Hello everyone! It's been a while since the last “Featured Mod”, but I’m sure you’ve been handling the wait well thanks to the juicy Talos 2 reveal that you’ve got! Now it's time to get serious as in this episode we are featuring another great community campaign: “Crystal Impact!”

Crystal Impact is a collaboration project of 17 different mappers from the Slavic Serious Sam Community Khreth! The rules are simple: each participant must continue the previous person’s map with their own level while having two to three weeks to do so.

The story is the perfect warmup for the upcoming Indiana Jones movie! It follows Sam Stone himself, who finds a strange crystal that leads him on a long journey around the new power in the world, affecting different worlds and leading him to a new mysterious ally!

17 participants, 17 maps, and 10 unique worlds to explore!
On top of all that, over 50 different custom enemies from the T&C co-op pack, more than 5 bosses, and a whole load of guns!

So what are you waiting for, go ahead and start your Crystal Impact Journey!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2940322581

BASEMENT CHATS WITH YASEN

⚪Hello Thanadrax and welcome back to the basement! Last time you were here you mentioned that you are running this collab project, well here we are a few months after its release, please tell us how challenging was it to organize a project of such scale and how happy are you with the end result.

Hey, it's Mr. Cool himself! Let's get straight to the question. To be honest, it is not the first time for me to organize some big events, and I didn't have problems with gathering and coordinating people.
The hardest part was the map pack itself. The first and the best part of the Khreth Mapping Challenge is the challenge term. No matter how skilled you are in modding - either a newbie or an experienced mapper, you have to make a level within quite a narrow timespan. It doesn't sound that hard on the first side - however, people forgot that they work on one map pack, together. Initially, there were 22 of us, others pretty much got scared of "group pressure" and abandoned us. It is understandable, since, once you realize that there are 17 more mappers waiting for your entry and it might not be that good at first, you begin to stress. It was my fault since I forgot to tell them about the polishing phase after everyone contributes to the project, and I will initially mention that in the next challenge.

Another hard part for me in terms of organizing was managing a common project vision. Many participants tried to change the direction of the mod's idea and gameplay, turning it into something else - be it a quick low resources shooter or puzzle-driven map, I had to explain that we are making a simple, Croteam - like a map pack with some funny story. I still can't believe everyone agreed on it almost instantly and got to fix their mistakes a few days later. I am happy with what came out of it, for sure.

⚪Congratulations on being able to manage all this and having a mutual agreement from everyone about the project's direction, that is rare. So this project was organized within the Khreth community but people outside of it were invited to join and participate if they had the desire to do so, how would you describe your community to those who are wondering if they should join it?

Thanks! Regards Khreth... it's hard to answer, but I'll try! Khreth initially was a roleplay-driven discord server for Slavic countries since 2017. In 2019, I opened a public branch for my friends to both play and roleplay on the same server so we don't have to hop from one place to another. In 2020, I divided the server into roleplay and non-roleplay sections, so people interested in games/creativity could keep themselves cozy without worrying about being "out of topic".

Khreth became a community in 2021 when I lowered the "curtains" and started letting everyone in. While it all sounds easy, the hardest part is to keep the very unique wave of community activity. It's a heavy task, sometimes you have to get rid of some people tending to break it apart, and sometimes you catch yourself on some organizing mistakes or even paranoia issues since you begin to see some kind of "enemy" in every single newbie. Regards that, I can give a simple but effective advice - let everyone in, community will eventually push out those who do not belong in here.

⚪Thank you for the answer! And now let's head to the project participants and hear about their experience working on the project! But actually, before we do this, the stage is all yours to share anything you wish with the Croteam Community!

I would like to thank Croteam for creating such amazing games which still inspire others to make something wonderful. No matter how far will I go from mod-making, Croteam games are forever in my heart. Talos 2 let's goooo!!!

LisSen

Participation in this challenge is something that I will remember for a long time. It was very cool to work with so many modders, where everyone supported each other. Since I was first on the list, I tried to make the map simple and introductory, like a little practice before the main content, and I think I got a good result. Of the interesting stories, one can single out the story of crossbowmen. On the day of release, everyone complained about the crossbowmen on the towers with the phrase "fucking crossbowmen!", as they were almost invisible and difficult to kill. I fixed this problem, but now there are letters on the towers saying that there used to be crossbowmen there. In conclusion, I want to say a special thank you to Riba4ok13, who made me participate in the challenge, Thanadrax for hosting this challenge, and to all members of the Khreth server for a warm welcome. See you!

Cyborg

Ooh, it was a wonderful experience! I would love to repeat it! I really liked this unusual format, where each participant continues the plot of the campaign, and he is given 2 weeks for this. It was interesting to see who did what and what card you should make as the queue approached. And so, when it was my turn, the campaign was in a very interesting position, where it was necessary to make a slightly more coherent story, summarizing all the previous ones, and at the same time make such a map that the player got out somewhere from another world. I had to replay all the previous maps, collect all the Netricsa messages, generalize, try to patch up the holes, and think through the details. And then do the first section in the other world, the boss fight, and then a more relaxed walk on the moon, to the beautiful soundtrack of Final Fantasy 14. Oh yes, and, of course, do not forget to hide the secret room with the rabbit statue and the gallery.

BuIlDaLiBlE:

Working as a mapper in a group project was the first for me, this was also a very solid reason for why I chose to participate. I think the group effort thing is what made other people want to participate and while the ride was a bit rough, I honestly believe everyone did a great job and that's what really shows that humans are indeed social beings that can do really cool stuff together. I was very glad to be a part of the effort, so I'm looking forward to the next Khreth Mapping Challenge next year.

Riba4ok13

Personally, I enjoyed participating in the Crystal Impact. It's a good way to get a feel for teamwork on one big project. The very idea of sequentially creating maps based on the ending of the previous map is pretty cool. And the most important thing in my opinion is the final polishing of each map and bringing the whole project to an overall quality. Of the interesting stories along the way, I can only mention my shock at the quality of the map, after which I had to make my own, although it only gave me inspiration. So I worked really hard to keep up with the increased quality of the previous map. It was my second map of all time. And so, when I was finished with the visuals on the map, I was very surprised with the results. I even asked myself, "Did I create it?". I hope that in the future there will be more projects like this, where you can get together in the company of mappers and do something great and just have a good time during development.

$uper_Dimann$

This is my first time participating in this kind of event in Serious Sam, and, to be honest, there are a lot of emotions. When I found out that I was in the middle of the queue, I exhaled at the same time, because I understood that in the middle of the map pack the gameplay could be made more dynamic, and after a while, I experienced a feeling of impatience. I wanted to make a map as soon as possible and go to rest. As soon as some of us began to leave the challenge for our own reasons, I was seriously worried. Well, as soon as it was my turn, I, as if at the snap of a finger, rushed into the editor and sat there until two in the morning, which I do not recommend. I was so afraid of not being on time that I riveted my card in 2 days, becoming the fastest of the participants in the entire challenge. Thanks to this, we saved many days, and the map pack came out much earlier than it could have come out. Before submitting the level, I caught a bunch of errors, which caused the level to crash, and I thought that everything was over. However, I still searched for a solution all my free time, and luck smiled at me. And so the level turned out - Blooming Plateau. Thank you for your attention.

Effect of Parasha

Khreth Mapping Challenge for me fell on a very difficult time - the first job, the weekend spent all the time for the editor, and 10 hours of work on the map. But despite the lack of time, it was a hell of a lot of fun. It was the first time I participated in something so big, I was able to communicate and work with many people in our community who seemed to me inaccessible before. Of the stories, perhaps the most interesting relates to the 6th level, which was made by Artem-41. His unique vision of his own map was completely out of the mood of the then existing 5 levels and simply flew away towards the sci-fi setting at the speed of characters from Quake. After a while, he redid the map and that's when it sparkled with new colors: mysticism and technology of aliens, the story of Zorg mercenaries, and the continuation of the plot. I enjoyed working together, discussing the story, and playing maps in co-op. Khreth - in itself turned out to be a small and pleasant community gathered from Serious Sam's fans and not only. Maybe you will also join and participate in the second KMC? Will wait!

Andrey Kustov

KMC presented a great experience of developing your own map in a short time. This is an indescribable feeling of belonging to something more, revealing talents and creativity to an absolute beginner in mapping. I immediately understood that the first pancake would come out lumpy. So what to do? Pressing on what you know best - narrative. The map was supposed to emphasize the atmosphere of the doomed place. In the past, many cataclysms happened on Earth, but life always won. Everything is different here. I wanted the players to feel what Mental's victory really means. The planet is waiting for a resurrection, a new dawn that will never come. It seems to me that this thought has always been the underside of the Serious Sam universe.