Bought Serious Sam HD on Steam

[doperst]

Tried to play it... It's a crap.
They call it HD, but most textures are just stretches of old ones, my former Voodoo2 and K6-2 could handle... Definitely not worth it. Not a 2009 game. "Serious engine 3"? No. Not serious.
And some bugs are there, too, right from the start menu.

A disappointment...

[doperst]

Well. i managed to play some more further...
It is playable. but "HD"? no. i wouldn't call it HD definitely. In the age of Team Fotress2 and Left4Dead1/2, which ARE REALLY HD, and provide FREE bonus maps/enhancements for lifetime, no.
The original SS was BRILLIANT, and i own 4 copies: FE, SE, Gold and SS2, tho i never liked SS2 that much and hardly passed two or three levels of it.
This one would nicely do as a free bonus for a gamer's magazine, it's quality is comparable to DUKE NUKEM HIGH RESOLUTION PACK that is available for free, and makes the same to the original Duke3D.
I've heard about Serious Sam Forever... No, please. We've seen what "forever" means. And if SSF will be anything like SS:HD, better don't do it.

Good luck and best wishes.

[Wytas]

Well, gameplay in HD is much more fun, comparing to original.
But I'm also very disappointed about old textures. The Great Pyramid level looks even worse than original to me

As for SSF, that's gonna be a kickass game

[Purple Psycho Sandwich]

Croteam has time with The Second Encounter, so they can take time and make that truly HD...I hope.

It'd take years to find a solution to stupid simple things.

I'd love to play Serious Sam with extremely high polygon count, extremely detailed levels...and millions of monsters. But that'd eat my PC alive and make it explode...

Dammit, I really hope something gets resolved in the future. :/

[dustyjo]

Really, most of the textures are just the originals with detail textures slapped on.

Why?

[Shrinker]

Are you really sure that the original textures had the same resolution as the current ones? They used detail textures since their first SS release, btw.

[Wytas]

Are you really sure that the original textures had the same resolution as the current ones? They used detail textures since their first SS release, btw.

Looks like it. Some levels look like made in a rush.

[dustyjo]

Are you really sure that the original textures had the same resolution as the current ones?

Some of them are exactly the same.





Oh well, at least it was cheap...

[Angelo]

Who cares about the textures? Sure, some of them are the same, but the graphics around it? It's awesome.

[dustyjo]

Who cares about the textures? Sure, some of them are the same, but the graphics around it? It's awesome.

Uh, what? We're talking about the graphics...

[Purple Psycho Sandwich]

Eh, detail textures go great with textures that are painted, there's lots of them like in original Serious Sam . They just should have added slight details and more polys to some buildings, like the towers, I like how those look.

Who knows, Croteam may fix some of these soon, patches don't exist for nothing ;P

[dustyjo]

Eh, detail textures go great with textures that are painted, there's lots of them like in original Serious Sam .

I didn't know the egyptians painted with pixels and bilinear filtering.

[doperst]

I didn't know the egyptians painted with pixels and bilinear filtering.

rofl

no, they were using bumpmapping

[Purple Psycho Sandwich]

rofl

no, they were using bumpmapping

Yeah, so it fits with the 'paintings' Egyptians did. Works for me, but they could have done other details a bit...

[Fiendian]

I didn't know the egyptians painted with pixels and bilinear filtering.

rofl

no, they were using bumpmapping

The ancient Egyptians were so far ahead of their time, like Da Vinci and Tesla.

[Valerie Valens]

Well, the texturing is way ahead of its time in 2001. It would be a waste of time and disk space to remake textures from scratch when high res remastered versions of them would work fine.

I think the texturing is fine. The game is worth the 20 bucks for the Steam services it provides as well as the auto download feature alone. Do you have any idea how much of a pain it was to organize a custom co-op game on the original games?

[Serious Issues]

Alright, so I'm not one of these "blindly defend Croteam and Serious Sam games" guys. Definitely got my issues with how Croteam handled SS2 and SS:HD, but I think some of you haven't stopped shooting enemies in the game long enough to run along the structures/walls/buildings and really look at the fine detail in the brushwork and mesh. Where in SS1 there was one big single shaped brush, there is a complex architecture of different shaped brushes combined to form beautiful, detailed structures in SS:HD.

Also, yes, Croteam did re-use some textures from the original games, but I'll guarantee you that for however many textures they re-used, there are 4x as many new textures or hi-res improved versions of the old ones.

I think they did a hell of a job in the design of this game. My beef with Croteam right now lies in how they handled their file structuring and securing. I think it's plain retarded, and they should have taken a little more time and found a better way to cheat-proof the game instead of taking the "let's lock all the game files and make it not run if you add anything onto it" approach.

[Valerie Valens]

Well, I am wiling to wait until they release files that allow for modification.

Considering that we have had problems with clans using lightbulb models, shutting this down for them would be a step in the right direction.

[Alen Ladavac]

Serious Issues.... if we didn't do it so strictly, and someone hacked it, then you would now be here complaining how we didn't protect it well enough. I guess we can never please everyone.

A dynamic check is relatively easy to hack out. An executable that is hard-coded to required is much more secure. So we did it this way. We can always change it to a softer version later, but if we shipped with a security hole in this place, we would never be able to correct, because the game supports saves, you could always load hacked saves from old version. And at that point, we can just throw the leaderboards out of the window, because noone will want to see them if they are full of undetected hacks.

Which reminds me... there are some things about leaderboards and score calculation that everyone should know. I will create a new thread about it....

[Alen Ladavac]

Some of them are exactly the same.
Oh well, at least it was cheap...

You are missing the point. Why don't you compare some areas that are in the sun, with shadows? Or with moving torch shadows? Or some enemy shots?

[Serious Issues]

Serious Issues.... if we didn't do it so strictly, and someone hacked it, then you would now be here complaining how we didn't protect it well enough. I guess we can never please everyone.

No, as a matter of fact, I would not. The main reason I'm irked about it is because I just spent the better half of 2 weeks putting together a replacement weapon/door/enemy sound mod for the community.

I frankly find it silly that people are complaining about anything else, because the game itself and everything about it is spectacular. Do not group me up with the "cry about every little thing" people category.

[Valerie Valens]

No, as a matter of fact, I would not. The main reason I'm irked about it is because I just spent the better half of 2 weeks putting together a replacement weapon/door/enemy sound mod for the community.

I frankly find it silly that people are complaining about anything else, because the game itself and everything about it is spectacular. Do not group me up with the "cry about every little thing" people category.

I think you need to take a chill pill. Your complaints may be valid, but they are no more valid than what the others have been putting out. You speak as if your work had gone to waste. It hadn't, don't worry, we will be able to try your mod as soon as the game is made moddable.

[GeNeRiC_DeTeCteD]

that's not HD graphics...
they are better but still aren't good enough.
but the water and the trees and sand canyon are amazing.
i prefer a game of 12GB but with extra detailed levels and awesome graphics instead of 1GB with no detailed levels and "nice" graphics....
but it still good enough for SS

[Finzy]

Like Alen said, everyone whining about reused textures and whatnot is missing the point. The areas in the first screenshots, for example, are outside the main gameplay area and as such don't need dozens and dozens of complex shaders and detail textures and whatnot, because ordinary people will never stray there (and it would hurt the fps to have them as detailed). And have you people completely forgot the game's running on an entirely new engine capable of dynamic lighting and much more complicated shaders and everything? There's definitely a huge difference between the previous versions of the game and SS2 compared to HD - if you don't see it you're likely blind.

I think SS:HD looks fantastic. Even on my age-old machine it's definitely the prettiest game I've played over the past couple of years - and that's saying a lot, since most newest games look like complete shit on low settings (and I'm even able to run SSHD on medium/high/high customized). SSHD is like from a different planet compared to that. (E.g Dawn of War 2 even looks WORSE than its precessor on minimum settings with no lighting or effects to speak of - and still stutters and lags on top of that with very cheap physics).

In the age of Team Fotress2 and Left4Dead1/2, which ARE REALLY HD

Well, if I spent about an hour trying to find texturing/modeling flaws in them I'm sure I'd be able to. And many. For example, Source engine games' textures look like crap on anything but high or maximum settings due to everything being cheaply downscaled (even loading screen textures).

No, as a matter of fact, I would not. The main reason I'm irked about it is because I just spent the better half of 2 weeks putting together a replacement weapon/door/enemy sound mod for the community.

Well, you should've waited at least until the game was actually out. You can never be sure the game works with what you've done or if it even has an editor or allows modified content.

[GeNeRiC_DeTeCteD]

finzy, tell me please what games did you played with your 'old" machine?

[Valerie Valens]

that's not HD graphics...
they are better but still aren't good enough.
but the water and the trees and sand canyon are amazing.
i prefer a game of 12GB but with extra detailed levels and awesome graphics instead of 1GB with no detailed levels and "nice" graphics....
but it still good enough for SS

I'd rather play an FPS with amazing gameplay. This game delivered it.

I've just been playing a 16 player co-op session on serious with the enemy health bumped up and it's pure epicness. Lasers, rockets, cannons and bullet tracers flying everywhere! You do not get more serious than that. It really is a level of epic I have yet to see since the release of HL2.

[Finzy]

finzy, tell me please what games did you played with your 'old" machine?

Check my Steam account if you're bothered, most of the games I play these days are on there.

[doperst]

Check my Steam account if you're bothered, most of the games I play these days are on there.

Finzy, it is silly to compare games by the way they look on LOW settings . Any game is supposed to be played on high or best settings by design, other options are there as a compromise. Serious Sam HD has HD (high definition, FYI) in it's name. And it looks mostly crap on my 28" HD (1900x1200) monitor with everything set at maximum quality. If you could see my Steam games list, you'd see there are about 70 games in it, and i set every one of them at maximum picture quality, because i want any game look the best it can, so far as my PC can handle it.

Again, original Serious Sam games looked terrific, if not best for their time, and that added for the value. I've expected something comparable, taking into account the year 2009, from SS:HD, and saw Quake 2 (or slightly better) graphics instead. Ok, i admit it is a cheap game, but price doesn't matter for me.

Alen Ladavac, talking about shadows, they look cheap, and inaccurate. As for other graphic effects, i've been rolling on floor when i saw how those burning lamps fall apart when you pass by: animation looks like Doom1 sprites and idea itself is lame, however you call it: "interactive environments HD"?

[Finzy]

Well there's no arguing against you, I guess. If you really think it looks like Quake 2 improved, be my guest.

EDIT: And I guess I did word my previous post a bit wrongly, actually I'm still able to run most games on medium settings fine (examples: Left 4 Dead 2, Empire: Total War).

[Fiendian]

You get the most bang for the buck at max settings but it is unrealistic for the average joe to maintain a PC powerful enough for that. How I do it is replaying heavy games that I played at non-max settings at max settings once I do a system upgrade. It always makes me feel giddy when I play my old favorites at settings the old geezer choked on.