The "Bug-Me" Thread: Your Questions for Croteam

[Zocky]

Hey all. I'm opening this thread for all the questions you might have for CT. I don't know how good it will work, but lets see.

There are couple of rules. First and most important, post only questions or comments related to the CT's answer, to keep this topic clean. So, no comments that are not either question, or directly related to CT's post.
And if everything goes ok, maybe we can get some answers from CT.

List of questions for Croteam (updated August 26th, 2009):

Not Answered

[SE3/SS3] With DX11 around the corner, will Serious Engine 3 take advantage of the extended possibilities of DX11 and DX10? And if so, will it be used in SS3 on PCs where the hardware supports DX10 and DX11?
[SS3] Have you guys from Croteam read the giant list of suggestions we made for SS3? Anything on the list you are not planning on implementing?
[SS3] Will the Cannon be back in SS3? And if so, will it make that awesome room-shaking roar like in the SS1 games?
[Modding/Mapping] Will it be possible to further customize custom maps in SS3 (and SSHD) with custom weapons and player models?
[SS3] Will there be Simba Dolls in SS3?
[SS3] Will SS3 be a full length game or will it be released in shorter episodes like SS1?
[SS3] Will SS3 return to the human cultures for its levels (SE took place in S-America, Babylonia and Europe fx.)? And if so, which cultures will Sam explore in SS3?
[SS3] Will SS3 have secret levels? If so, how many and how hard will they be to find?
[SS3] Will the sound effects in Serious Sam 3 be more bassy and powerful than in Serious Sam 2 (namely explosion & weapon sounds)?
[SSHD] Will the SS1 music be remastered and/or re-encoded for better sound quality in SS:HD? (ogg vorbis has come a long way since 2001)
[SE3] How well does the engine scale hardware wise? Can a computer that ran SS2 on high settings run SS3?
[SSHD] Will there be a demo of Serious Sam HD?
[SSHD/SS3] Will Damjan Mravunac return as the music composer for the upcoming Sam games?
[SSHD] Is the XBLA version of SS:HD going to have splitscreen co-op like the XBOX version of Serious Sam? And if so, how many?
[Modding/Mapping] Will SED3 have primitive geometry tool, to quick making basic levels topology, like SED1, UnrealED or Valve Hammer?
[Modding/Mapping] Will SED3 have support 3ds max mesh export?
[Modding/Mapping] Will the engine have features like model swivel points and jigglebones that can be used in the editor app?
[SE3] Will the engine be able to employ distance occlusion and only display certain objects when they are a certain distance to the player/camera? If that is so, then it leaves the opportunity open to theoretically create vast plains as large as a whole country.
[SSHD/SS3] Will the games on the new engine support automatic content downloads if the server happened to run a custom map, or if a player with a custom model is joined to the game?
[SSHD/SS3] Will it be possible to alter the weapon parameters (Bullet-spread, recoil, ammo ratio, damage ratio etc) server-side?
[SSHD] Will SS:HD be ported to Linux so ungrateful Linux users such as myself can continue to delude ourselves that our platform is not important outside of graphic workstations, render farms, and web servers?
[SSHD/SS3] Will there be any improvements to the server browser interface, say a chat lobby with a list of players?
[SSHD/SS3] In the editor, will there be an option to automatically pack levels into .gro files? SS2 had this, but as far as I can tell, it required additional tools to work, and didn't work perfectly.
[SSHD/SS3] Are chapters still used?
[SSHD] How will SSHD deal with the differences in controls between XBLA and PC - controller vs mouse+keyboard? Will enemy movement patterns be different between XBLA and PC to make it easier on consoles?
[SSHD] Will there be any new gameplay modes like TeamDeathMatch, Instagib and so on?
[SSHD] How much gameplay has changed? Will it still work good for DeathMatch, like in original FE&SE?
[SSHD] Will you still keep scorematch?
[SSHD] There is only one DM map in FE, is there gonna be some new ones in HD Sam?
[SSHD] How about SE HD, any new DM maps in there?
[SSHD] Will fragmatch still be so crazy as it was in SSSE, not boring like in SS2 (i'm talking about running speed, jumping, navigation/gravity specifics while you're in the air)
[SS3] How fast does Sam run in Serious Sam III? How fast are most of the enemy projectiles?
[SSHD] Will Serious Editor 3 be packaged with the game or will it be bundled with a patch? If not, will there be a public beta of the editor so fans can get a look at it and give feedback?
[SS3] Will we get a chance to hear some rockin' heavy metal tunes during boss/massive battles like in SS1?
[SS3] Would you all consider having a contest for Serious Sam fans where people would submit enemy/weapon/environment ideas and the best enemy/weapon/environment designed by fans would be worked into SS3?
[SS3] Will there be something new in Serious Sam 3? I appreciate all the run and gun gameplay Serious Sam has, but it can use something new...maybe more interactive world/environment. To Sam can do some melee tricks, alternative ammo for weapons, alternative fire mode for weapons, more weapons, and totally weird/crazy/wacky enemies/ideas. Basically stuff like that, Sam should expand more.
[SSHD] Will you add some competitive things like a score board that shows everyone's stats of how many kills, secrets, power up pickup, etc. are found/done in co-op mode?
[SSHD] First and Second Encounter had many broken triggers which resulted an incorrect maximum killcount and secret values. Will these be fixed?
[SS3] Will Netricsa appear in SS3 as a 3D model or as a 2D picture like in SS2?




Partly Answered?

[Modding/Mapping] Will SS3 have more macro functions? Or will SS3 retain the same macro commands from SS2?




Answered

For the answered questions go HERE

.

[Louva-Deus]

No. Next question?

[Fiendian]

Will Serious Sam 3's story continue where Serious Sam: The Second Encounter left off (we saw Sam leaving the grand cathedral in a big spaceship, heading for Sirius I think)?

(this is a great idea, btw)

[Zocky]

how will the terrain making process look compared to the Sed2 (where,iirc, you used RGBA chanells on tex to blend 5 difrent textures) and in general, what how will you deal with terrains?

[Fiendian]

Will Serious Sam 3 go back to a more serious design of enemies (for example the very serious-looking Werebull vs. the toy Rhino)?

(btw, Zocky, you should maybe collect all questions in the first post, makes it much easier for both readers and Croteam themselves)

[Finzy]

What are the system requirements?

How well can SED3 and SED2 interact with each other? Can we expect to export levels, models, particle effects and such? How much have the editors changed? Is macro still used?

[Pan Strife]

Will the normal array of weapons still come around? Or will it be more modern/futuristic like SS2?

[Angelo]

Will SED3 be as easy as SED1 was? Becuase SED2 is very difficult to use.

[ChrisW]

Have you guys from Croteam read the giant list of suggestions we made for SS3? Anything on the list you are not planning on implementing?

[Deepblue]

Will Serious Sam 3's story continue where Serious Sam: The Second Encounter left off (we saw Sam leaving the grand cathedral in a big spaceship, heading for Sirius I think)?

(this is a great idea, btw)

I'm not entirely sure it was Sam in that ship.
Remember than Sam and Mental were in that confession box beforehand?
Why would it be Sam inside the ship flying off?

and why would the bigheads be cheering Sam on as the ship flies away despite going after him at the end of FE and start of SE?

Although it would be nice to what Sam was doing before being teleported by the Sirian "great council" (pff, yeah right) at the beginning of SS2

Sed3 requires a multi-touch screen monitor. There is no mouse.

I say it requires pure mind control with the computer wired to your brain
Giving you an electric shock when you get hurt or die naturally

[Fiendian]

Will Serious Sam 3 utilize fully dynamic lighting/shadowing?



Psst, you forgot to add my 2nd question to the list.

[Fiendian]

Will the Cannon be back in SS3? And if so, will it make that awesome room-shaking roar like in the SS1 games?



You duplicated my first question, btw.

[Louva-Deus]

Questions only or you will live the rest of your life as a halfling.

[Ryason55]

Will SS3 have more macro functions? (such as get/set x/y/z coord?)

Will it be possible to further customize custom maps in SS3 with custom weapons and player models?

Will there be Simba Dolls in SS3?

[Scorpion777]

Will SS3 be a full length game or will it be released in shorter episodes like SS1?

[Fiendian]

Will SS3 return to the human cultures for its levels (SE took place in S-America, Babylonia and Europe fx.)? And if so, which cultures will Sam explore in SS3?

[Scorpion777]

Will SS3 return to the human cultures for its levels (SE took place in S-America, Babylonia and Europe fx.)? And if so, which cultures will Sam explore in SS3?

What else is left besides the obvious one (ancient Rome)? I guess you could do a greatly expanded version of Russian or Viking architecture, but that's really all that comes to mind.

[Fiendian]

1 was enough for FE and 3 was enough for SE; so you pretty much mentioned enough material for a great sequel. They have yet to cover Asia too.

[Scorpion777]

I suppose you have a point there, Chinese architecture was covered briefly in SS2 but there's so much more that could (and should) have been done with that theme. I do think SS3 should have a few reconstructed human civilizations, but I'd also like to see some completely foreign civilizations.

[Valerie Valens]

I think they should also cover Ancient Greece and the mythical city of Atlantis.

Anyways, questions :

How well will Serious Sam 3 work with the video capture software of today?

How elaborate will the demo playback and recording system be? Will demo rewinding be possible?

Will free-roaming cameras be possible for live online sessions and demo playback?

It was said that Serious Sam 1's netcode could handle latencies of up to 500ms, which is impressive, while the netcode of Serious Sam 2 starts to break down after 150ms, generating player warping during online play. How would the performance of Serious Sam 3's netcode compare?

Will we see the return of many of the features from Serious Sam 1 that were absent in Serious Sam 2 like Mental mode, custom gravity and saturation/colour bias sliders?

Is there any chance of open-sourcing the source code for Serious Engine 1/Serious Sam 1 to the community?

How flexible can games made on the Serious Engine 3 be without the need for coding a mod?

Will Serious Sam 3 come with a set of deathmatch maps?

Will there be an achievements/unlock/rewards system for superior gaming skills?

Do you plan on giving Broussard the ultimate kick in the balls by eventually developing a Duke Nukem game on the Serious Engine 3?

[jasser]

Val, if you're gonna ask technical questions like video capture and stuff, you might as well add "does the sound engine work with integrated soundcards this time around?" to the list .

[Fiendian]

Of course Serious Sam 3 will work with today's video capturing software.

Proper on-board sound acceleration support would be nice though, especially when the PCI sound cards suddenly malfunction (I'm looking at you, darn X-Fi) and one has to fall back to on-board until that is sorted out.

[Valerie Valens]

Okay, okay!

Will the sound engine have more extensive support for integrated sound cards and soundchips?

Will the engine include support for OpenAL implementation as an alternative to Creative EAX?

[Finzy]

It'll very likely support it since 99,99% of today's computers have onboard sound.

Which is a very bad, bad thing.

[Fiendian]

Yes, but on-board accel. and separate sound cards (PCI or PCIx compatible) aren't mutually exclusive.

[Alen Ladavac]

Hey guys!

I saw this thread recently, and with HD announced we can finally start responding to things like this....

1. Will Serious Engine 3 use anything similar to Id's Megatexture technology?
No. We have to be able to create downloadable games (XBLA, etc.), not Blu-ray titles.

2. how will the terrain making process look compared to the Sed2 (where,iirc, you used RGBA chanells on tex to blend 5 difrent textures) and in general, what how will you deal with terrains?
Similar. The approach is same, but improved. There are tools and bakers to automatically mix textures based on height, slope, etc. plus manual baking on top of that. The crumbs system is also improved to integrate better with terrain, to support dynamic shadows, better lodding, etc, etc.

3. Will Serious Sam 3's story continue where Serious Sam: The Second Encounter left off (we saw Sam leaving the grand cathedral in a big spaceship, heading for Sirius I think)?
I ain't giving away any spoilers.

4. How well can SED3 and SED2 interact with each other? Can we expect to export levels, models, particle effects and such? How much have the editors changed? Is macro still used?

SED3 is a new version of SED2 (and SE3 or SE2). I.e. no complete recode this time. So all the stuff you have in SED2 you also have in SED3, plus tons more. In general, you can load most content directly (there is no exporting needed), but there are of course compatibility issues due to changes in the games themselves. SS2 used LDR and 1.x/2.0 shaders. SSHD/SS3 use full HDR rendering and 3.0+ shaders. So you can load all models, but have to recreate/substitute the materials.

Macro still exists, but it is deprecated and not used in SSHD/SS3. SE3 uses Lua for all scripting. Lua scripting in levels is very similar to the way macros work: Same stuff with event, on-handlers, etc, same user interface, with drag/drop for entities, group variables, etc. On-the-fly syntax suggestion and help is much better this time though, and the language itself is much more powerful (of course, because Lua is a general purpose language). You can do amazing things with it in the levels, but explaining that all deserves a lot more space.

5. Will the normal array of weapons still come around? Or will it be more modern/futuristic like SS2?
As you have probably already read elsewhere, SS3 is more serious, gory and non-cartoony. The way SS:FE was in its time. The new tech allows it to be so even more.

6. Compared to Sed1 and 2, how easy will sed3 be?
SED3 is SED2 improved. The approach is the same, with a lot of new stuff. Lot of places in the UI have improved, new tools added, etc. Still, beware: HDR rendering adds more tricks to the editing game, and that will take some time getting used to. But the results are astounding (IMO).

7. Will Serious Sam 3 go back to a more serious design of enemies (for example the very serious-looking Werebull vs. the toy Rhino)?
Yes. See #5.

Alen

[Fiendian]

Woah, wasn't expecting answers to our questions so soon. Thank you very much for the information, it has ramped up my excitement for SS3 & SS:HD, and SEd 3 of course.

By the way, the first post only collected the first few questions, there are some more hiding in the replies, namely Valerie Valens' post.

[Deepblue]

Will SS3 have secret levels? If so, how many and how hard will they be to find?
SS:FE had secret levels but then SS:SE and SS2 just dropped them completely

[Alen Ladavac]

How well will Serious Sam 3 work with the video capture software of today?
Don't know. Haven't tested it.

How elaborate will the demo playback and recording system be? Will demo rewinding be possible?
Same as in Sam2, probably some fixes, but not much more. No rewinding, certainly, as we haven't plan on doing any further improvements there yet.

Will free-roaming cameras be possible for live online sessions and demo playback?
Probably.

It was said that Serious Sam 1's netcode could handle latencies of up to 500ms, which is impressive, while the netcode of Serious Sam 2 starts to break down after 150ms, generating player warping during online play. How would the performance of Serious Sam 3's netcode compare?
"It was said" is a good term. As it is more of a "legend" than a fact. SS1 netcode had its strengths, but also had a lot more weaknesses. It was more biased towards modem connections, and not that good for modern internet play. Player warping and other netcode issues are something that I would like to address, but that will come gradually. The good thing is that we are now going to ship several products on the same platform with gradual improvements from one to another. That will allow much better tuning than with what happened with Sam2. But don't expect it to be perfect at the first shot. :p

Will we see the return of many of the features from Serious Sam 1 that were absent in Serious Sam 2 like Mental mode, custom gravity and saturation/colour bias sliders?
Mostly yes, plus, SSHD holds some more improvements that are in the line on where SSFE was, and SS3 adds some more specific stuff to gameplay and options, but I won't go into details. But gravities, unfortunately not yet. I've explained for SS2 that, while the new physics engine supports arbitrary gravity, puppets, projectiles and particle effects are hardcoded for downward gravity. That saves a lot of development time on the AI, and we haven't yet found enough reason to go for directional gravities.


Is there any chance of open-sourcing the source code for Serious Engine 1/Serious Sam 1 to the community?
Probably not yet.

How flexible can games made on the Serious Engine 3 be without the need for coding a mod?
A bit more than SS2 in places. We are aiming for more scriptable things, but that is not yet completely finished.

Will Serious Sam 3 come with a set of deathmatch maps?
Probably.

Will there be an achievements/unlock/rewards system for superior gaming skills?
Yes there is, already in SSHD.

Do you plan on giving Broussard the ultimate kick in the balls by eventually developing a Duke Nukem game on the Serious Engine 3?
Seems like there are too many DN games being developed already. :p

[Alen Ladavac]

Will the sound engine have more extensive support for integrated sound cards and soundchips?

Will the engine include support for OpenAL implementation as an alternative to Creative EAX?

SE3 supports DirectSound W&W/O EAX, OpenAL, and XAudio2. But XAudio2 rocks so much, you don't want to use anything else. That will be the default, and there probably won't be a menu option to use the other two at all (only through the console). XAudio works perfectly, no matter which chip you have. We were never able to pull this much reliablity in reproducing the same sound effects with other APIs before, ever since our old software mixer (which is not used for quite some time). Effectively, XAudio2 _is_ a software mixer, and that is why it works so well.