, but all of whom are bent on your personal destruction.
Hi everyone! I can’t believe it’s been a month already, but we’ve been hard at it, trying to make Revolution into what it was meant to be at first. We were all over your reports and feedback, fixing, readjusting, rebalancing and expanding in the meantime. Our main focus was fixin
Hi everyone!
I can’t believe it’s been a month already, but we’ve been hard at it, trying to make Revolution into what it was meant to be at first. We were all over your reports and feedback, fixing, readjusting, rebalancing and expanding in the meantime.
Our main focus was fixing game-breaking issues as well as the Workshop issue that came up, as we love seeing your mods shine. This was sorted out, so please make magic happen, we can’t wait to check all your custom stuff out.
This update also takes care of the leaderboard issues with survival levels, as well as many smaller issues with Netricsa, collision, textures and such. More detailed update notes can be found below.
Stay Serious! - Danny, on behalf of Croteam.
General changes
Workshop items will now show up properly in the custom level menu.
Sniper zoom has been adjusted to be more in-line with the classics.
Fixed an issue where inverting vertical look would only work on a mouse and not on a gamepad.
Fixed erroneous time estimates on Bright Island.
Added updated model for the final boss of Bright Island.
Leaderboards for Survival levels should now work as intended.
Fixed smaller issues with wording in Netricsa.
Fixed several collision issues across the board.
Fixed several issues with textures on multiple levels.
Fixed visibility issues across South American levels related to the faulty rendering of several pyramid models.
Several smaller balance and gameplay changes on the Bright Island levels, based on community feedback.
Map specific changes
BrKeen Chevap Xbox - Fixed an issue where the wrong music would play during matches.
Crystal Cove - The secret laser will no longer clip through the floor.
Forlorn Ruins - Rebalanced the last arena to align the difficulty with previous areas.
Forlorn Ruins - Added additional platforms for bridges to make passing them easier.
Forlorn Ruins - Changed Arachnoid Adult spawn positions and movement patterns.
Forlorn Ruins - Rebalanced the Kleer fight to keep it in-line with other encounters.
Forlorn Ruins - Players should now be able to progress through Tree Village arenas on lower difficulties.
Forlorn Ruins - Overhauled the final arena.
Ruins of the Abyss - Lava golems in the fire elemental area should spawn more consistently now.
Ruins of the Abyss - Readjusted the position of the coop portal to better fit intended gameplay.
Ruins of the Abyss - Increased the sensing range of elemental enemies.
Ruins of the Abyss - Rebalanced several fights.
Ruins of the Abyss - Platforms will no longer wound the player in the water element room.
Ruins of the Abyss - Enemies will no longer be able to see the player when it’s not expected.
Ruins of the Abyss - Mud golem no longer floats when awake.
Sunken Pyramid - Redesigned the gravity room to provide players with a more balanced experience.
Sunken Pyramid - Slowed down spinning platforms on the 3rd floor of the pyramid.
Sunken Pyramid - Players should now be able to progress through some arenas on lower difficulties.
NOTE: This update will once again render your saves useless. Unfortunately, this is due to some limitations of the old engine, and there are no workarounds at this point in time. That’s also one of the reasons we are trying to provide you with substantial updates less frequently, rather than smaller updates that would break saves constantly. Sorry about that.
In the future, we will be keeping one older build live even after updates, so you can continue with your progress in case you don’t feel like you’d benefit from the update. We use a similar thing in our other games as well.
Player Feedback
We value your input, and we want you to reach out to us with all feedback. For general thoughts and ideas, please use the General section of the Revo forums on Steam. Should you encounter any issues or bugs, please report them on the Tech & Support subforum, along with your game log (located in the game installation folder) and a detailed description of the issue.
For all things Serious Sam hit Mr. Stone up on Twitter and Facebook. Follow Croteam on Twitter and Instagram, like us on Facebook, and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Oh, and don’t forget to join our ever-growing Croteam family on Discord and Reddit.
Happy days! Serious Sam Classics: Revolution is out in the wild as a fully released game, and we're celebrating with a huge discount! You saw this coming, let's be honest, as we have recently announced Croteam will help to get this project through the door. Serious Sam Classics:
Happy days! Serious Sam Classics: Revolution is out in the wild as a fully released game, and we're celebrating with a huge discount!
You saw this coming, let's be honest, as we have recently announced Croteam will help to get this project through the door.
Serious Sam Classics: Revolution is now THE best way to enjoy Classic old-school Serious Sam games, improved and expanded upon with many often requested changes, tweaks, and fixes, as well as a brand new original campaign - Bright Island. The game features 8 new maps, on top of those available in the originals, and some brand new achievements. We mustn't forget the workshop support, so get in and showcase your modding skills. We can't wait to see what your imagination will spawn.
Huge thanks and congrats to everyone Alligator Pit and everyone else involved with this project over the past couple of years.
Serious Sam is 18 years old today. It was on March 21st, 2001 that Serious Sam: The First Encounter hit the shelves. Quite literally, as digital distribution was still a distant future back then. We were young, super passionate and, after a successful tech test launched in the su
Serious Sam is 18 years old today. It was on March 21st, 2001 that Serious Sam: The First Encounter hit the shelves. Quite literally, as digital distribution was still a distant future back then.
We were young, super passionate and, after a successful tech test launched in the summer of 2000, confident that Serious Sam would resonate well with the gaming community. Turns out, we were right. Serious Sam: The First Encounter caused quite a stir in the gaming community, won dozens of awards (including Gamespot's Game of the Year) and laid the foundation of everything Croteam is today.
Fast forward 18 years later and Serious Sam got numerous sequels, spin-offs and remasters on most platforms. Hell, we even sent Sam to virtual reality and as with everything else - had tons of fun doing so.
Even though he's 18 years old (and legally allowed to buy a beer here in Croatia, finally), Sam's still going strong and we can't wait to take you on another journey of chaos and mayhem with Serious Sam 4.
Until then, we'll raise a glass (of aforementioned beer) in Sam's name and celebrate all of you for being Seriously awesome. Whether you've been demolishing hordes of aliens since day one or just joined our community – we thank you for supporting us from the bottom of our hearts!
In the immortal words of our beloved publisher: “Chaos incarnate Croteam and professional hype-people Devolver Digital have launched Serious Sam VR: The First Encounter and Serious Sam VR: The Second Encounter on HTC Vive and Oculus Rift via Steam.” Visit South America, ancient M
In the immortal words of our beloved publisher: “Chaos incarnate Croteam and professional hype-people Devolver Digital have launched Serious Sam VR: The First Encounter and Serious Sam VR: The Second Encounter on HTC Vive and Oculus Rift via Steam.” http://store.steampowered.com/app/552460/ Visit South America, ancient Mesopotamia and Medieval Europe, and don't forget to bring your chainsaw. Actually, bring two: dual-wield your new toys to defeat Mental or use your arsenal in a deathmatch against "flat peasants"!
That's right, SSVR: The Second encounter will be getting a free Fusion 2017 update, bringing cross-platform co-op and other multiplayer modes (VR vs non-VR) and Steam Workshop support. SSVR: The Second Encounter is launching with a special 25% discount (until April 11th), and there's a 25% discount for the entire Serious Sam VR budle – thank you for supporting Croteam's VR division!
In the immortal words of our beloved publisher: “Chaos incarnate Croteam and professional hype-people Devolver Digital have launched Serious Sam VR: The First Encounter and Serious Sam VR: The Second Encounter on HTC Vive and Oculus Rift via Steam.” Visit South America, ancient M
In the immortal words of our beloved publisher: “Chaos incarnate Croteam and professional hype-people Devolver Digital have launched Serious Sam VR: The First Encounter and Serious Sam VR: The Second Encounter on HTC Vive and Oculus Rift via Steam.” http://store.steampowered.com/app/552460/ Visit South America, ancient Mesopotamia and Medieval Europe, and don't forget to bring your chainsaw. Actually, bring two: dual-wield your new toys to defeat Mental or use your arsenal in a deathmatch against "flat peasants"!
That's right, SSVR: The Second encounter will be getting a free Fusion 2017 update, bringing cross-platform co-op and other multiplayer modes (VR vs non-VR) and Steam Workshop support. SSVR: The Second Encounter is launching with a special 25% discount (until April 11th), and there's a 25% discount for the entire Serious Sam VR budle – thank you for supporting Croteam's VR division!
Serious Sam Classic: The First Encounter is now a part of Serious Sam Classics: Revolution, along with Serious Sam Classic: The Second Encounter! So, when you buy Serious Sam Classics: Revolution, you also get both Classic Encounters!
Serious Sam Classic: The First Encounter is now a part of Serious Sam Classics: Revolution, along with Serious Sam Classic: The Second Encounter!
So, when you buy Serious Sam Classics: Revolution, you also get both Classic Encounters!
Serious Sam Classic: The First Encounter is now a part of Serious Sam Classics: Revolution, along with Serious Sam Classic: The Second Encounter! So, when you buy Serious Sam Classics: Revolution, you also get both Classic Encounters!
Serious Sam Classic: The First Encounter is now a part of Serious Sam Classics: Revolution, along with Serious Sam Classic: The Second Encounter!
So, when you buy Serious Sam Classics: Revolution, you also get both Classic Encounters!
