Serious Sam: The Retro Encounter [2018 "Farewell" Version]

[Batandy]

Serious Sam: The Retro Encounter is a fan made, freeware DooM mod that aims to recreate Serious Sam's gameplay and provide a balanced multiplayer and an unique Serious Sam style campaign.
SS:TRE was made by me and Duke_Nume in 2011, originally just as a tribute to the nearly-teased Serious Sam 3 Trailer.

I've Rebooted and reworked the whole game, fixing most of the flags, completely re-writing the story.

Trailer of the First Beta

A farewell to Retro Encounter
Yesterday, Serious Sam 4 was teased, and i couldn't help but think of my first "big" project, The Retro Encounter.
Not many people associate me with this project, but working on this is what made me love Doom modding and this beautiful community, I've made many mistakes but also achieved many goals here, and other projects like Golden Souls wouldn't even be possible without the knowledge i gained from working on Sam.

This is why i'm releasing an update today, consider it the "final version".
The project was never completed and it still isn't, there's no new content. I've just decided to patch some stuff in order to make it work as intended with the current version of Zandronum, and also brought back Gzdoom support, even if it's not tested and i still recommend to play it with Zandro.

Download the 2018 "Farewell" version: http://www.mediafire.com/file/3tgp183p4 ... hotfix.pk3

Changelog

Code: Select all

V 2.0
-Added 3 singleplayer maps "Egypt Expansion Pack"
-Added 1 survival map
-Added 2 deathmatch maps
-Added an intro for the main campaign
-Added 3d Models (You can disable them by typing "gl_use_models 0" in the console)
-Added Sgt. Mark's "Ketchup Gore"
-Added recoil to most of the weapons (There isn't any kind of recoil when using Iron Sights)
-Added taunting sound effect
-Added hi-res sprites for the foliage
-The Serious Bomb weapon now works correctly in multiplayer
-Improved DM04
-Improved explosion sprites
-Improved laser gun projectiles

Code: Select all

V. 1.5:
-Added new holiday maps: "Yodeller", "Nutcracker" and normal maps: "Flag Trouble"
-Added CTF gamemode
-Added InstaGib modifier
-Added Buckshot modifier
-Added Sawed Off
-Made the singleplayer map brighter
-Improved Axe: Better collisions and gets bloody on kill
-Sniper Rifle's zoom is now instant
-Sniper Rifle now fires slower
-Fixed weapon switch order
-Fixed weapon selection order
-Fixed respawn rates: Serious damage respawns every 2 minutes, Red Armor and Health every minute
-Removed recoil drawbacks from the Coachgun, Sniper Rifle, Pump Shotgun , Winchester M1887

OLD VERSIONS:
[1.0] Download Here: http://sickedwick.net/uploader/files/se ... beta__.pk3

DEATHMATCH SERVER
Name : [UK] -->Grandvoid--> Serious Sam : The Retro Encounter Deathmatch - Beta 1
Ip : 94.229.74.178:17089

STEAM GROUP:

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/seriou ... oencounter
Join the Steam Group to support the mod!

These are the maps currently included with the first beta:

//SINGLEPLAYER//

Sam01 - Hellenic Landscape

The first level of the campaign.
Serious sam entered the timelock once again, this time to travel back in time to the Ancient Greece.He must take the medallions stored in Troy and Sparta,
to open the secret room of the Parthenon in Athens.The scientists discovered that Pythagoras studied the Egyptians, and knew about the Sirians' technology.
He built a secret rocket that can bring anyone in every possible place of the universe.Even Mental's base.
This is a great chance for Sam to finally destroy mental in the past, to save the future.

//MULTIPLAYER//

DM01 Little Trouble (By Duke_Nume)

The Classic Serious Sam map! Good for 1vs1 and even 8 players matches.

DM02 DWANGED!

One of the most famous DooM maps remade in Serious Sam Style, Pretty good for 1vs1!

DM03 Royal Purgatory

Remade from Serious Sam HD, a big, symmetrical map good for every kind of match

DM04 Dirt and Gunpowder

Ported from the old version of Retro Encounter, it's a huge map suitable for 8 player matches

DM05 Hellenic Medieval Rage

Remade from Serious Sam HD, a small map with a teleporter on the exact center, that may bring you to the Serious Damage or the Sniper Rifle spots

DM06 Flood

Remade from Serious Sam HD, a flooded town in the middle of a storm, features alot of jump pads.

DM07 Shotty Trouble

The same as Little Trouble, except that it has only got double barrelled shotguns, another classic from the older Serious Sam games.

DM08 Blackbroth

A map set in some Spartan baths, it has got big rooms with small hallways and an underwater section

DM09 Apollo's Gardens

Floating islands in the sky with swimmable waterfalls, a map where moving carefully is required to survive

DM10 Sand City

A Greek port city, medium sized symmetrical map

CREDITS

Mod by Batandy

Additional help by Duke Nume

Betatesters:
Duke_Nume
Devostator
Valerie Valens

Thanks to:
ID Software for the game
Codeimp for DoomBuilder
Croteam for Serious Sam and all related to it (Sounds, music, weapons ecc)
Zandronum Team for the MULTIPLAYER Sourceport
Devostator, Valerie Valens, Duke_Nume for betatesting the game
Gez for helping fixing the gibs
John J. Dick "Booger" for supporting the mod and offering to record oneliners
Al. C. for general support
David G for the beheaded rocketeer death animation
Zombieguy for the bloody weapon script
Viper45 for his custom models
Final Hoat for the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy cover


Additional stuff by:

"Little Trouble" and "Shotty Trouble" by Duke_Nume

Bulletpuff sprites by Tormentor667, Solarsnowfall

Pieces of Chunky Gibs by Creeping_Infected

Beheaded Kamikazi by captain Toenail with support of Tormentor 667 for sprite editing.

Power Slave Textures converted by Ceeb, made by Lobotomy Software



Old Reboot Reveal Trailer:

[amv2k9]

How do those Serious Bombs work?
From the video it looks like you just throw them around and they explode, but the player is holding some sort of remote detonator-looking thing in his hand.

[Zero X. Diamond]

The weapon sprites need some major work. They are on-par with some of the Counter-Strike rips you'd see in mods back in the late 90s, and that's not a good aesthetic to go for. In particular, they seem pretty noisy and the edges are pretty rough, especially in the first screenshot where the hand almost has a gray outline in a few spots. The blue-white used on the shirt and shoes of the guy in the first screenshot (another player/bot?) is also lacking. There's practically no contrast there so it ends up looking almost like a solid color.

The idea is solid, especially considering Serious Sam sold itself as a love song to the old school FPS scene, but you're gonna have to work on the graphics a bit to get there.

[hugoroy]

Oh joy, I was waiting for this to come back up.

[Batandy]

How do those Serious Bombs work?
From the video it looks like you just throw them around and they explode, but the player is holding some sort of remote detonator-looking thing in his hand.

You throw them around, press the alt fire and boom, they all detonate at the same time

The weapon sprites need some major work. They are on-par with some of the Counter-Strike rips you'd see in mods back in the late 90s, and that's not a good aesthetic to go for. In particular, they seem pretty noisy and the edges are pretty rough, especially in the first screenshot where the hand almost has a gray outline in a few spots. The blue-white used on the shirt and shoes of the guy in the first screenshot (another player/bot?) is also lacking. There's practically no contrast there so it ends up looking almost like a solid color.

The idea is solid, especially considering Serious Sam sold itself as a love song to the old school FPS scene, but you're gonna have to work on the graphics a bit to get there.

Actually the sprites are exactly what would the weapons look like with the resolution set at 320x200, they actually don't have any grey outline, the only sprites i need to fix are the model 1887's sprites, that have some blue pixels due to the palette

[Steve1664]

Looks seriously good so far. More Sam enemies are always a good thing, and the weapons are cool enough. I guess the resolution could be a bit sharper, but focus on making this the ideal Sam/Doom hybrid first and foremost.

[Zero X. Diamond]

Actually the sprites are exactly what would the weapons look like with the resolution set at 320x200, they actually don't have any grey outline, the only sprites i need to fix are the model 1887's sprites, that have some blue pixels due to the palette

Yes, they look what they'd look like if you literally just shrunk them down to fit that resolution. That doesn't mean they look good, dude. Look at any other commercial 2.5D FPS' weapons and compare them to these. Which ones look better? The fact of the matter is that these weapons are very noisy and lack detail, both clearly indicative that they've been sloppily downsized from 3D model rips with no work done to them in post. Unless you've poorly resized the screenshots themselves, none of your HUD weapons should look pixelated. They all do.

[wildweasel]

If all you're doing here is sizing screenshots down in nearest-neighbor mode to prevent the edges from being anti-aliased, that's the wrong method. I tend to size it down from a very high (1280x960-ish) resolution to half that, with the method typically being either Bicubic or PSP9's Smart Size. It will take special attention and hand-editing on every frame, which yes, is highly tedious, but the results will look far, far nicer.

Also, pay more attention to the lighting conditions that you're getting your screenshots from. Some of the screenshots I see here have a profound lack of contrast and a noticeable darkness to them. Make sure you're facing the exact same direction, too, or the specularity effects will be a dead giveaway.

[amv2k9]

How easy/hard is it to set up good conditions in a map for ripping in SS3, i.e, keeping the lighting strength & direction consistent, etc?

[Batandy]

If all you're doing here is sizing screenshots down in nearest-neighbor mode to prevent the edges from being anti-aliased, that's the wrong method. I tend to size it down from a very high (1280x960-ish) resolution to half that, with the method typically being either Bicubic or PSP9's Smart Size. It will take special attention and hand-editing on every frame, which yes, is highly tedious, but the results will look far, far nicer.

Also, pay more attention to the lighting conditions that you're getting your screenshots from. Some of the screenshots I see here have a profound lack of contrast and a noticeable darkness to them. Make sure you're facing the exact same direction, too, or the specularity effects will be a dead giveaway.

Actually, i made a custom map just to rip them without having the wrong lighting and annoying pixel colours, and for the ripping, i rip them at 1680x1050 with animget (which i reccomend for anyone who wants to rip stuff from games!) in order to get the exact sam amount of frames based on my current fps, i scale them down and edit every single frame with paint.net in order to remove or edit some pixels.

How easy/hard is it to set up good conditions in a map for ripping in SS3, i.e, keeping the lighting strength & direction consistent, etc?

Pretty easy, that's why i did it. You just have to make sure that you face the direction where the light comes from, so your rips will not look shadowless

[Zdoomer1337]

When is this coming out it looks awesome

[Batandy]

When is this coming out it looks awesome

Coming when it's done, there's still alot of work to do, and this time the new beta will include something more than a few deathmatch maps


For now...

Yeah, here's the first gameplay video!
3 minutes of the first level. Nothing is final and may be modified.

Also, i've changed my Youtube account, if you were following me, i'd reccomend you to subscribe to my new channel:
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkxCO4osk_uBDEHqQ83Xviw

[Batandy]

Meet the Gnaars!

[CaptainToenail]

Well, I'm glad someone found a use for those beheaded kamikazes.

Something about the monster movements is bugging me though. In Serious Sam the zombies tend to run forward a few steps, pause, fire, then run another few steps etc. etc. Here they just slowly wander forward like the standard Doom zombies.

Also everything in Serious Sam gets pushed about a lot more by the weapons than Doom. You could lower the mass of the monster, or even better give them custom pain and death states where they are thrust both backwards and upwards when shot with weapons such as the shotgun.

Keep going this looks good so far.

[Viscra Maelstrom]

is it just me, or are the sprites in the latest screenshots absurdly dark? O.o