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

[Solais]

Um, 5 gros? What? All the rar files are supposed to be a single archive when extracted. Just extract the first part and the rest should be extracted with it as well.

[Valerie Valens]

Just played through Dry Valley on Hard Difficulty, and it actually isn't as bad as Danker made it out to be. Maybe the issue is with the Multiplayer spawns, as I was never overwhelmed by the enemies. All I can say is that the level is more riskier, seeing as you are given far less bullet ammo than the other types, namely the Grenades. The level is comparatively generous with grenades, and it becomes very useful as a bull and kleer demolishing weapon. My recommendation is to save the minigun for distant arachnoids and reptiloids.

[Lavama]

I did something stupid, ignore all that about the 5 .gros. Hadn't worked with multiple .rar files before.



I found that odd, don't know if intended.



I'm using Pan's Samurai Edge mod, and I can disable that if needed, but I found that except for a lucky rocket, it's nearly impossible for the Bio's to kill you like this. Don't know if intended or not.

Otherwise, seems good so far. Only death was checking out that area past the Oasis Secret in First Level.

[Solais]

Right. That's not intended, that's a remain from a Closed Beta test when Temple of Ptah wasn't complete yet.

As for the other, I think you could do the same with the original layout as well.

[Lavama]

That's possible, didn't try that yet on Vanilla.

Also, found a pillar in Level 1 that's invisible. Took screenshots.





I've completed the level without any other issues, and have started the second level. I cleared the outside area before attempting the Harpy secret, and stopped there to play some Killing Floor.



Right there in the Second Level is a bit odd... Can't really describe it.

[Emilio]

That looks amazingly interesting, too bad that my machine does not support any version of SSHD but congratulations to those who have been playing them maps of Solais

[Valerie Valens]

Now that I got some time to upload the shots I made, I got a couple to pick on.



In this shot, you notice a clump of grass that isn't lit up at all, and is z-fighting with the other clumps of grass.



In this shot, this illustrates a small problem i have with the design of Dry Valley, and it's that the cross-section of some of the valley paths look too smooth to look natural. It's just personal taste though.

[Solais]

First picture: I wondered when someone will notice that bug.
But dunno if I can do something about it, it seems to be a bug in the crumbs system.

Actually, I wonder when people will notice all the floating grass in Dry Valley that I forgot to bake for this released version.

Second picture: You know, this actually gave me the idea to make the valley look -more- artificial. Like it was dug out by the people from the near quarry.

[Serious Wolfer]

Update on some more uncovered bugs.

- There are a lot of bugged spawns in The Clerical Wards and The Great Obelisk levels; both in the hundreds. Some minor bug spawns in the Metropolis and Temple of Ptah levels/

- MAJOR BUG in Alley of the Sphinxes. About 2 seconds after the Large Lava Golem spawns, you INSTANTLY die and you CAN'T avoid it.

[Solais]

Hundreds? How?
Also Bug spawns in Metropolis? The only change I did for that level is to remove the disablers so every enemy can spawn on the level normally.
I need more info on these bugged spawns. Are you sure they are all bugged? Maybe you just don't trigger them all.

You're the second person reporting this and I don't know what is the problem. I haven't touched the lava golem fight whatsoever. Will look into it, but still. Also, are you sure you're not too close to it? Are you sure it's not like this in the original as well?

[Solais]

Alright, since testing for enemy counts and spawners is hard just like that, I will now share a method that Tome told the SS3 testers back in the day:

Originally Posted by Tome

Within SEditor you can turn on Debug mode (Alt+Shift+7), check Debugging allowed and Put variables names in 3D view.
Then turn on Debug categories: Puppet health and Spawners to spawn.

Now you will be able to see floating boxes with number (Puppet health) for remaining live enemies, and spawner ID with number of templates to spawn on spawners that were not triggered yet. If you cannot kill or trigger those you can send us ID of spawners and we will check/fix problem.

Since enemy spawns differ on different difficulties, in the World Editor, on the right hand menu you can find the Simulation settings. There, you can find options to edit the current Simulation and change the difficulty. It doesn't always work, sometimes it needs a restart to the editor, but you can experiment with the settings.

Just as Tome's post suggests, you should post the IDs of spawners that you fail to trigger.

[Rakanishu]

Lavama and Solais, you should know that this bug is already existing in the original SSHD. I've descrovered it months ago in the non-moddable version.

[Solais]

Which bug?

[Rakanishu]

That you can pass through the collumn..

[Lavama]

It did? Seriously? Huh, I don't think I've ever run into it though... (And I would have sworn the Kleers on Serious pushed me all over that thing.)

[Solais]

I have located and eliminated the Lava Golem Death bug. It was caused by obsolete Damager entities which aren't needed anymore since the replacement of the old sphinx statues with the new Ram-headed sphinxes. As we all know, the SS1 Damagers damage the player instead if there are no targets to be damaged...

[Serious Wolfer]

debug isn't working for me at all. I did Tome's method exactly the way it is, but nothing seems different in gameplay. Am I missing something here? It's happening both in HD and BFE

[Solais]

What did you do exactly? Did you manage to activate the debug window in the editor? It's in the upwards menu as well, under one of them (not File).

If you managed to invoke the window, did you check the "Allow debugging" switch at the top?

[Serious Wolfer]

Yes I activated the debug window in the editor and turned on the "allow debugging" checkbox along with the others from Tome's method.

[Solais]

And then you open a map in the editor and test it by pressing T? Then it should work.

[Serious Wolfer]

EDIT: Okay I ran through Temple of Ptah in debugged mode under normal difficulty. Spawner ID #12905 has 12 bugged spawns. To be more specific, 12 bug spawn marsh hoppers in the corridor BEFORE that rising platform and spikes on ceiling room.

Also, Spawner ID# 13820 (X 6) in the very beginning is bugged. It's not enemy spawns though as I finished the level with 1424/1436 kills.

I don't know how to test the maps under Serious Mode because that's the difficulty where I'm missing 100+ enemies when the enemy count is 1579.

[Solais]

ID13820 are the six health items spawned by the six vases around the area, that's normal.

Since enemy spawns differ on different difficulties, in the World Editor, on the right hand menu you can find the Simulation settings. There, you can find options to edit the current Simulation and change the difficulty. It doesn't always work, sometimes it needs a restart to the editor, but you can experiment with the settings.

Have you tried this?

[Serious Wolfer]

I can't change the difficulty at all. There is no such setting in the Simulation settings.

[Solais]

It is inside configure and you have to open a few menus inside to get to it. Though, I just checked it doesn't actually work.

However! There's a console command you can write into the "Local" thing on the bottom, which is a console.

gam_gdDifficulty=5

This will change the difficulty to Serious.

[Serious Wolfer]

okay then.

In any case, Temple of Ptah only has 12 bugged spawns, which are those Marsh hoppers I told you before, even in Serious Mode as I finished the level in regular format rather than debug at 1467/1479.

I already know flat out Clerical Wards (which is Children of Amon Ra and Holy Spirits maps tied into one with your special section of map you made) has bugged spawns if you disable the health and armor feature as some spawn when picking those items up. Will check to see if there are any more besides those.

[Valerie Valens]

Playing through Temple of Ptah, I have to say that I really hate the Chamber of the Cosmos, the problem is not in the puzzle as it is very cleverly done, however, the amount of walking to get to each of the planets is ridiculous. There is no reason to have to walk for 10-15 minutes straight just to move from the bottom planet to the top planet.

If you could add a set of teleporters at the entrance and next to each of the planet systems so players can quickly travel between them, that would make this part so much better!

About the battles, this could have been a great opportunity to add new enemy types and variations, however, besides the Elder Arachnoids, most of the battles are Kleer spamfests with 2-3 types of other enemies thrown in. There really needs to be more variety, maybe introduce some more combat variety, and that would help the map along greatly. For example, in the room that Danker described with the headless on top and Kleers + Kamikazes at the floor, you could have it so that more than one type of headless spawn on the rafters, and that Gnaars and Biomech Minors spawn in place of some of the Kleers. The floating eyeball enemies from Noam's Mars survival map would fit in nicely as a new enemy introduced in the Temple.

[Solais]

Actually, the original plan for the Planet Room was about the same, but I changed it for some reasons. You are right, I'll try a more balanced design for that room.

The Kleer Golems also appear on that map, don't forget that. Two new enemies per map (three when the boss is in) is enough. I do agree about the kleer spamfest, that's why the final area has none.

I'll think about varying the enemy types in the Great Hall.
I'm not planning porting the Soul Eaters to SSHD yet, and I especially don't want to use them in the temple for specific story reasons that will be apparent when the boss is implemented.

[Dankzaii]

So uh, we finally completed the Grand Obelisk and here's my opinion on it:

Pros:

- Level finally balanced
- Awesome music for an end-of-chapter level

Cons:

- The night atmosphere felt unchanged, and it feels too plain with Valerie's music, I'd suggest making it look more bluish with more stars, like Bio did with his Enhanced LOTB level
- Other than more enemies, level feels exactly the same, that's why changing the background should be something that must happen
- Is the Deja-Vu secret bugged? I tried to get it many times but it never spawned, and we had 3/4 secrets:

- The door on that yard was bugged, we couldn't get past there, so we had to use cheats to go there, this door, on the yard infront of the pic above:


Honestly, it feels the same all again, when I saw Bio's enhaced version of the level I thought the night would be a bit similar on your version of HD: Ex, but I was surprised all I found good was Valerie's music and a decent gameplay, I think you should improve the night and make it a bit more colorful.

[Solais]

I especially can't change the night now that Bio did his version. The plan was always that the level stays the same, just with better gameplay. The only change I might do is to add some similar color similar to the other night levels of SSHD, if there are some in the first place. Want to try visually consistent.

The Deja Vu secret doesn't work the same as in the original, since that was actually a bug. To activate the new secret, you must do the same as in Tower of Babel: Go through the level, then repeat for a super hard second run.

I had no trouble with that door, but I'll check, maybe there's something up with the co-op triggers.

Um... So what about Clerical Wards?

[Dankzaii]

I just noticed I forgot to review that, sorry

I'll write about it tomorrow