Serious Sam Forever

[MeG@ByTe]

Originally Posted by gnaarwarian

Look here forums.seriouszone.com/showthread.php?t=61522

thank you very much!

[Louva-Deus]

Oh... maybe I should mention that I was able to get back almost all of the SSF project and codebase from DwK. There are some screwy things that need to be fixed for some reason (stuff missing) but the mod still runs. With a group of developers interested in the idea we could maybe resume it..

[Gnaarwarian]

Alright thats great news LD, this makes gnaar feels

[Greyson]

Hmm...... interesting, Louva. When I become more familiar with 3DS Max, I might drop a PM about this. Definitely would be fun to continue Forever. Nothing wrong with a little dual projecting(?).

[Louva-Deus]

More the merrier.

[Solais]

I know this is a project before my time, but come on, we have SS1 Classic, SS1 Revolution and SSHD. Do we really need another SS1? I think it should be something else entirely.

[Louva-Deus]

Well it would be a real shame to see what work that was done to go to waste. The real problem is that the project is stuck on SE2 because that is the only one we have an SDK for. If we switched to a newer engine we would lose the more unique features of the project (bot AI, etc.).

That being said.... I could maybe see a way for us to re-use/re-purpose the existing material while also doing something different.

Here's the idea:

Phase 1) We create the true origin story for Starship Captain Sam "Serious" Stone as a mini-campaign. This would be based on the original backstory with some creative alterations to make it work better.

Phase 2) We create a series of survival maps aimed at re-enacting Mental's invasion and the fall of Earth. Maps would also include the other planets that humans occupied at the time of the invasion.

Phase 3) We create a campaign that starts after the war with Mental where Sam goes back in time to take care of various Sirian ancients who at particular points in Earth's past had set themselves up as gods and enslaved the human race (all prior to the encounter with Mental). This is to continue a temporal causality loop so that humanity would be able to later acquire Sirian technology (namely the Timelock) and bring about the events of the original story.*

* For this campaign we would re-create specific parts of the other games (TFE/TSE/NextEncounter?/SS2/SS3?), re-using existing SSF content as much as possible, and have Sam go there to take out one of the Sirians.

We had originally planned to add Sirian mini-bosses to the TFE campaign for SSF anyway, so this would be a good way to re-use what we already have.

Any takers? LOL....

[Solais]

Well my opinions about the Phases:

I think Phase 1 is nnot going to work, otherwise the project might face the same thing as it did when SSHD was released. This is because I believe in this small theory of mine, that Croteam is most likely creating a "Prequel Trilogy" right now. We've seen the end of the war in SS3, and from what we've seen, SS4 might be a prequel to SS3 (the argument for this one is simple: Croteam wouldn't show a preview image about a game containing specific elements if they will make something different, aka I'm pretty sure SS4 will be a prequel). Following this theory, I think Croteam will eventually tell the backstory of Sam in a future game.

Phase 2 is pretty much doable, even as a campaign, really. While Croteam might tell the story of the battles on the colonies, I think it is quite easy to expand on that idea with an X amount of colonies with Y amounts of scenarios. This can works quite well to tell a self-contained story.

As for Phase 3... this one is different. It really depends on the interpretation of the backstory, but I don't think the Sirians really enslaved humanity, more like they provided technology to them, birthing the first civilizations. I myself imagine them to be mostly benevolent. However, it is quite an interesting idea.
Technical problems can be that if the enemies are Sirians, they most likely have their own servants and minions, which are not like of those from Mental's Horde (with the exception of maybe the Gnaars and the Werebulls, as they are presumably of Sirian origin). Meaning, this would be quite a work to design and create completely new enemies like that.

[Finzy]

Sure, now you guys just go ahead and create all that. *leans back on seat*

I think it'd be wiser to just release whatever's done of SSF as is, which I suggested a long time ago anyway. If there are any singleplayer levels that are playable just bring them out, and release the unfinished ones as well so someone can pick them up later if they decide to, rather than having to wait for the developers to release anything. Who knows if some russian modders from outside this community might be interested in it for instance.

[Zocky]

I kinda agree with finzy here, lets just release whatever there is, and maybe someone continues from it.

And if anyone is up for some community project (maybe some sort of scifi-ish map pack or something), i might be prepared to join in, if i could work on assets.

[AverageJoe]

I remember looking at pooper's level development work and alot of it was simply fantastic.

One of the things from SSF I really, really wish would get ported to SEG3.x is Dk's AI code.
I've never seen better AI anywhere. No joke.

Release it!

[Gnaarwarian]

Phase 3 gnaars posts gives you tons of storyline suggestions.

[Mkbewe]

Louva-Deus Sounds great! Is some progress?

[Valerie Valens]

I think there may be a way to revive this mod with not that much work.

Phase 1 would involve getting in contact with Croteam, and getting access to the SDK for the latest Serious Engine, or at least the engine Serious Sam HD uses.

Phase 2 would involve merging the content of Fiinzy and TwL's Deathmatch Pro mod for Serious Sam 2. You will need the permission of TwL and Finzy for this.

Phase 3 would be the massaging phase. Edit what you already have to make it work with the engine, and edit the merged content to work with the new stuff the SSF DM test version offers, like bots.

Phase 4 is a possibility, but it will be a long way off, and it involves merging Solais' mod in progress Serious Sam HD Extended into the mod as the Single Player campaign project to SSF. If you have new versions of the classic levels, override the SS HD Extended levels in question with them, or perhaps find a way to insert them in between.

[AverageJoe]

That is a lot of work from something Croteam did better than the community anyway.
SSF was simply SSHD before CT made SSHD. Once CT announced SSHD, SSF development essentially stopped.

However, not wanting to be outdone or being responsible for wasting people's time, the manager decided to add in as much 'creative' elements into the Sam1 franchise as possible.
LD, who was project manager for SSF had no direction whatsoever, nor positive influence on the development team.
Every moment was a constant change in creative direction, using the development team for his personal amusement and verification of self worth.
With CT rightfully refusing to develop/release the SEG3SDK, and LD's errant abuse of power, the ONLY programmer, DwK, became disgusted with with the whole scene and went back to Web Programming.

That was the death of SSF. It needs to stay dead. It was a bad joke to begin with, had no timing, and completely, fully, irrefutably mismanaged, thus never delivered.

The more you know....*

[Solais]

That's strange, because DwK is still part of the scene, just in subtler ways you imagine.

SE3 SDK is also not released for a different reason, partly because of time constraints, partly because they try to basically integrate it inside the Serious Editor in a more accessible format.

[Louva-Deus]

Originally Posted by AverageJoe

That is a lot of work from something Croteam did better than the community anyway.
SSF was simply SSHD before CT made SSHD. Once CT announced SSHD, SSF development essentially stopped.

However, not wanting to be outdone or being responsible for wasting people's time, the manager decided to add in as much 'creative' elements into the Sam1 franchise as possible.
LD, who was project manager for SSF had no direction whatsoever, nor positive influence on the development team.
Every moment was a constant change in creative direction, using the development team for his personal amusement and verification of self worth.
With CT rightfully refusing to develop/release the SEG3SDK, and LD's errant abuse of power, the ONLY programmer, DwK, became disgusted with with the whole scene and went back to Web Programming.

That was the death of SSF. It needs to stay dead. It was a bad joke to begin with, had no timing, and completely, fully, irrefutably mismanaged, thus never delivered.

The more you know....*

I'm sorry you feel that way. I certainly made my share of mistakes on this project but the biggest one was not releasing something on a regular basis (lesson learned). This had nothing to do with HD, by the way, it was an issue of team morale.

All truth be told... I knew about HD from the beginning and Croteam knew full well about this project as well. In fact, SSF might have even prompted them to do HD (maybe Alen could confirm this). That is one reason why SSF was never a remake; it was a re-imagining. And this is also one reason why things were rather chaotic because I let everyone have a lot of creative freedom in the things they made.

Managing an open-ended project with a bunch of volunteers was challenging and proved to be frustrating at times, but it wasn't completely wasted. I learned a lot and I think some of the team learned quite a bit along the way (some have even moved on to become game developers iirc and benefited from this experience). Also, we did put out a demo that people enjoyed immensely.

What you take away from any experience can be good or bad. I choose to look at this experience in a good light.

By the way, DwK and I are still on good terms.

[Valerie Valens]

You know Joseph, blindly pointing fingers is not the right way to deal with a project that ended up dead in the water. Or have you forgotten the early days of Serious Engine 1 modding where 90% of all projects die without even an alpha release?

Also what? Are you anti-modding now?

If you want to go that route, I can just as easily say that I have spent so much time working on designing the elements for your Serious Sam Classic mod idea that you were so eager to start on and so confident that it will be finished that I believed that it could be done myself. Then one day, you vanished without a word, and stayed that way for at least a year.

[Zocky]

Well, LD, i still think it's a little wrong the way you see SSF, it was a remake, atleat for the most time, only near the end, we slowly started to move away from the SS1, but for the most part, it was a remake, allthough with weren't going to do exact 1:1 replica of original, but it's still a remake as i see it.

And as such, i can speak for myself atleast, that it's simply wrong to say that HD didn't influence on us. It for sure did on me. We told CT what our plan was back then, we even made Karnak demo remake, even got valuable help from CT, and even made few maps that were somewhat close to the original. And then the HD hit us, and from my point of view, the mod just lost it's point. We sort of tried to change it, but the still, there was no place for such mod anymore with HD.

IIRC, i wasn't the only one with that thinking. I mean, there's no way we can compete with CT, not when we were doing it in free time, and were just mostly noobs compared to them.


Still, for me, it was very positive experience, i learned a great deal from it, and it was still fun to work on it. Hack, as LD said, it even helped me to get a job.

Also, LD for sure made many mistakes (but didn't we all?), but i gotta say, we did some thing really great, tnx atleast party to him.

Like, we had Spoon make a web app in PHP (iirc), where everyone member who se his tasks, set how much progress we made, how much progres overall was made in certain fields, like level design, monsters, etc...

That was quite a big deal if you ask me.

And not to mention that we had some really talented guys. DWK you already mentioned, then there was Aarian, great both modeller and painter. He was REALLY talented.

Then we had Kristo, really good modeller at the time (nowdays more into programming iirc though). And some others.

Look, it may be true that this mod failed, but i will still say, that imo, this mod was one of the best thing that happened to this community. If nothing else, it really brought many of us together. And for that, i can only say thank you to LD, the members and the CT.

There.

[Gnaarwarian]

Originally Posted by Zocky

We told CT what our plan was back then, we even made Karnak demo remake, even got valuable help from CT, and even made few maps that were somewhat close to the original

Wait a Minute man you made Karnak Demo and doesn't Release it?

Give us Karnak Demo Map Please!!!

[Louva-Deus]

What's so interesting about a Karnak remake?

[Gnaarwarian]

Give us Karnak Demo Map Please!!!

Its the 1st SP part of SSF, how can ya say its not interest, thats even better then then the Death of Fidel Castro!!!

The Humanity needs it! Release it pleeeaaassseee!

[Thekazuya005]

HOLLY **** REleASE IT PLS XDD no seriously, that would be awesome

[Fungus]

Srsly, dropping this mod just because SSHD got out was silly.
This mod has so much value and potential, it's also more-sort-of artistic concept of than a remake.
It was awesome, should've finished it.

[Valerie Valens]

It mostly has something to do with the netcode. Serious Sam 2's netcode had a multitude of problems, which makes multiplayer on the engine uncomfortable at best, and downright unplayable at worst. Serious Engine 3 on the other hand, had a netcode that was faster and more stable even at high pings, which made multiplayer much more enjoyable, and since the core of the Serious Sam experience is co-op, it's even harder to get people playing Serious Sam 2 on co-op, at least not the ones that aren't team-killing pricks that pirate the game, and play online with cheats activated.

[Gnaarwarian]

Why we don't have a Serious Engine 2 coder here then?

I mean we got Visual C++/Studio to fix it or not?

[Thekazuya005]

Is there a way we can download this?

[Gnaarwarian]

Just Download the File anyway, so we got a Backup.

Press 'Yes' Button.

[Thekazuya005]

Originally Posted by Gnaarwarian

Just Download the File anyway, so we got a Backup.

Press 'Yes' Button.

file is removed

[Zeo]

I have such a question either .. Where is possible to download it ?
Btw, I became sad when I've heard SS: Forever won't be continued. I loved all the screens, somehow it looked a bit more cool than SS FE HD ..