[Mod] Serious Sam HD: Extended - Open Beta Testing (Open Beta 2 is OUT!)

[Solais]

Alright everyone, the wait is over, here's the first Open Beta test for SSHD: Extended Part 1.

DISCLAIMER: This is a BETA version. Nothing is final and is subject to change, based on feedback and personal preference. It's also a specific version compiled for this OPEN BETA test only. This means, it got less stuff to show that what I have ready internally. There's no Workshop version, because I don't want this to be widely distributed in its current form.

This build of the mod is obsolete. Download links removed.

WHAT IS IN THIS BETA

- Full Episode 1, with 14 levels. It is now content complete!
- Five Episode 2 levels.
- 14 Lore tablets to find on Episode 1 levels. One tablet per level.
- New Enemies, Models, Messages, Effects, Music, etc.


WHAT IS NOT IN THIS BETA

- The rest of Episode 2.
- Lore tablets for Episode 2 levels.
- The intro levels for both episodes.
- A few Netricsa messages.
- A new MenuLevel.wld.
- A new menu loading screen.
- New Credits.


WHAT I'M ASKING YOU, THE TESTER

- Report me all the bugs you find.
- Tell me about your experience.
- Tell me how the new levels are.
- How the first episode feels like.
- How the second episode feels like so far.
- How the whole experience is like.
- Your suggestions and feedback to make this project much better.
- Have fun!



OPEN BETA 2 Changelog:

General

- Changed the Minigun's stats to the Classic one
- TextEffect introduces the bosses now
- A few new enemy types you'll meet
*Levels are still not finalized due to a bug in the SSHD editor. Due to this, some can be quite laggy.


Episode 1

- Some enemy spawn changes around a few levels.
*You'll notice them easily when you replay the episode.

Hatshepsut Temple

- Changed location of the Lore Tablet a little
- Added some spawns to explorable locations
- Removed those ugly blocks, there are now rocks
- Added 3 new secrets to find around the level
- Edited visibility
*No, you still can't enter the side temples. But I'd check out the valley temple...

Dry Valley

- Changed enemy and item spawns significantly to make the level much more easier
- Added some rock models to make the level more rocky

Temple of Ptah

- Lighting completely redone. Due to this, some rooms will look completely different.
- Save file corruption due to the previous lighting system fixed.
- Planet Puzzle Room redesigned to include less walking. It now includes more teleporting and more bloom. It might be laggy on some machines.
- Missing cutscene, boss and netricsa messages implemented.
- Removed some hanging vines in the last area, as they looked bad with the new lighting.
- Adjusted spawns across the level.

Clerical Wards

- Fixed Croteam bug about forgotten alpha triggers that caused a large number of enemies to not spawn.
- Adjusted a few battles and spawns.
- Possible minor fixes I can't remember.

Great Obelisk

- Completely changed the lighting
*Added blue crescent moon too!
- Fixed Croteam bug about forgotten alpha triggers that caused a large number of enemies to not spawn.
- Adjusted a few battles and spawns.
- Changed the Boss' projectiles to have AoE damage. Thus it is much harder now.


Episode 2

- Re-added the following levels: Karnak (now "Karnak: The First Pylons") and Sacred Yards (now "Karnak: Sacred Yards").
- Added a new level: KarnakLakeAndAlley (aka "Karnak: The Sacred Lake").
- Just like Moon Mountains, Sacred Yard is unskippable non-secret level when on Hard difficulty or above.

Alley of the Sphinxes

- Added 2 secrets.
- Fixed bug that caused every player to die when the Lava Golem spawned

Karnak: The First Pylons

- Original: "Karnak"
- Added pots and Episode 2 specific models
- Changed background models to fit the following levels
- Adjusted spawns to include new enemies
- Adjusted the final room to reflect the beginning of the next level "Karnak: Amon Complex".
- Created a custom barrier around the Ankh Pool to prevent enemies falling into it
*Custom barriers only work on enemies
*I have to redo the Netricsa images for this level

Karnak: Amon Complex

- Adjusted spawns
- Restructured the event when you get the Minigun
- Changed background models to fit the following levels
- Adjusted visibility of background models you can see in the last yard (regarding the rising obelisk)
- Changed the endlevel room to reflect Sacred Yards being a required level on Hard and above.

Karnak: Sacred Yards

- Original: "Sacred Yards"
- Added pots and Episode 2 specific models
- Changed background models to fit the previous level
- Adjusted spawns to include new enemies
- Fixed many floating models left there by Croteam
- Fixed the Geek Teleport secret that was only available in SS1 Classic. Also, it's now a registered secret that can be done without rocket jump.
- In one of the gold sphinx yards, where in Classic you encountered flipped gravity when switching some buttons, the "gravity" was somewhat reimplemented. Near the buttons, the gravity is much lower so you can jump higher to reach the buttons.

Karnak: The Sacred Lake

*Remade SS1 Alpha level. Originally started a year and a half ago, based on speculation.
*85% of the layout is based on speculation.
*5% of the layout was converted from the original alpha map, once the resource was available for me (about a room and a half).
*10% is completely new or changed layout, after realizing that the original alpha map is pretty awful.
*Its music is not complete yet, so it uses the music of Clerical Wards as a placeholder.

PATCH Changelog:

- Removed the Hunter Daemons and their entities from multiplayer temporarily till they are fixed by Croteam. They still appear in SP though.
- Fixed Save Corruption in Temple of Ptah for real now
- Changed the cutscene room at the end of Metropolis to fit to its Temple of Ptah counterpart
- Added missing ChapterInfos for KarnakLakeAndAlley
- Too bad patches like these can't remove things I have left in the original gro by accident

[Serious Wolfer]

For some reason, mediafire isn't letting me download part 4 and ONLY part 4. I tried it on Safari and Explorer. I would assume Chrome would do the same.

UPDATE: WinRAR is hollering at me saying I need part 4 in order to extract all the files successfully. Since I cannot download part 4, I cannot go any farther until this problem is resolved.

[Solais]

What does mediafire says? It works for me. Maybe it's asking for something?

And yes, you need all parts to extract the rar.

[Serious Wolfer]

Pic explains it all:



And its URL is for Part 4 of the mod. No matter how many times I refresh the page it just gives me this automatically. I don't get the message asking me to download part 4 of the mod unlike the others.

[Solais]

I still don't understand, tried it again, it works for me. I'll try reuploading.

[Marko J]

Part 4 works for me.

[Marko J]

Bugs:
- This bushes don't have "Ghost Effector" they are blocking you! (Found in "Dry Valley")


- Water in the vases has "Stone" material!


Experiance:
It was interesting I like the new Mummy models. The Bio-Mech failing to teleport from the future was also interesting and cool.

New Levels:
All new levels are awsome my favorite one will be the "Dry Valley" The basic design is very good also the enemy spawn and balance is good.

This models are nice also it's a good thing they still have the annimation.


The only thing I dislike about it is this temple or whatever it is here:

The design is kinda lame, it looks like a box... And also the NETRICSA menu level is very cool I like that it has that grid like in SS3.

[Pan]

Well I had a bit of a go with some of the levels, I'm impressed for sure. I'll split my issues and the things I like apart for easier reading. I'm only up to Dry Valley so far.

What I liked (so far):
Hatshepsut: The expansion was good. I agree with marko on the box part of it but the enhancements to the level were good, and I appreciate them. The inclusion of pots in general was nice.
Nectrisa: Enhancing the lore available was nice. I will have to check where you got your information from, and how much of it is fake. Not to be all like LOL THATS FAKE but out of general love for knowledge.
Music: It's good.
Dry Valley: The merging of different models and textures when they meet each other is impeccable. The use of terrain to match that of the official episodes is a great achievement. I feel like I'm looking at a map that belongs in the campaign and not a fan map. It's usually easy to tell the difference, here not so much. I also liked how it reminded me of my favourite TNE level.
Custom models: Always a nice addition.

What I didn't like (so far):
- Hatshepsut may be pretty, but it's a fake kind of pretty. As I said I love the additions made to the level but all those places I can walk to for no reward was a bother. I wouldn't mind so much but it was an issue when it was so far to walk for nothing. Unless I'm missing something, but still.
- Dry Valley could use a tad bit of balancing in my personal opinion. I'm a casual player and I found that there wasn't enough health in the first section of Dry Valley to compensate for the amount of harpies, arachnoids, kleers and kamikazes that were spawning in one wave. I'd barely walked a few steps before the horde arrived and was a bit surprised at how much the enemy count had picked up after Oasis. it's not a bad sort of balancing, but it just seems that if the player ****s up, they're really gonna pay the price for it.
Edit: Dry Valley - I must have bugged my level. I just replayed it and the enemy spawns were a lot more spread out than on my original play through. Well ignore that, I suppose.

General comments:
- Bringing Sam 3 and HD together with some small nods to Serious Sam 3 was a good thought. I think it worked in the games favour to have them appear. Not gonna say what since that's for others to experience. The added information given in Nectrisa also improves that.
- Did you leave Moon Mountains alone? I didn't notice changes. Then again I kinda just tore through it like normal.
- Whats up with the extra enemy pack? Does that stuff come later? XD Big download size is big man. Then again that's par for the course for your work now isn't it.
- Lack of secrets?

Bugs:
Dry Valley: I don't know why but every time I get the rock slide in the second valley, (section with falling rocks on the right side, with the small village along the cliff side on the left) The boulder falling sound replays constantly at intervals of aroudn 5 seconds. It gets very aggravating to hear after a while. XD I belive it's due to boulders thinking they are still rolling, but are colliding with other objects.

Nectrisa errors:
Item Armor: Ammounts is not spelt correctly. "Fortunately EDF have included" - has? Had, more like?
Sirian Mutilator bracelet: "It seems that the time travel have damaged the weapon systems" - Has damaged
Key: ____ Elemental: Wrong use of the word "obviously" - might wanna rewrite it?
Item: Health: "Fortunately EDF have included" - has? Maybe Had, again. Mispelling of "amounts"

Just a side note for the page on the Ankhs. In the description you say the same thing twice in a sense. "It represents the concept of eternal life, which is the general meaning of the symbol" I'm just saying if it represents eternal life, that's its meaning.

I pause my game a lot to type out my thoughts as I play so I don't lose anything. This project is an important one so I feel like losing something to say could be a wasted opportunity. I'll try not to post too much shit but hey. Just what i do.

[Finzy]

I played the first couple of levels of the campaign and I agree with Pan on the walking around for no reward thing. It was nice to see all those places expanded, but I got bored out of my mind walking everywhere only to find out that there was no reward, or to find out that the building is inaccessible.

I think it isn't good level design to add a neat looking temple to the distance so the player is tempted to explore it, only to be greeted by a long netricsa message that could be summed up as "TL;DR IT'S LOCKED". I spent ages searching around, looking for cool secrets and stuff, only to find none. Lore tablets - neat idea, but I'd honestly prefer finding original, thought out secrets, cause in a game like Serious Sam most players really can't be expected to spend time reading walls of text. Especially in co op.

And going near the temple at the end of the dunes in Hatshephut REALLY shouldn't kill you imo. I get that there's a desert and it's hot. But come on, you're just coming out of the open desert into the SHADE of a huge temple - it shouldn't be that hot anymore, and it just makes the player go WTF.

The pots were a neat touch but I think they might be tad overused since they appear absolutely everywhere in the level (who'd honestly need that many ), and imo fewer of them should give health and armor pickups. Because it's incredibly annoying to break 100 vases to get 100 armor, yet a player who does that will have an advantage over someone who doesn't want to waste many minutes doing that.

But overall I'm digging the changes and the expansions, it'll definitely give the game more replay value. I'm just hoping not all of the levels that were changed basically just have additional models that aren't even worth walking up to.

EDIT: Also noticed a typo in the netricsa message about the hatshephut desert:

"the incredibly cold would kill you" --- should be the "incredible"

[Serious Wolfer]

never mind it works for me now

[Solais]

Thanks for the comments so far!

About Moon Mountains: Yes, this level is barely changed, I never intended to. It's perfect. The only changes I did was fixing the bugged spawns.

About the Typos: Yep, I knew I left a few. Will be fixed.

About Hatshepsut: Hmm, I agree with Finzy about the killer near the temple and I generally agree about it being bad design. However, I kinda -had- to make it like this, because of a certain Episode 2 level which is all about revisiting these inaccessible areas. In a way, I planned that these areas generate wonder in the player that would pay out well when they reach that revisit level. It just doesn't feel that good without that level included.
I'll fix those walls, they have been bothering me for a while too.

About the pots: They rarely drop stuff (dependent on the level where I think their rewards should be useful in tight spots), so most of the time they are really just for scenery.

About the Netricsa messages: Some of them were lazily copied from Wikipedia and edited together to fit the game.

About Dry Valley: Thanks for the positive feedback so far. I personally don't consider it my greatest work yet, but I'm glad you're liking it. I took note of its problems and the bugs and will fix them eventually. The boulder bug is something I actually know about and completely forgot to fix for this release, sorry about that.

Thank you all for the feedback!

[Valerie Valens]

Played from Hatshepsut to Tomb of Ramses and here are my thoughts so far :

• The new look for Hatshepsut is pretty cool, as is the lore associated with the extra temples.
• I would have liked to be able to actually enter the side temples. Perhaps move the key to one of them so that Sam has a reason to go there.
• The lore tablets are a pretty great idea, adds even more to the immersion.
• I like the callbacks to the SS3 versions of the enemies, however some associations are missing, like the Beheaded Rocketeers and the Juvenile Arachnoids and how Mental had the luxury of waiting till they're sufficiently grown before deploying them.
• It would be nice for the first few levels to have the added extra enemy variations.
• The extra props are cool, but they kind of stick out from the rest of the level scenes. The vases are uncharacteristically glossy. The extra crates as well as some of the vases are way too reddish. Maybe if you could dull the reflections, and try to blend in the colour from the surroundings, it would fit the look better.
• There is a visibility glitch in Hatshepsut where if you open the door to the final room, then run back across the pool and rub up against the door going back, the entire level geometry appears to disappear leaving only the skybox and the terrain visible.
• I experienced a crash when attempting to skip the end-of-level cutscene on Tomb of Ramses.

More thoughts are pending as I play through more of it.

[Solais]

About the Key: Well the idea was to use the parts of the original Hatshepsut layout that were really just there and rarely anyone really bothered with it. I still don't know if I want to utilize the other temples before the revisit level.

About the Messages: I thought I included the Rocketeer thing, I probably forgot. Will check.

About Enemy Variations: I work by Tiers when it comes to using enemies, so I want to introduce them gradually, without the original enemies losing their importance. Most of the enemy variations I have are later tiers. I also don't want to change how some of the original levels play, nor I want to include all enemy variations too early, or the player will have nothing else to look forward to.

About Vases: Will look into that.

About the Visibility bug: I don't think that's my fault, and I can't fix it, as I have no access to the visibility of the level (but I might ask Alen for an editable copy for the revisit level).

About the Crash: I need a log to check that.

Thanks for the feedback!

[Serious Wolfer]

This is far off from this part of the extended mod, but I have a request Solais. In the Grand Cathedral level, I have noticed objects do not brighten up from the lightning (outside the cathedral). Can you fix that so the cathedral, castle walls, etc. will be brighter when the lightning strikes?

[Solais]

I don't know. I'll see when I get there eventually.

[Valerie Valens]

I couldn't replicate the crash, but I found this in the report :

Report generated at: 10/08/13 21:00:08
Version: $Version: SeriousSamHD_TSE; Win32; Standard; Final; 3.003.00:184716; 2013-06-18 23:01:11; @builder01$
Build type: Win32-Static-Release
Exception code: C0000005 ACCESS_VIOLATION
Fault address:
62CDFBD3 0001:0004EBD3 "$C:/Windows/SysWow64/XAudio2_6.dll"

Dumping registers:
EAX:FFFFFFFE
EBX:7AB25368
ECX:00000000
EDX:0B3AE3C0
ESI:0B63D850
EDI:00000000
CS:EIP:0023:62CDFBD3
SS:ESP:002B:0B4CFDD4  EBP:0B4CFDE8
DS:002B  ES:002B  FS:0053  GS:002B
Flags:00010206

Dumping stack back trace:
62CDFBD3 00000001 $adr: "$C:/Windows/SysWow64/XAudio2_6.dll" 0001:0004EBD3
62CD30ED 00000001 $adr: "$C:/Windows/SysWow64/XAudio2_6.dll" 0001:000420ED
62CD089D 00000001 $adr: "$C:/Windows/SysWow64/XAudio2_6.dll" 0001:0003F89D
62CC957E 00000001 $adr: "$C:/Windows/SysWow64/XAudio2_6.dll" 0001:0003857E
62CC9393 00000001 $adr: "$C:/Windows/SysWow64/XAudio2_6.dll" 0001:00038393
62CCA54B 00000001 $adr: "$C:/Windows/SysWow64/XAudio2_6.dll" 0001:0003954B
751D336A 00000001 $adr: "$C:/Windows/syswow64/kernel32.dll" 0001:0000336A
77309F72 00000001 $adr: "$C:/Windows/SysWOW64/ntdll.dll" 0001:00029F72
77309F45 00000001 $adr: "$C:/Windows/SysWOW64/ntdll.dll" 0001:00029F45

//=====================================================

Here's the log : [Link]

[Solais]

Unfortunately I can't do anything with the rpt, because it would need decoding and I can't really do anything with that either, only with the log.

Hmm, from the log, it seems like to me just a generic crash.

[Solais]

Any new feedback?

[Dankzaii]

Don't worry Solais, sooner or later I'll drop a coop feedback with some of my own thoughts, just wait...

[Serious Wolfer]

Well I do see a few potential issues with the Extended unless I'm purely missing them. For the life of me I cannot find that Lore Tablet in the new Dry Canyon level (and I cannot find the first secret either) and the Approaching Memphis level.

There are potentially very miniscule amount of bugged spawns in your new levels and the ones combined with the DLC.

Other than it is a FANTASTIC mod. This is something Croteam should've done as a patch after the SS3 BFE release to close the gaps in the Serious Sam Storyline.

[Solais]

The first secret of Dry Canyon is actually a very BS one: If you reach the oasis and walk ALL the way back to the very beginning to the level, then you'll find it.

I'm curious about those bugged spawns. Can you pinpoint them out?

[Serious Wolfer]

I can tell you for sure for the Dry Canyon level that there are at least 3 bugged spawns. I have always ended up with 3 enemies short of par. All original levels before the Dry Canyon level are fine.

I will play through Episode 1 VERY thoroughly again starting at Dry Canyon.

BTW, I have not played through Episode 2 yet (though I have unlocked it), so all feedback will be from Episode 1 for now.

[Dankzaii]

Okay so me and Yukaraj finally played Dry Valley, and here are my personal opinions about it:

Pros:
-The level is indeed an awesome thing, looks so good.
- Valerie's music is awesome *greets Valerie from here*
- The level is long (50/50)
- The pot-with-goodies mechanic is cool

Cons:
- The level is long (50/50)
- As Pan mentioned, the rock sound bug, I had to make a werebull move the rock to stop it
-As for playing on coop, we were playing on Hard difficulty, we were quickly running out of ammo on the half of the level, and more and more enemies spawned
-

[Spoiler]

The diminute red biomechanoid killed me at least 3 times before I could find it, screen it and kill it

- As mentioned above, running out of ammo makes it even more harder to kill the

[Spoiler]

Highlanders

that appear after, I had no ammo until I respawned directly from a chapter info entity, if you're open to suggests I'd add the

[Spoiler]

highlanders

on Serious difficulty
- In these kind of things you'd require to use a Tommygun but as mentioned above the lack of ammo makes it harder against the Kamikazies and Kleers, notice how here I have othing but shotgun shells against all of that:

- There's way more enemies than in Dunes, which would make it like, Oasis - easy, Dry Valley - hard, Dunes - medium, I'd suggest toning down some spawners.

Otherwise we enjoyed playing the level, and after we'll follow the Temple of Ptah, can't wait to smash some Golems

[Solais]

Play the other levels too, I'm curious about how the whole episode feels as an experience.

I wonder how you played the level. The level has two routes and it is designed such way that you only need to clear one. That way, the enemy count is halved.

Interesting that the level is regarded as long, as it is designed to be short.

I'll look into the other things, like balance and enemy spawning. Thanks for the feedback!

[Valerie Valens]

The enemy balance in Dry Valley could easily be fixed if you use a design trick that Rusutaku Assault uses to get away with spawning a shit-ton of enemies and still be fun to play. The idea is to have infinite spawning backpacks that spawn at regular intervals. That way, the focus is more on dodging and shooting rather than being forced to cheese it due to ammo-starvation.

Low ammo only really works in level design styles like The Eye of Ra by getodac, where it is balanced by the level having loads of corners and covers to hide from Arachnoids, so you can peek and shoot with the shotgun.

[Solais]

Strangely enough, the level wasn't designed to have low ammo count, it just happened to be. I'm actually always afraid that I put too much ammo on maps.

[Dankzaii]

Well in most of your HD TSE maps you always put low ammo unless it comes from Serious Packages

Edit:

On second thought, why don't you apply the thing Valerie says but on coop?

Since more enemies spawn on coop, would be fair to have a bit more of ammo on coop than in single player, I really found myself under pressure fighting a Highlander with shotguns against kleers

and dunno how yukaraj managed to kill it

[Dankzaii]

So yeah, me and Yukaraj finally played Temple of Ptah, and here's my thoughts about it:

Pros:
- The level is long
- Valerie's music is awesome
- Some good puzzles
- The level has nice details

Cons (sorry for so much ):

- At the room with the orbs, sometimes you gotta be careful where you point to activate every orb, thinking you could activate them facing anywhere, and you end bringing up NETRICSA every time.
- In the room here you place the ingredient pots, sometimes you can get quickly overrun and have no other option to shoot, while firecrackers and bombers are up, kamikazies and kleers keep swarming you below, and you have 2 options, shoot the ones above, or shoot the ones below, either ways you're forced to take a lot of damage, like in these pics I took:



- The room with the invisible floor panels, is definitely the black sheep of this map, at least from what we tried to do, you have no pattern on where to move unless you spend every single bit of ammo you have to find out where to move, in coop it's more annoying, as if you fail before getting close to the end, you go back to the beginning, and you have to do the whole thing all over and over again, I'd suggest if you made it so that the platforms you step on stay on, so you don't have to figure the pattern every time you fail in the try, in the end we were pissed off and we used cheats to avoid that part, sorry for that

- The elevator with the bloody room, if you die, sometimes you spawn under the moving floor, and you have to kill yourself to spawn above again:



- The elevator past the maze with the kleer golems went up and left us down, we had to bring the cheats again to fly above it using the ghost cheat:



- The final part has a lot of enemies, and the abscence of a cannon makes it a bit harder

My suggestions:

Overall it's also a really original map, and has some potential, I know this is a beta, and hopefully you'll take some of my suggestions;

I'd tone down some enemies in the pots-with-ingredients room, make the firecrackers/bombers spawn down, and make the kleers/kamikazies spawn above, so you can kill the easier first, then the harder

I'd also try to add an easier pattern to the room with the invisible floor panels, it can get really annoying to be close to finish it and fail due to the platforms sometimes being too small or being too far

Something I'd do is like in BFE, add a boss variation of the Kleer Golem the first time you fight it, a strong one, it was really weird to see such a huge thing being beaten up so easily in your first encounter with them, compared to BFE where your first encounter with many enemies are boss-like, if you're open to ideas, I'd add that

Otherwise it's okay, and we'll play the rest later, now we're going to Clerical Wards so my next review on that is coming

[Solais]

Very good feedback! I'll consider and fix most of these. And yeah, I was most afraid of this map having the most problems, as this is a puzzle focused one, which is not the best for coop.

I wonder, how you solved the sphere room? Did you use the hint to find the correct sequence or you just switched on all the spheres? Because both are good solutions, only you actually fight enemies if you switch on all of the spheres (as enemies spawn if you switch on a "wrong" one).ú

What about the Arachnoid Room and the Rotating Platform Room?

[Lavama]

Oooo, Open Beta. As soon as I can start downloading Part 1, I'll start playing.

EDIT: Heh, Captcha for 5th Part was "Dry Run". Good foreshadowing Mediafire!

EDIT 2: I must be a special kind of retarded. I can't figure out what I did wrong. I've got like 5 ZZZZMOD_Extended_Pt1_OB1.gro in my contents folder. I can see Act 1 Episode 2 in Level Select, but not Episode 1. I've done something wrong, but I'm not savy enough to figure it out.

EDIT 3: Also, I'd like to note in Hatsheput, the Health Pack at the top of the ramp in front of the Time Lock has a red glow to it when looked at from a distance. I don't know if that's the Extended mod trying to get in or not, though.

EDIT 4: Nevermind, I'm just retarded. Didn't know I was supposed to only extract Part 1.rar.