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Monday, May, 18, 2009 |
Seriously! Downtime - Louva-Deus - 7:17 PM - Comments - Link to this Item
We would like to thank you all for bearing with us in our downtime. We know it has been hard for some of you. Here is the poop.
- We moved to a new host
- The router at the new datacenter died and our host decided to do its planned upgrade a month early and purchased all new machines
- There were some problems with restoring the archive of the Seriously! website onto the new server
We will post more information soon. Until then a temporary backup of the website is currently up on our old server. Because it is temporary the forums will remain closed and will redirect to the IRC Java Chat page.
If you come to IRC please keep in mind that it is not a very active channel so you may have to wait 10 minutes or more to get a response. You are welcome to idle in the channel as long as you want and visit with other members of the community.
We'll be back. Can't keep a good Sam down.
Serious Sam 3, Serious Engine 3, and A Lot More! ..Seriously - Louva-Deus - 6:32 PM - Comments - Link to this Item
After a long wait we have finally heard from Croteam! Here's the scoop:
Here is the brief update on the events from both the business and development side:
Since the Serious Sam 2 was released in end of 2005, we have been working hard on a number of things, one of which is new next-gen 'Serious Engine 3' technology. More on this will come in future updates.
We have also recently started the development on two games, one of which is the next Serious Sam FPS game. Here, we are pretty close in signing the publishing deal, so when that happens, you'll hear it here as well.
Regarding military game we were working for some time, that development was halted some time ago by investors and publishers. We were doing a 'work-for-hire' development there, so after the game was put on hold, there was nothing more to do there and we moved back to our projects. Obviously, the above also means that our next title won't be published by Gamecock, as contrary to last year's published press release by Gamecock.
Finally, to reassure again all our fans, our development is going great on all three projects and we will soon have exciting things to show. Since a lot still has to be done, especially on the next Sam game, we don't have a firm release date on it yet. When we do, we'll announce it here on our pages.
Stay serious,
Roman Ribaric
CEO
Croteam
Are you excited? We are! Two games! Check back here for the latest news, screenshots, and other media!
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Thursday, April, 16, 2009 |
Serious Sam Forever Developer Interview at Casual Game Informer - Louva-Deus - 4:56 PM - Comments - Link to this Item
Casual game Informer has posted an interview with Nathan Brown, Maarten Staa, and Yuriy Sountsov of Prophets of Sam. In this interview they talked about everything from chocolate to flaming poop guns, but they also revealed some very interesting tidbits about their upcoming project Serious Sam Forever.
CGI: What kind of multiplayer is being added to the game? What can we expect?
NB: In multiplayer you can expect to see some Serious Bot ActionTM?. We are making it so that it will only take a small amount of time to create a simple new game mode. You can expect to see at least 4 or 5 game modes ship with Serious Sam Forever all with the ability to add Player Bots.
CGI: Serious Sam is noted for having some pretty insane boss levels. Any insight on what we can expect with Serious Sam Forever? Will there be giant angry badger for example?
YS: Insane? Oh you’ll get insane…. (maniacal laugh)
MS: Badgers again? I think I heard that one a few questions back. Anyway, The First Encounter had one of the most awesome boss battles in existence with the four handed Ugh Zan III. That will make a return, of course, and I can tell you that it’s going to look awesome with present day graphics. In addition, there’s going to be a few extra unexpected surprises while you play through the game.
NB: Bosses? We need bosses? Oh shit…
They have also posted a video at the end of the article showing a Deathmatch game with a 100 bots, yes, BOTS! Anyway, check out this awesome interview with Prophets of Sam over at Casual Game Informer.
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Wednesday, April, 01, 2009 |
Seriously! Closing Down - Rodzilla - 4:07 AM - Comments - Link to this Item
April Fools! - We do have some important site-related news coming up, but it's good news, so don't worry. Stay tuned, and stay serious!
After eight and a half long, excellent years, of serving the Serious Sam and Serious Engine game community, I deeply regret that we will be closing our doors at the end of this month. Before I explain why, I would like to thank Croteam for making such a great game and for their help and involvement in the early days of this site. Thanks to everyone who has worked without compensation other than personal satisfaction to make this site the best Serious Sam site in the world for almost a decade. And thanks to publishers for putting up with our harassment for more information, and all of our visitors for your support.
The hard economic times have not been isolated to the auto industry, housing industry, and financial sector. They have hit everything across the board, and it was hard enough to run a sustainable business model when times were good. Due to the global recession we have seen a drastic drop in merchandise sales and our advertising revenue has simply not been keeping up. Additionally, with the mediocre and short-lived success of Serious Sam 2 and the lack of much activity in the community since then, traffic has been steadily declining, further straining revenue.
We have taken donations in the past, but we cannot continue to ask a select few individuals to bail us out, especially in times like these when everyone has their own problems to worry about. This has not been an easy decision, and the staff of the site has discussed the best way to handle this over the past several months. While it will not be a popular decision, sometimes financial reality is too hard to ignore.
We have already paid for this month's hosting, and therefore the site will remain online until April 30, 2009 at 11:59 PM. In order to recoup financial losses we've suffered while attempting to keep the site up we will be selling the web space for the remainder of the domain's registration (through January 31, 2010) to provide advertising for Gamespy's network of products and services. This will allow time for content to be transferred over to their servers, at which point the site will redirect completely to their network. All forum profiles and posts will be transferred to ForumPlanet, so you won't need to worry about years of posts being lost.
Good Night, and Good Luck.
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Friday, March, 13, 2009 |
Serious Sam Forever teaser video released! - The Serious Spoon - 9:15 AM - Comments - Link to this Item
I have just received an anonymous email containing just the following link:
http://www.serioussamforever.com
There was no other info, but the website contains - you're not going to believe this - a teaser video for Serious Sam Forever! That's right, the very promising project that was revealed to us Summer 2007 returns, and it would seem the guys (or gals? Not sure...) over at Prophets-of-Sam haven't been idle, as the content shown in the video is absolutely mindblowing. You could say it is almost, but not entirely, unlike the first game that Serious Sam Forever is based on. You'll just have to see for yourself.
So check out that link!
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Tuesday, October, 14, 2008 |
Southpeak acquires Gamecock - The Serious Spoon - 3:26 PM - Comments - Link to this Item
According to MCV, a website about the computer games industry, SouthPeak has acquired Gamecock, the publisher we know Croteam is with for at least one of its upcoming titles.
Melanie Mroz, SouthPeak CEO, said of the deal: "Gamecock brings us a solid slate of upcoming titles, including Legendary, Mushroom Men and Velvet Assassin and supports our strategy of working with independent developers. We are excited to give the Gamecock titles a bigger platform to succeed."
CEO of Gamecock Mike Wilson added: "We are thrilled to be joining forces with SouthPeak to continue to bring great original titles from independent developers to market with a stronger sales and distribution reach."
You can read the rest of the article here. It is unclear so far what, if any, effects this will have on the production of Croteam's upcoming game or games.
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Sunday, March, 16, 2008 |
Muchos new content on the File System - Discy - 11:24 AM - Comments - Link to this Item
I am proud to announce we have a wad of new content for you to download. Some of the highlights are:
| Maze of Chris |
| 429.15 KB |
| Jason_689 |
| Completed in 2006, the concept of a SS maze deathmatch level was suggested by a guy named Chris during class one day. The level turned out great and, as usual, contains a few secrets. |
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You can find this and all of the other files submitted by the community on our Download Page.
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Sunday, February, 24, 2008 |
Eight new files on the File System! - Discy - 1:56 PM - Comments - Link to this Item
We have a bunch of new files on the file system for you to download. These files are:
You can find this and all of the other files submitted by the community on our Download Page.
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Wednesday, February, 06, 2008 |
Five new maps! - Discy - 4:08 PM - Comments - Link to this Item
There are five new maps for all three Serious Sam games on the file system for your downloading pleasure.
| Madness on The Farm |
| 6.14 MB |
| ForgottenSeer aka Vinko |
| Placed in a small valley surrounded with big rocks, water crossing in the middle of the map and lots of other stuff, this map will hopefully be interesting to everyone. |
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| Castle of Doom - Part I |
| 21.67 MB |
| Pooper |
| You have been mysteriously teleported to the Castle of Doom and now must fight your way to the Castle itself to figure out what's going on (with NETRICSA helping you out) and how to get out of your mess. This is the first part of your journey. |
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| Single Shotty Trouble |
| 201.51 KB |
| Finnish Guy |
| Single Shotgun version of Croteam's original Little Trouble map. Only single shotguns in this map, and superhealth & mega armor removed. |
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| Shotty Complex & Flare SE |
| 5.1 MB |
| Dr. Dre & JayChyl |
| This map pack contains two great maps:
Shotty Complex is a nice, small shotty map. Good for 1vs1 and 2vs2 battles.
Flare SE is a conversion of the legendary Serious Sam: The First Encounter custom map. |
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| Modern Egyptian Complex |
| 804.58 KB |
| Jason_689 |
| My first completed level, made over 4 years ago, back when I was just learning the editor. Just a bunch of rooms connected by hallways and staircases and a few secrets. Turned out to be alright for small deathmatches. |
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You can find this and all of the other files submitted by the community on our Download Page.
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Monday, February, 04, 2008 |
Semi-new files! - Discy - 5:07 PM - Comments - Link to this Item
We finally have a whole bunch of new files for you to download! Some of the highlights include:
| Cube of Mysteries |
| 21.77 MB |
| F1NLAND-Warrior |
| A medium-sized DM map featuring a massive magical cube. Includes a fully custom soundtrack, respawnable turrets & vehicles, and more. |
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| Sky High version 1.3.4 |
| 5.41 MB |
| Warpzone |
| Sam's in hot pursuit of Mental when he gets shot over planet
HopSteppe. Now stranded on a series of cliffs connected by bridges,
surrounded by an endless sea of clouds, Sam must face the wind. Can
you help Sam get off this rock? |
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You can find this and all of the other files submitted by the community on our Download Page.
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Saturday, February, 02, 2008 |
Gamecock hopes to reveal info on Croteam title during EIEIO - The Serious Spoon - 3:13 PM - Comments - Link to this Item
GameInformer posted an interview with Gamecock, talking about the plans Gamecock has for the year 2008. Naturally, one of the questions brought up is what's going on with the Croteam title we've all wanted more info on. Here are the questions and answers:
GI: What’s going on with Untitled Croteam Project?
Wilson: I still can’t tell you. I’m hoping to very soon.
GI: Probably during EIEIO?
Wilson: I hope so. There are a few factors contributing to the fact that we’re not talking about it yet. As soon as those clear up, we can’t wait to show and tell. Those guys have got a fantastic piece of technology going—their engine is just world class. Part of that is because, unfortunately, they were unemployed for about a year in between games, and they kept working on that engine. We’re thrilled to be working with them again, and we look forward to telling you what it is. That’s another developer who was successful with us, made a lot of money because of the Gathering model and was able to say, “Hey, we’d like to work with you again.”
Unfortunately, that's all that's mentioned regarding Croteam. You can read the rest of the interview here.
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Monday, November, 12, 2007 |
New files on the file system! - disconnector - 4:23 PM - Comments - Link to this Item
A load of new files have been added to the file system. These include:
| Better Gnaar Pack |
| 560.67 KB |
| Deepblue |
| This is my first submission of my better enemy series. My goal is to make some enemies in SS2 look better, some may look like their SS1 counterparts and some may get a facelift based on what I think looks good |
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| Sky High version 1.3.4 |
| 5.41 MB |
| Warpzone |
| Sam's in hot pursuit of Mental when he gets shot over planet
HopSteppe. Now stranded on a series of cliffs connected by bridges,
surrounded by an endless sea of clouds, Sam must face the wind. Can
you help Sam get off this rock? |
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You can find this and all of the other files submitted by the community on our Download Page.
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Saturday, July, 14, 2007 |
Response to Voodoo Extreme's E3 Comments - Rodzilla - 1:03 PM - Comments - Link to this Item
Voodoo Extreme recently posted their thoughts on the new E3 as it pertains to exclusivity.
The revamped E3 is over. Attendees appear to be happy, probably because they got to go. There were no crowds, no booming video displays, and absolutely no booth babes or cosplayers in sight. Ya see, the problem with the new E3 is its elitist attitude. Sure, VE was invited, and we gladly went, but if you're not part of one of the bigger sites you were left out in the cold.
The likes of IGN and GameSpot got even more access to devs and even more opportunity to take long, lengthy videos. And yes, we posted a lot of them. With the old format E3, community and fan sites got access not normally available to them. Some were freeloaders, but every E3 I could guarantee that an amazing, in-depth preview of nearly every game would pop into my inbox. The preview, interview, or article didn't come from the aforementioned super-sites, but instead from the fan guys who spent their time with one title rather than rushing from appointment to appointment.
In the process of writing my email response to them I realized that much of what I was saying belonged here, so here's my thoughts:
I'm writing in response to your "In Other News" post summing up the end of the new E3 Media and Business Summit and its exclusivity, especially relating to fansites. As the owner of a fan site (Seriously!) and a three-time attendee of E3 (twice as a part of Seriously!) I just wanted to briefly address what you said. When they initially announced E3 was going to be invite-only I figured that meant the end of E3 coverage for our site. However, I was astonished to receive an invitation to attend a few months ago, although after reviewing coverage of E3 this year it appears I was in the minority in terms of smaller sites receiving invitations. Unfortunately the new timing of E3 and my current job prevented me from attending this year, so now once again I'm worried that the invite-only event (assuming it stays the same next year, an assumption that is up in the air right now) will be closed to us (If I didn't attend this year, why should a preciously rare invite be risked on me next year?).
The ESA had the right idea in between E3 2005 and E3 2006. E3 2005 was an absolutely absurd mess of 70,000 people, many of which were common employees of chains such as Best Buy, EB Games, or GameStop. The next year the ESA attempted to tighten the requirements on who could attend, and their efforts were a large part for attendance dropping by 10,000 people. At the same time they realized the media were being overrun by people who just wanted to play the latest games but not write about them, so they introduced the media-only hours at the beginning of the first day.
These were amazing steps in the right direction, and I was convinced that if they continued the trend they had started that E3 could be brought under control. All they had to do was continue tightening their enforcement of approving badges only for those with a legitimate reason to be there and continue to take steps to make it easier for media to do their jobs. As one of the complaints raised was the ever-increasing sound and lighting to drown out neighboring booths, the fix to that was simple as well -- impose stricter regulations on booths.
Instead, ESA was forced to scrap the entire thing and recreate it as a much smaller, invite-only event. This has had the result of severely limiting the number of publishers and developers in attendance (especially smaller companies, whose products often tend to be more original and unique).
At the same time, it has limited the detail and extent of media coverage of the event. As you had stated, in previous years there was literally an in-depth preview of everything at E3, thanks to the broad range of media in attendance. After following the new E3 for the last couple days it was no different than previous years -- all the big gaming sites posted similar videos, previews, and interviews of the top upcoming games. Yet unlike years past, the diversity of opinions and depth of coverage that many smaller sites brought to the expo was gone.
Hundreds of thousands of people visit large gaming sites because they offer tons of news and information in one place. Yet countless smaller sites still exist, because while gamers want to be able to follow the latest and greatest, they also have an interest in certain niche areas that larger sites just can't devote their time and space to focusing on in great detail.
While part of E3 is to serve as a meeting place for developers, publishers, investors, and distributors, the other side of it is aimed at being the biggest media event of the year in the industry. It simply cannot succeed at that goal without allowing the broad spectrum of media - large and small, generalized and specific - that resulted in extraordinary amounts of media and information to pour out of previous E3s for weeks.
Sincerely,
Jason Rodzik
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Tuesday, July, 10, 2007 |
The Dawn of the New E3 - Rodzilla - 9:57 PM - Comments - Link to this Item
Tomorrow marks the beginning of what will likely be a new era in the gaming industry, or at least something different from the previous decade of the massive gaming expo known as E3. The results of the Entertainment Software Association's massive downsizing of E3 from 60,000 people to 4,000 people, the rebranding of the expo from the "Electronic Entertainment Expo" (E3 for short) to the "E3 Media & Business Summit," and the move from the LA Convention Center to various hotels in Santa Monica will all come to fruition tomorrow.
E3 Insider is in full swing, as are all of the usual gaming sites, as this has been the event that the entire industry's calendar revolved around for as long as many of our readers can remember. Blue's News is already on part 2 of their regular "It Came From E3" series. And as usual, speculation runs rampant, though it isn't entirely focused on the new games this time. The biggest questions are no longer what Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo are going to show off, but instead of whether the new E3 is going to harm the industry and whether E3 itself may actually be pronounced dead.
As you may know, I received an invitation several months ago to represent Seriously! in Santa Monica this week at the E3 Media & Business Summit. Unfortunately, due to several factors I will be unable to attend this year, and as the invitations are non-transferable we will be unable to provide the live coverage that we have in years past. It's killing me inside to be missing out on E3 after the last several years, but as I only run this site in my free time sometimes there just isn't room for everything. The timing of the E3 this year combined with the economical aspect of attending and the fact that I'm extremely busy with my job right now all regrettably make it impossible for me to attend. I would like to thank those who invited me and hope that we can continue the trend of excellent coverage from the past few years in 2008.
The next three days should bring a horde of exciting announcements, videos, demonstrations, previews, interviews, and all of the usual media that E3 has always brought about (though with a lot fewer people and a whole lot less flair). However they will also answer the question that has been on everyone's mind since E3 was "canceled" a year ago: Can the gaming industry survive without the massive hype of the old E3?
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Friday, June, 22, 2007 |
New Galleries! - Louva-Deus - 7:26 PM - Comments - Link to this Item
We have set up new galleries for Croteam's Serious Engine 3 and Prophets-of-Sam's Serious Sam Forever. You can click on the following images to go straight to the new galleries, so enjoy!
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