Serious Sam Classic: The Second Encounter News

Hello and welcome to the first Featured Mod episode for 2023!

In today’s episode, we won't highlight a single map, but a whole package of them that we recommend you guys to check out. Today we are highlighting a contest organized by SeriousSite.ru called “Jingle Bombs 2022”.

Jingle Bombs 2022 is a contest in which the contestants have to create a single-player or a cooperative map with a Christmas theme. The creation that captures the spirit of the Holiday the best and has the most effort put into it, gets the top prize.


The top 3 ranked maps are:

Winner - "Break the Loop" for Classic: TSE by “Cr1sTaL”
2nd Place - "Stolen Snow" for Serious Sam Fusion by “Riba4оk13”
3rd Place - "On the eve" for Classic: TSE by “TesLineX”

Those maps deserve a featured mod article of their own, but as I've said today, we will focus on the contest as a whole, so I strongly recommend heading over to the SeriousSite.ru website and giving those maps and also the rest of the ones submitted for the contest a check. There are a total of 8 submissions: four maps for Classic: The Second Encounter, three maps for Serious Sam Fusion, and one map for Siberian Mayhem.
Now you have plenty of variety and Serious Content to play in the upcoming snowy days!

In today’s basement chat, we will talk with the contest’s organizer who’s also a member of TimeLock Studio: Ar2R-devil-PiNKy! This is just one of the competitions that he has organized. He has been doing mapping contests since 2010 on various themes such as: Speedrun, RetroWave, Escape, Horror, Puzzles, and many many more. You can check all those competitions and maps on the SeriousSite.ru website. Now let’s head to the basement and talk with Ar2R-devil-PiNKy about all this stuff!

Link to the maps: https://www.serioussite.ru/forum/33-3959-1



Hello everyone! It's an honor for me to welcome our first guest in the basement for 2023- Ar2R-devil-PiNKy! He is a co-founder of SeriousSite.ru and a member of TimeLock Studio. He has been organizing contests and activities for Serious Sam for way too many years now!

⚪Welcome Pinky, nice to have you here finally. I've known you for many years now as we have co-hosted some community activities back in the day. Please introduce yourself to those of the community members that don't know you. When did you become a community member and when was the first time you started getting involved in creating community activities?

Hello Yasen, thank you for inviting me. My name is Arthur, I've been a fan of the series for more than 20 years, and have been modding for more than 17 years. I think probably every fan has come across at least one of my works, be it maps, mods, art, video content, etc. I became a member of the community back in 2009 when I was just connected to a good stable Internet. Loved playing Serious Sam 2 a lot, and during one of the co-op sessions I met two guys, they were ZIM and ALEX. ZIM introduced me to a website that he had just created. That's how it all started. The first contests were held by my friends, but a few years later I decided to make this event an annual one (with honorary members of the jury, of course). And a few years ago we added an additional second contest for every new year.

⚪You've had quite a long journey! There have been over 15 mapping contests. Which ones hold a special place in your heart and you would strongly suggest to the community to try? My personal favorites would be "Brainiacs" and "Manhunt".

Oh, honestly it's hard to give an answer to such a question, since each contest has its own gems, heh. I would advise to start with "Treasure World", "Brainiacs", "RetroSeriousWave" and "Masters of Horror" - that's my favorite ones.

⚪How would you rate last year's two contests that you hosted: "Please fly" and "Jingle Bombs 2022", in terms of community activity (submissions) and quality of maps? I'm interested in hearing from you since you have been a member of the community for such a long time, what do you think about the state of the Serious Sam community currently, and is there something that you think we can all do to improve it further?

Very solid. Did not even expect that there would be such a number of works. Mappers never cease to amaze with their ideas. I think the state of the Serious Sam community is more or less good now. Of course, due to the long time interval between the release of the main games of the series (Serious Sam 3: BFE and Serious Sam 4), a lot of time has passed and a lot of people have come and left, but this is a common thing. Sometimes old members who have left the community come back- once a fan of Sam, always a fan of Sam. People just need to be nice to each other and, if possible, not to disturb others too much with their Marsh-Hoppers in their heads.

⚪Very well said, people should always be nice to each other. It’s been almost 14 years now since you joined the community and you are now part of TimeLock Studio, and Croteam and you also have your own personal life. What motivates you to keep doing this volunteer work for the community and still be so engaged on all fronts?

The community itself. It's always nice to bring a little piece of joy to your favorite game and share it with others, and the process of creating something is still very exciting, even if there is very little free time for it now. It was also influenced by the fact that since the age of three I have been burning with the desire to create my own games (and in secret, I am slowly going to this) and Serious Sam modding has become a confident starting point in all this.

⚪Speaking of creating games, you now have a Serious Sam game behind your back! Could you please share some behind-the-scenes pieces of information on Siberian Mayhem: how did you join the project and what is your overall experience of working on it and having Croteam's support for it.

Sleepless nights and lots of fun. The story is quite simple, Kadath offered me to work on the project and I agreed. And sure I can tell you something interesting behind-the-scenes. You won't believe it! One day [REDACTED] and he, like, [REDACTED]. We look at [REDACTED] scene, and after that, we decide [REDACTED] until it's done. We finished at 4 o'clock in the morning (according to my time) and the result was great

⚪Well, I'm sure the community will love it so much once they read all this spicy information exclusively here in the Featured Mod article! Thank you for sharing it all. Now that we have covered Siberian Mayhem and the contests, I have to ask you about my personal favorite work of yours… Samolash. Do you plan on doing another episode and if yes then when can we expect one? Please tell me soon, the world needs more of it!

I am very glad that you liked it. Unfortunately, I can't give an exact date when, but I do aim to finish work on a new episode sometime in 2024. A lot of ideas have accumulated for the new episode and I'm hoping it will turn out to be the biggest and most interesting one! Moreover, new games have been added to the series and this is a huge scope for new jokes and parodies. And by the way, just like last time, I accept work from everyone who wants to participate in a new episode!

⚪Exclusive news right here: Samolash is returning in 2024! I think we have gone through most of the topics, so I have to ask you: what does the future hold for you? What are your future goals and things you would like to achieve in the upcoming 1-2 years? Should we also expect more contests?

Hehe, the jury members and I have already come up with themes for the following contests for years ahead. For example, the "Please Fly 2022" contest concept was invented in 2020. Annual contests have already become a SeriousSite legacy and we are not going to stop. We also have plans for other things, but it's too early to talk about them yet.

⚪Happy to hear that there are no plans of you stopping any time soon. I would like to thank you for coming by the basement and having a chat with me. I can't wait to see the future content from you. For the finale, by tradition, the stage is yours to address the community. Share anything you wish for them or simply give shout-outs! See you in the next episode everyone!

Thank you Yasen, and thank you handsome stranger who read this right now. Bye!

All of us at Croteam wish you have a great Winter break.

Happy Holidays and have a great New Year. 2020 is about to get Serious!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yvz1-pWeq7I

Hi everyone!

I can’t believe it’s been a month already, but we’ve been hard at it, trying to make Revolution into what it was meant to be at first. We were all over your reports and feedback, fixing, readjusting, rebalancing and expanding in the meantime.

Our main focus was fixing game-breaking issues as well as the Workshop issue that came up, as we love seeing your mods shine. This was sorted out, so please make magic happen, we can’t wait to check all your custom stuff out.

This update also takes care of the leaderboard issues with survival levels, as well as many smaller issues with Netricsa, collision, textures and such. More detailed update notes can be found below.

Stay Serious!
- Danny, on behalf of Croteam.

• Workshop items will now show up properly in the custom level menu.
  
• Sniper zoom has been adjusted to be more in-line with the classics.
  
• Fixed an issue where inverting vertical look would only work on a mouse and not on a gamepad.
  
• Fixed erroneous time estimates on Bright Island.
  
• Added updated model for the final boss of Bright Island.
  
• Leaderboards for Survival levels should now work as intended.
  
• Fixed smaller issues with wording in Netricsa.
  
• Fixed several collision issues across the board.
  
• Fixed several issues with textures on multiple levels.
  
• Fixed visibility issues across South American levels related to the faulty rendering of several pyramid models.
  
• Several smaller balance and gameplay changes on the Bright Island levels, based on community feedback.
  

• BrKeen Chevap Xbox - Fixed an issue where the wrong music would play during matches.
  
• Crystal Cove - The secret laser will no longer clip through the floor.
  
• Forlorn Ruins - Rebalanced the last arena to align the difficulty with previous areas.
  
• Forlorn Ruins - Added additional platforms for bridges to make passing them easier.
  
• Forlorn Ruins - Changed Arachnoid Adult spawn positions and movement patterns.
  
• Forlorn Ruins - Rebalanced the Kleer fight to keep it in-line with other encounters.
  
• Forlorn Ruins - Players should now be able to progress through Tree Village arenas on lower difficulties.
  
• Forlorn Ruins - Overhauled the final arena.
  
• Ruins of the Abyss - Lava golems in the fire elemental area should spawn more consistently now.
  
• Ruins of the Abyss - Readjusted the position of the coop portal to better fit intended gameplay.
  
• Ruins of the Abyss - Increased the sensing range of elemental enemies.
  
• Ruins of the Abyss - Rebalanced several fights.
  
• Ruins of the Abyss - Platforms will no longer wound the player in the water element room.
  
• Ruins of the Abyss - Enemies will no longer be able to see the player when it’s not expected.
  
• Ruins of the Abyss - Mud golem no longer floats when awake.
  
• Sunken Pyramid - Redesigned the gravity room to provide players with a more balanced experience.
  
• Sunken Pyramid - Slowed down spinning platforms on the 3rd floor of the pyramid.
  
• Sunken Pyramid - Players should now be able to progress through some arenas on lower difficulties.
  

NOTE: This update will once again render your saves useless. Unfortunately, this is due to some limitations of the old engine, and there are no workarounds at this point in time. That’s also one of the reasons we are trying to provide you with substantial updates less frequently, rather than smaller updates that would break saves constantly. Sorry about that.

In the future, we will be keeping one older build live even after updates, so you can continue with your progress in case you don’t feel like you’d benefit from the update. We use a similar thing in our other games as well.


We value your input, and we want you to reach out to us with all feedback. For general thoughts and ideas, please use the General section of the Revo forums on Steam. Should you encounter any issues or bugs, please report them on the Tech & Support subforum, along with your game log (located in the game installation folder) and a detailed description of the issue.

For all things Serious Sam hit Mr. Stone up on Twitter and Facebook. Follow Croteam on Twitter and Instagram, like us on Facebook, and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Oh, and don’t forget to join our ever-growing Croteam family on Discord and Reddit.

Happy days!
Serious Sam Classics: Revolution is out in the wild as a fully released game, and we're celebrating with a huge discount!

You saw this coming, let's be honest, as we have recently announced Croteam will help to get this project through the door.

Serious Sam Classics: Revolution is now THE best way to enjoy Classic old-school Serious Sam games, improved and expanded upon with many often requested changes, tweaks, and fixes, as well as a brand new original campaign - Bright Island. The game features 8 new maps, on top of those available in the originals, and some brand new achievements. We mustn't forget the workshop support, so get in and showcase your modding skills. We can't wait to see what your imagination will spawn.

Huge thanks and congrats to everyone Alligator Pit and everyone else involved with this project over the past couple of years.

Big cheers from Croteam!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/227780/Serious_Sam_Classics_Revolution/?beta=1

Serious Sam is 18 years old today. It was on March 21st, 2001 that Serious Sam: The First Encounter hit the shelves. Quite literally, as digital distribution was still a distant future back then.

We were young, super passionate and, after a successful tech test launched in the summer of 2000, confident that Serious Sam would resonate well with the gaming community. Turns out, we were right. Serious Sam: The First Encounter caused quite a stir in the gaming community, won dozens of awards (including Gamespot's Game of the Year) and laid the foundation of everything Croteam is today.

Fast forward 18 years later and Serious Sam got numerous sequels, spin-offs and remasters on most platforms. Hell, we even sent Sam to virtual reality and as with everything else - had tons of fun doing so.

Even though he's 18 years old (and legally allowed to buy a beer here in Croatia, finally), Sam's still going strong and we can't wait to take you on another journey of chaos and mayhem with Serious Sam 4.

Until then, we'll raise a glass (of aforementioned beer) in Sam's name and celebrate all of you for being Seriously awesome. Whether you've been demolishing hordes of aliens since day one or just joined our community – we thank you for supporting us from the bottom of our hearts!




BOOM GOES THE ALIEN!