It’s a texture upscaler for images that you can use offline in Blender. It’s very easy to use, and it gives some amazing results.
You’ve probably tried online AI programs, but this is an ERSGAN model and it seems that you can use it from the comfort of an offline PC.
I tried it on some low-res Croteam textures of enemies and weapons in your mod, upscaling them to 1024 x 1024 and I was impressed with how they look, even on low-poly models.
It’s a definite improvement. It almost restores all of the details that must have been present in the original textures.
I’m thinking this could greatly enhance the look and feel of the following enemies and weapons, even if you plan on not using them anymore.
It’s much better than having to discard or redesign them, and they will look even better than they look now:
- Plasmathrower
- Sledgehammer
- Mantaman - Dragonman - Cyborg and Bike - Waterman - Rockman? - Ugh Zan Devil - Your Jaws or Cyclops enemies - and the Larva Offspring
Also, this could help you improve the look of any of your skies, or environmental or building textures / photos that you want to use, especially if they look too blurry, or are too small, or you just want to increase their details.
For the 4th Episode, which I'm guessing eventually involves Sam reaching Sirius and its Sky cities, have you thought about including some very basic hoverbike vehicle? Like the ones the cyborg enemies use?
It only needs to float up or down, move sideways, and fire some laser or mine. Plus there's not much need for animations, since it's just Sam on it and the player only sees a third person view from behind.
It could help give some variety to the one of your level sections, as in that SS2 Sirius level were you ride an air vehicle?
Also, you probably know this already, but someone released a Sky City Alpha reconstruction (the video is on YouTube). Could be a good inspiration for making one of your more detailed levels?
4th episode will not involve going to Sirius, nor Sky City. I have other plans. As for vehicles, I thought about it, but I wasn't impressed by them in SS2 and I have no idea how to code something like that, anyway.
Well, I updated the mod. Also checked all the levels.
Chapter 3 - Planet Atlantis. Levels 1-4 cause the game to crash a second after launching. There are no crashes in the start menu (NETRICSA). And everything is fine with the other levels. Let me remind you that I can’t say exactly what the error is, because there are no errors in the console when starting the level.
Well, I have a situation where I haven't updated the mod for a long time. And I want to know what is the best way to proceed. I think I'm on update 22.
I noticed one strange thing. I can easily launch any level in the editor, but in the game they crash. Moreover, I can't say what the error is. The game crashes after one second when starting a level. If you look at the console, there are no errors. But this only occurs at your levels. This is such a weird situation.
I would also like to say about one thing that can make the mod much more interesting.
I think you know very well that in Serious Sam 2 there were items that give points to the score, and this gives an extra life. In Serious Sam 4, the developers added upgrades and gadgets. I thought about it and realized the problem that the levels needed something that would allow the player to wander around them more and look for something useful. This will encourage players to look for secrets and explore the level in more detail rather than rushing through it. If there was such a feature in the game, then I would probably be able to find almost all the secrets with great interest. At the moment, on the contrary, I find a smaller part of the secrets. Ideally, this should provide replayability and different play styles.
If you're that far behind, then the issue is likely something outdated, or assets conflicting. The best way to proceed is to get the latest update and replace everything. If you get the issue after that, then I might be able to help.
There already are secrets, that encourage exploration. I really don't see the point of score items, since points don't do anything in the game. A life system would be too much hassle and everybody hates lives systems nowadays, anyway. And I kinda hate SS4's upgrades and gadgets system too, so that's definitely not happening. Secrets are a mapper's responsibility to make it worth looking for them. Or making a map that relies more on exploration. I'm not good with making secrets and I prefer classic gameplay, so that's what I'm going to make.
Okay. I understand that implementing such ideas is quite a difficult task. Well, that means my levels will also have classic gameplay, but I will try to create more unusual situations.
It's hard to say about the release date, even approximately. I have problems in my life now and this is greatly slowing down the process of creating levels. I also make other levels for another mappack. I can say with absolute certainty that you shouldn’t expect any new work from me in the near future.
Perhaps there are a minor disadvantages among the enemies, but:
1. There is no HD textures for Mantaman and Dragonman, I mean, there are some flaws for Alpha enemies. 2. Gnaar Boomer doesn't have any limbs/debrises when dismembered like the others gnaars. (Dragonman too)
I just think that the mantaman looks good as is. It's got a nice alien design, with good animations, that's not really asking for an improvement. I didn't feel like putting in the effort to redo it as is. (Also, its wings seem like an arse to animate.)
I don't know what's going on with the gnaar boomer. It's literally the same code as the others.
The dragonman is kind of irrelevant, since the devil stallion can already be considered an improvement of it.
Tried the first level, and have to say, this really is the closest to a Third Encounter as if it was made back in 2002 (which I could already see from your old Third Encounter project)! I like that you were conservative with the new enemies just yet, introducing them slowly and not getting carried away with them like SS2. The level really feels like classic SS levels, and of course, can't help but notice how the first level was made out of the first 3 Theba levels from Sam2000 (or the LotB levels). The very start of level 2 I also recognize from Sam2000. Which is -also- very Croteam-like, since we know that multiple levels in TSE were made out of cut TFE/Sam2000 levels as well. And I love the cut enemies finished and fully realized too.
Man. This just feels so genuine and refreshing, good luck with finishing this, I'm looking forward to it!
Well, the only Revo feature that I haven't been able to implement, is the sniper's scroll wheel changing colour according to enemy health. Also the ammo types sorted into multiple rows. Currently it's one single row, which may end up overlapping other hud elements. Also would like to look at how they were able to implement multiple world maps in a single game. I'd like to make a world map for my own campaign and I could use some help with that. Oh, and also separating the secondary fire from use and evoke Netricsa. Not sure what exact files these would require. Player.es, PlayerWeapons.es, HUD.cpp, Map.cpp. Would also be interesting to include the new headman types, though I'm not sure if I'd actually use them.
Hi, just found this project, quite interested seeing someone properly finish it off this time, and remembering your old works, I'm curious how you manage to. Will wait until finished to see how it is.
The only thing I'd like to comment on was the story in the manual: You really don't need to overcomplicate things. No need for timey-wimey things, Mental and Sam seeing time and all that. Just have that after TSE, Sam is teleported by the remaining Sirians, then SS2 plays out and that's it. At the end Sam kills Mental in the past, then Sam just fades back to his own timeline but now humanity is alive as if Mental never existed and that's it. It's like an old movie that didn't really care about the implications, because it didn't need to.
You're gonna be waiting for quite some time. I'm making steady progress, but I still give it about two years.
Also, too late for story modifications. It's already been scripted and voice acted. I thought about making the story continue from the SE rocket, but I already used elements of SS3 and SS4 (some lore pieces, enemies, weapons), plus I needed to explain away the holy grail. But it's not like Sam games aren't already full of wacky time stuff, so a needlessly complicated backstory is on brand for the series, I feel.
Hello! At the moment, the development of my mappack is more than 70% complete. But there is one problem where I need your help. For the final map of my mappack I need a special boss. The problem is that I can't customize them from existing enemies. I would like to simply ask to create one boss from an existing enemy, but with slightly modified parameters. I would be very glad if you help me, it will affect whether the mappack will come out or not.
If anything, I won't have to describe much. It will take me one message to describe such an enemy. Are you ready to help?
Okay. The boss is intended to be the first appearance of a biomechanoid enemy, but a fairly powerful one. Let's just say it will be a unique version of a biomechanoid (Netricsa). Now I'll move on to the enemy description. I'll just note that this is an arena boss.
1) Health - 9000. These values are taken because I am making an enemy based on an enemy from another game.
2) Attack. Like the red biomechanoid. But if possible, as an attack boost, you can make an attack with 4 rockets instead of 2 rockets.
3) Color. To distinguish it from other types, let it be orange.
4) Speed. He's pretty powerful and again I'll mention that he's based on an enemy from another game. So for balance he should be slow enough, and on all difficulties. Let his speed be half of Sam's, but you can make it even slower so that he stays slow on higher difficulties.
5) Since this is a boss, let's make it a little bigger than a green biomechanoid. Somewhere around 1.75 times bigger than the red biomechanoid. Considering that the green biomechanoid is 1.5 times bigger.
It's unlikely that this will be applicable anywhere other than my mappack. You can name them like key items. By adding CaptainPelmen_"Enemy".
Okay. I thought it was yellow. But black is a good and unusual choice.
I based the enemy on the game Will Rock. Just type this into a search engine: Will Rock Cyclop boss. In fact, the differences are significant. But I suggest the simplest option for creating a boss enemy. Moreover, according to the meaning of my mappack, I need an enemy that will have weaker versions in future levels. Biomechanoid fits this role.
As for when I need it? Whatever is more convenient for you. If it's in the next update, I'll start working on the boss fight right away. If it's later, I'll be busy polishing up other things.
There should be an update coming, but I'm not in a hurry. Work has started on the second chapter, so I'm focused on adding new key items. But also trying to improve the Carcinus Lurker and Zorg sniper. For the former, I want to add in the sweeping laser, like in Next Encounter. For the latter, I just want to make it into more than just a mini-reptiloid.
Also, looking at the Cyclops, wouldn't it make more sense for it to be an Albino?
This has been one of the most impressive and fun classic Serious Sam mods I've ever played! I can't believe I've basically only played half of the finished thing too! That being said however, I do have some complaints. Now most of the complaints have already been listed on this page as things that you're currently either trying to fix or looking for help for (such as making the alt fire a separate key from the use key). The main things I wanna point out then are that performing an alt fire and then immediately switching to your main fire will cause the gun to still do the alt fire even though that wasn't my intention. I feel like this issue is known but is harder to fix than it seems, but I wanna point it out. Also, this is more of an issue with classic Sam in general, but underwater combat is just plain unbearable. This was a thing in the first and second encounters, but swimming in water causes the accuracy of your guns to basically throw itself out the window. You can't hit anything more than a dozen or so meters away from you while swimming. This wasn't too bad in the classics since you barely ever swam, but this mod has entire sections where you do underwater combat and it really sucks because you can't hit the high priority targets while they can snipe you for half your health. If you can somehow change this somewhere in the engine to make your shots perfectly accurate while swimming just like on land, that'd make the underwater sections so much better. I have no experience with the Serious Engine, but I'd wager that this has something to do with how your view will bob around while swimming. Aside from these though, I really love this mod! Keep up the good work!
I've known about the alt fire issue and frankly, have no idea how to fix it. In fact, I'm pretty sure Revolution has this issue as well, but don't quote me on that. Kinda know about the underwater annoyance as well. I tried working around that and not making those fights too annoying. Homing rockets are really useful there, but the ghost buster is good as well, since the beam lets you track your aim. But if that doesn't feel right, you can actually disable view bobbing in the options. I admit those parts might have been a mistake though.
Unless there's a source code, it's unlikely I'll figure out how to do any of that. Even then, it's something that would need the game balanced around. Would be cool for a Next Encounter mod. The maps are already being reworked and I ported some of the enemies.
Btw, you have brought up an idea a while ago, about using player models for enemies. At the time I said no, but lately, I have been thinking about the idea for something like that. Basically, Mental trying to clone Sam to create an elite army.
That's a really smart idea. Do you have a way of applying the Multiplayer Bot AI to a Single Player enemy? Because that would mimic an enemy Sam quite well. The only thing would be to make the bot less jumpy and slower. Alternatively, something like the Ugh Zan Candidate in Revolution?
The Blue Bill, Green Garry & Righteous Robert MP models definitely look like a Sam clone to be honest. (And I'm almost convinced that the Stainless Steve model was repurposed from a model for the earlier-than alpha Cyborgman/Terminator/Cyborg).
Netricsa typically crashes when Player entity fields are mismatching. You added properties related to Serious Jump in update 25 and most likely didn’t rebuild GameMP, leading to these crashes.
Every time you add new fields to Player, always rebuild GameMP.
Alright, that's good to know. Weird that it didn't happen before, even though I added a lot of things to Player.es. I guess those additions coincided with changes to GameMP too?
Hey, I need your help with something. I want the plasma thrower's secondary fire to be more like the Revolution version; a consistent pattern, as opposed to totally random. But I can't find the way to make the projectile launch at an angle.
If you wanna modify your existing function, pass a unique index or something into each FirePlasmaRayAlt() call and then adjust the angle based on the index.
Replace CalcWeaponPositionImprecise() with CalcWeaponPosition() and modify plPlasmaRay.pl_OrientationAngle after its call. Or use plPlasmaRay.Rotate_Airplane() to add rotation relative to the current view.
Hey Cecil, do you think it'd be possible to remake the Carcinus Lurker's sweeping laser attack? Like, the ray casts based on an angle. And then the angle moves in a sweeping motion. How complicated would that be to make?
I don’t know what that is or how it behaves but if you want a hitscan laser that follows the player instead of directly targeting them, I can propose this:
(1) Define a target angle for your enemy’s hitscan as ANGLE3D (e.g. m_aTowardsTarget) and optionally set it to the enemy’s orientation angle on start.
(2) When the enemy begins attacking, calculate an angle towards the target (m_penEnemy in enemy’s case) with a small delay before the actual attack:
(3) During a continuous hitscan in a loop, calculate an angle difference between the current target angle and the angle towards the target. Reuse the same code as in step 2 but instead of setting angle to m_aTowardsTarget, do this:
Here the difference is divided by 2 to make it follow the target twice as slow. Adjust as needed or even clamp the maximum speed of each angle like this:
Or if the laser needs to just go from one side to another in the general direction of the player, add an initial angle to that target angle so it starts to the side and just add a specific fixed amount to the angle each loop iteration instead of the difference relative to the target.
The Carcinus Lurker is an enemy from Next Encounter. It shoots a laser in a sweeping motion from left to right and you're supposed to jump over it or duck under it. I did bring back the enemy, but never got that sweeping motion down, so it just shoots towards the player, even though the animation still does the sweeping motion. I was just wondering if that's possible.
Maybe you came late. I get this error when I try to play and I don't know what the solution is and I'm also not very expert at that so if one of you can help me
Level00.tex isn't even something that's in the mod, that comes with Second Encounter to begin with. And it should be in TexturesMP anyway. Unless you're using Revolution, which relocates all files in MP folders to regular folders. And I don't have a libEntitiesMP.so file anywhere, so I don't know what that is. And why is the menu green?
Also, it seems like ModelsMP/Enemies/SS3/SpiderSmall/SpiderSmall.h should be updated too as I’m still getting errors about some missing animations (HATCHPOSE, WALK, HATCH, CLIMBDOWN, FIRE).
I don't know if I'm finding the right one. The modeler can't open these files, because they're in some specific dds format. And even it could, they all seem to be mostly transparent for some reason.
I installed it incorrectly. When unpacking, I had 2 folders with the mod because the old folder had the same name. And so I installed the old version, thinking that it was the new one. So, everything is fine and there is no error.
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Hi,
I found something that may be of use for you:
It’s a texture upscaler for images that you can use offline in Blender. It’s very easy to use, and it gives some amazing results.
You’ve probably tried online AI programs, but this is an ERSGAN model and it seems that you can use it from the comfort of an offline PC.
I tried it on some low-res Croteam textures of enemies and weapons in your mod, upscaling them to 1024 x 1024 and I was impressed with how they look, even on low-poly models.
It’s a definite improvement. It almost restores all of the details that must have been present in the original textures.
Here’s a gallery of photos I made for you, to show you how they look: https://itch.io/blog/917136/upscaled-weapon-and-enemy-textures
And here’s a tutorial I made for you, if you want to give it a try: https://itch.io/blog/917160/tutorial-for-using-the-upscaling-textures-add-on
I’m thinking this could greatly enhance the look and feel of the following enemies and weapons, even if you plan on not using them anymore.
It’s much better than having to discard or redesign them, and they will look even better than they look now:
- Plasmathrower
- Sledgehammer
- Mantaman
- Dragonman
- Cyborg and Bike
- Waterman
- Rockman?
- Ugh Zan Devil
- Your Jaws or Cyclops enemies
- and the Larva Offspring
Also, this could help you improve the look of any of your skies, or environmental or building textures / photos that you want to use, especially if they look too blurry, or are too small, or you just want to increase their details.
For the 4th Episode, which I'm guessing eventually involves Sam reaching Sirius and its Sky cities, have you thought about including some very basic hoverbike vehicle? Like the ones the cyborg enemies use?
It only needs to float up or down, move sideways, and fire some laser or mine. Plus there's not much need for animations, since it's just Sam on it and the player only sees a third person view from behind.
It could help give some variety to the one of your level sections, as in that SS2 Sirius level were you ride an air vehicle?
Also, you probably know this already, but someone released a Sky City Alpha reconstruction (the video is on YouTube). Could be a good inspiration for making one of your more detailed levels?
4th episode will not involve going to Sirius, nor Sky City. I have other plans. As for vehicles, I thought about it, but I wasn't impressed by them in SS2 and I have no idea how to code something like that, anyway.
Well, I updated the mod. Also checked all the levels.
Chapter 3 - Planet Atlantis. Levels 1-4 cause the game to crash a second after launching. There are no crashes in the start menu (NETRICSA). And everything is fine with the other levels. Let me remind you that I can’t say exactly what the error is, because there are no errors in the console when starting the level.
Did you update the Atlantis levels? There have been a few updates for those as well.
Thanks for mentioning the update. Everything is fine now. Looking forward to new updates!
Well, I have a situation where I haven't updated the mod for a long time. And I want to know what is the best way to proceed. I think I'm on update 22.
I noticed one strange thing. I can easily launch any level in the editor, but in the game they crash. Moreover, I can't say what the error is. The game crashes after one second when starting a level. If you look at the console, there are no errors. But this only occurs at your levels. This is such a weird situation.
I would also like to say about one thing that can make the mod much more interesting.
I think you know very well that in Serious Sam 2 there were items that give points to the score, and this gives an extra life. In Serious Sam 4, the developers added upgrades and gadgets. I thought about it and realized the problem that the levels needed something that would allow the player to wander around them more and look for something useful. This will encourage players to look for secrets and explore the level in more detail rather than rushing through it. If there was such a feature in the game, then I would probably be able to find almost all the secrets with great interest. At the moment, on the contrary, I find a smaller part of the secrets. Ideally, this should provide replayability and different play styles.
If you're that far behind, then the issue is likely something outdated, or assets conflicting. The best way to proceed is to get the latest update and replace everything. If you get the issue after that, then I might be able to help.
There already are secrets, that encourage exploration. I really don't see the point of score items, since points don't do anything in the game. A life system would be too much hassle and everybody hates lives systems nowadays, anyway. And I kinda hate SS4's upgrades and gadgets system too, so that's definitely not happening. Secrets are a mapper's responsibility to make it worth looking for them. Or making a map that relies more on exploration. I'm not good with making secrets and I prefer classic gameplay, so that's what I'm going to make.
Okay. I understand that implementing such ideas is quite a difficult task. Well, that means my levels will also have classic gameplay, but I will try to create more unusual situations.
CaptainPelmen, are you going to finish your mappack soon?
It's hard to say about the release date, even approximately. I have problems in my life now and this is greatly slowing down the process of creating levels. I also make other levels for another mappack. I can say with absolute certainty that you shouldn’t expect any new work from me in the near future.
I've been playing this mod for over six months, and it's amazing! This inspired me to create my own levels for this mod.
Can I share the disadvantages of this mod?
Yes, of course!
Perhaps there are a minor disadvantages among the enemies, but:
1. There is no HD textures for Mantaman and Dragonman, I mean, there are some flaws for Alpha enemies.
2. Gnaar Boomer doesn't have any limbs/debrises when dismembered like the others gnaars. (Dragonman too)
I just think that the mantaman looks good as is. It's got a nice alien design, with good animations, that's not really asking for an improvement. I didn't feel like putting in the effort to redo it as is. (Also, its wings seem like an arse to animate.)
I don't know what's going on with the gnaar boomer. It's literally the same code as the others.
The dragonman is kind of irrelevant, since the devil stallion can already be considered an improvement of it.
I agree about mantaman's nice design and animation. It just seems to me that the textures of his wings are very blurry.
The other enemies are all great!
Mantaman doesn't bleed out after death; is that how it should be, or is it already a flaw?
I don't know. It's that way in the alpha too.
Tried the first level, and have to say, this really is the closest to a Third Encounter as if it was made back in 2002 (which I could already see from your old Third Encounter project)! I like that you were conservative with the new enemies just yet, introducing them slowly and not getting carried away with them like SS2. The level really feels like classic SS levels, and of course, can't help but notice how the first level was made out of the first 3 Theba levels from Sam2000 (or the LotB levels). The very start of level 2 I also recognize from Sam2000. Which is -also- very Croteam-like, since we know that multiple levels in TSE were made out of cut TFE/Sam2000 levels as well. And I love the cut enemies finished and fully realized too.
Man. This just feels so genuine and refreshing, good luck with finishing this, I'm looking forward to it!
Oh yeah, still got some earlier pre-Bright Island source of Revolution, could share stuff that you might need, if there's any.
Ooh, I'd love to see that.
Well tell me what you need, the map.cpp? Ammo.cpp from HUD? Those seem to be your problems, tho not sure what is the problem with the map dots.
Well, the only Revo feature that I haven't been able to implement, is the sniper's scroll wheel changing colour according to enemy health. Also the ammo types sorted into multiple rows. Currently it's one single row, which may end up overlapping other hud elements. Also would like to look at how they were able to implement multiple world maps in a single game. I'd like to make a world map for my own campaign and I could use some help with that. Oh, and also separating the secondary fire from use and evoke Netricsa. Not sure what exact files these would require. Player.es, PlayerWeapons.es, HUD.cpp, Map.cpp. Would also be interesting to include the new headman types, though I'm not sure if I'd actually use them.
I'll send a friend request on steam and send you stuff.
Hi, just found this project, quite interested seeing someone properly finish it off this time, and remembering your old works, I'm curious how you manage to. Will wait until finished to see how it is.
The only thing I'd like to comment on was the story in the manual: You really don't need to overcomplicate things. No need for timey-wimey things, Mental and Sam seeing time and all that. Just have that after TSE, Sam is teleported by the remaining Sirians, then SS2 plays out and that's it. At the end Sam kills Mental in the past, then Sam just fades back to his own timeline but now humanity is alive as if Mental never existed and that's it. It's like an old movie that didn't really care about the implications, because it didn't need to.
You're gonna be waiting for quite some time. I'm making steady progress, but I still give it about two years.
Also, too late for story modifications. It's already been scripted and voice acted. I thought about making the story continue from the SE rocket, but I already used elements of SS3 and SS4 (some lore pieces, enemies, weapons), plus I needed to explain away the holy grail. But it's not like Sam games aren't already full of wacky time stuff, so a needlessly complicated backstory is on brand for the series, I feel.
I feel the "needlessly complicated backstory" is what gave us the prequels of prequels of prequels problem in the first place.
Hello! At the moment, the development of my mappack is more than 70% complete. But there is one problem where I need your help. For the final map of my mappack I need a special boss. The problem is that I can't customize them from existing enemies. I would like to simply ask to create one boss from an existing enemy, but with slightly modified parameters. I would be very glad if you help me, it will affect whether the mappack will come out or not.
If anything, I won't have to describe much. It will take me one message to describe such an enemy. Are you ready to help?
Sure, just tell me what you need and I'll see what I can do.
Okay. The boss is intended to be the first appearance of a biomechanoid enemy, but a fairly powerful one. Let's just say it will be a unique version of a biomechanoid (Netricsa). Now I'll move on to the enemy description. I'll just note that this is an arena boss.
1) Health - 9000. These values are taken because I am making an enemy based on an enemy from another game.
2) Attack. Like the red biomechanoid. But if possible, as an attack boost, you can make an attack with 4 rockets instead of 2 rockets.
3) Color. To distinguish it from other types, let it be orange.
4) Speed. He's pretty powerful and again I'll mention that he's based on an enemy from another game. So for balance he should be slow enough, and on all difficulties. Let his speed be half of Sam's, but you can make it even slower so that he stays slow on higher difficulties.
5) Since this is a boss, let's make it a little bigger than a green biomechanoid. Somewhere around 1.75 times bigger than the red biomechanoid. Considering that the green biomechanoid is 1.5 times bigger.
It's unlikely that this will be applicable anywhere other than my mappack. You can name them like key items. By adding CaptainPelmen_"Enemy".
Only problem is that the gunner biomechanoid is also orange. Can yours be black maybe?
Also, I'd like to take a look at the enemy it's supposed to be based on. Just out of curiosity.
Edit: Also, when do you need this?
Okay. I thought it was yellow. But black is a good and unusual choice.
I based the enemy on the game Will Rock. Just type this into a search engine: Will Rock Cyclop boss. In fact, the differences are significant. But I suggest the simplest option for creating a boss enemy. Moreover, according to the meaning of my mappack, I need an enemy that will have weaker versions in future levels. Biomechanoid fits this role.
As for when I need it? Whatever is more convenient for you. If it's in the next update, I'll start working on the boss fight right away. If it's later, I'll be busy polishing up other things.
There should be an update coming, but I'm not in a hurry. Work has started on the second chapter, so I'm focused on adding new key items. But also trying to improve the Carcinus Lurker and Zorg sniper. For the former, I want to add in the sweeping laser, like in Next Encounter. For the latter, I just want to make it into more than just a mini-reptiloid.
Also, looking at the Cyclops, wouldn't it make more sense for it to be an Albino?
This has been one of the most impressive and fun classic Serious Sam mods I've ever played! I can't believe I've basically only played half of the finished thing too! That being said however, I do have some complaints. Now most of the complaints have already been listed on this page as things that you're currently either trying to fix or looking for help for (such as making the alt fire a separate key from the use key). The main things I wanna point out then are that performing an alt fire and then immediately switching to your main fire will cause the gun to still do the alt fire even though that wasn't my intention. I feel like this issue is known but is harder to fix than it seems, but I wanna point it out. Also, this is more of an issue with classic Sam in general, but underwater combat is just plain unbearable. This was a thing in the first and second encounters, but swimming in water causes the accuracy of your guns to basically throw itself out the window. You can't hit anything more than a dozen or so meters away from you while swimming. This wasn't too bad in the classics since you barely ever swam, but this mod has entire sections where you do underwater combat and it really sucks because you can't hit the high priority targets while they can snipe you for half your health. If you can somehow change this somewhere in the engine to make your shots perfectly accurate while swimming just like on land, that'd make the underwater sections so much better. I have no experience with the Serious Engine, but I'd wager that this has something to do with how your view will bob around while swimming. Aside from these though, I really love this mod! Keep up the good work!
I've known about the alt fire issue and frankly, have no idea how to fix it. In fact, I'm pretty sure Revolution has this issue as well, but don't quote me on that. Kinda know about the underwater annoyance as well. I tried working around that and not making those fights too annoying. Homing rockets are really useful there, but the ghost buster is good as well, since the beam lets you track your aim. But if that doesn't feel right, you can actually disable view bobbing in the options. I admit those parts might have been a mistake though.
Did you see that a completed version of the Serious Sam Xbox mod was released?
It uses the same updated Netricsa and Combo Shooting system that Next Encounter uses.
Just a silly question, would you be interested in adding any of those parts as options for your Sequel?
Thanks
I have seen it, but haven't played it yet.
Unless there's a source code, it's unlikely I'll figure out how to do any of that. Even then, it's something that would need the game balanced around. Would be cool for a Next Encounter mod. The maps are already being reworked and I ported some of the enemies.
Btw, you have brought up an idea a while ago, about using player models for enemies. At the time I said no, but lately, I have been thinking about the idea for something like that. Basically, Mental trying to clone Sam to create an elite army.
That's a really smart idea.
Do you have a way of applying the Multiplayer Bot AI to a Single Player enemy? Because that would mimic an enemy Sam quite well.
The only thing would be to make the bot less jumpy and slower.
Alternatively, something like the Ugh Zan Candidate in Revolution?
The Blue Bill, Green Garry & Righteous Robert MP models definitely look like a Sam clone to be honest.
(And I'm almost convinced that the Stainless Steve model was repurposed from a model for the earlier-than alpha Cyborgman/Terminator/Cyborg).
Netricsa typically crashes when Player entity fields are mismatching. You added properties related to Serious Jump in update 25 and most likely didn’t rebuild GameMP, leading to these crashes.
Every time you add new fields to Player, always rebuild GameMP.
Alright, that's good to know. Weird that it didn't happen before, even though I added a lot of things to Player.es. I guess those additions coincided with changes to GameMP too?
Hey, I need your help with something. I want the plasma thrower's secondary fire to be more like the Revolution version; a consistent pattern, as opposed to totally random. But I can't find the way to make the projectile launch at an angle.
If you wanna modify your existing function, pass a unique index or something into each FirePlasmaRayAlt() call and then adjust the angle based on the index.
Replace CalcWeaponPositionImprecise() with CalcWeaponPosition() and modify plPlasmaRay.pl_OrientationAngle after its call. Or use plPlasmaRay.Rotate_Airplane() to add rotation relative to the current view.
Hey Cecil, do you think it'd be possible to remake the Carcinus Lurker's sweeping laser attack? Like, the ray casts based on an angle. And then the angle moves in a sweeping motion. How complicated would that be to make?
I don’t know what that is or how it behaves but if you want a hitscan laser that follows the player instead of directly targeting them, I can propose this:
(1) Define a target angle for your enemy’s hitscan as ANGLE3D (e.g. m_aTowardsTarget) and optionally set it to the enemy’s orientation angle on start.
(2) When the enemy begins attacking, calculate an angle towards the target (m_penEnemy in enemy’s case) with a small delay before the actual attack:
(3) During a continuous hitscan in a loop, calculate an angle difference between the current target angle and the angle towards the target. Reuse the same code as in step 2 but instead of setting angle to m_aTowardsTarget, do this:
Here the difference is divided by 2 to make it follow the target twice as slow. Adjust as needed or even clamp the maximum speed of each angle like this:
(4) Then use the resulting angle in the CCastRay as the source:
Or if the laser needs to just go from one side to another in the general direction of the player, add an initial angle to that target angle so it starts to the side and just add a specific fixed amount to the angle each loop iteration instead of the difference relative to the target.
The Carcinus Lurker is an enemy from Next Encounter. It shoots a laser in a sweeping motion from left to right and you're supposed to jump over it or duck under it. I did bring back the enemy, but never got that sweeping motion down, so it just shoots towards the player, even though the animation still does the sweeping motion. I was just wondering if that's possible.
Maybe you came late. I get this error when I try to play and I don't know what the solution is and I'm also not very expert at that so if one of you can help me
Level00.tex isn't even something that's in the mod, that comes with Second Encounter to begin with. And it should be in TexturesMP anyway. Unless you're using Revolution, which relocates all files in MP folders to regular folders. And I don't have a libEntitiesMP.so file anywhere, so I don't know what that is. And why is the menu green?
libEntitiesMP.so suggests that this is either a Linux or an Android build, which your mod obviously does not support (probably the latter).
Somebody did a Linux compatible version here, but I don't know how often they update it.
Btw, I should probably add that to the official links.
Last commit was exactly a year ago, so probably not at all.
I don’t see a point in any port until the mod is fully finished.
yes i'm playing on my phone
ModelsMP/Enemies/SS3/SpiderBig/SpiderBig.h header is missing from the sources.
Sorry, I have added that now.
Why did I not get a notification for your comment?
I don’t get them either sometimes.
Also, it seems like ModelsMP/Enemies/SS3/SpiderSmall/SpiderSmall.h should be updated too as I’m still getting errors about some missing animations (HATCHPOSE, WALK, HATCH, CLIMBDOWN, FIRE).
You're right. I forgot to update that. It should be good now.
You can do that here.
I don't know if I'm finding the right one. The modeler can't open these files, because they're in some specific dds format. And even it could, they all seem to be mostly transparent for some reason.
I do have irfanview. It can't open them.
I did download Paint.net to open them, but there are like 2000 files and they're not properly named.
Oh, that's very nice!
I got an error loading a new level.
Class 'CGhoul' not found in entity class package file 'Bin/EntitiesMP.dll'.
I downloaded the new version and dropped it into the mods folder with the files replaced.
But as I see, other people have the level loaded. Apparently I don't know how to update correctly.
I don't know what's going on there. The class file is in the download and the class itself has been added quite some time ago.
I installed it incorrectly. When unpacking, I had 2 folders with the mod because the old folder had the same name. And so I installed the old version, thinking that it was the new one. So, everything is fine and there is no error.