Hey, what’s up? It’s been a while since we did one of these, and in the meantime, the Serious Sam 4 workshop has become absolutely humongous. With more than 200 mods, there’s a little something for everyone, and we don’t see it slowing down any time soon. That may be why we have decided to switch it up a bit in this feature article.
Most of the time, we like to focus on mods that either convert our games or turn them into something else, providing players with new experiences. This time, however, the featured mod lets you customize your guns to a whole new level. The NSKuber's Resource Manager mod has been a part of the workshop since day one, and it's been helping players and modders to obtain and configure stats of certain resources in the game (weapons, upgrades, and gadgets), both default ones by Croteam and custom ones created by other modders, in Singleplayer and Multiplayer.
If you are creating a Serious Sam 4 mod right now or thinking about trying your hand at it – make sure to check out the link below. You’ll need it.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2432507197
Things don’t end here. Our boy Yasen is still locked in the basement, and NSKuber came to visit. Being an integral part of the Serious Sam modding community for years, Kuber is a fascinating guy with some cool stories about how it all started, so scroll down and read all about them in the latest edition of Basement Chats with Yasen.
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Basement Chats with Yasen - NSKuber's Resource Manager
Welcome to the basement chat, everyone. Today's basement dweller is one of the most talented modders for Serious Sam - NSkuber. Kuber has been making life easier for the modding community for years, and I’m happy to finally have him in my dungeon.
⚪ Hi Kuber, glad to have you in my basement today! You are a very well-known guy in the community. You have an extraordinary list of mods and maps in your portfolio, but how did it all start? Did everything start with the creation of the Portal turret player model for Serious Sam 3: BFE?
Yes, it did. It all started with me joining a couple of 7Smoke events back in January of 2016. By then, everyone in the group had their "own" (or just preferred) player model and I felt like having something for myself. So, with the help of Noam's guide, I managed to weigh and import the turret from the Portal as a playable model. Why the turret, you may ask? Well, I never had any sort of special online "identity". People have favorite characters, set avatars on forums, etc. I didn't have any of that. So I had zero ideas about who to make as my player model. But my Steam avatar was set to the generic Portal Turret many years ago for some reason (I am not even sure I set that myself), so that's where the idea came from.
⚪ What a nice origin story! Today we are highlighting the resource manager, but you have a huge list of memorable mods that are worth being their own official game modes. For example, Manhunt – my favorite mod out there. I remember everyone going crazy about it. And then there are mods like Protect the president, Mental gladiator fights, and of course your Diablo 2 campaign. Which mod of yours you hold dear to your heart and why?
It's Diablo II Act I, actually! And this campaign (Into the Sanctuary') is one of my most memorable works. It was my first mapping experience (if we're being honest, it's the last, too), my first ever large project (which I spent several months on), and the project in which I first dipped my toes into advanced scripting. After finishing it, I briefly started to work on Act II, but then I got sucked into pure scripting mods. First, a few cool ideas for the original BFE, then Fusion came out with a whole bunch of new great scripting toys, so that project got abandoned. Making maps/enemies with animations/etc takes a lot of time, and I felt like making scripting mods was a way more effective use of my time.
Man, there are so many other mods, all of which have some kind of memory attached to them... But I'll try to keep it short.
Another really huge part of my modding life would be the Overwatch weapon pack. I remember how it started with me trying to port the Overwatch Orisa's weapon into Sam cause I recently started playing the game and was high on it. I spent a lot of time on it and it worked pretty well, so I did one more weapon, and another one, and another after that. The next thing I remember is, I am in this continuous process of porting one more weapon every day, spending 5-10 hours in SED. A year later, I went back to the mod and added VR support, along with a few new weapons. And after another year I went on and added some heroes' abilities to the new pack. Each time I returned to it, I was way more skilled than the last, and it was satisfying to bring better and better quality ports each time.
Serious RPG game mode for Fusion was also a pretty large undertaking at the time. This was another project heavily inspired by Diablo II. I love progression systems so I decided to make one in Sam, and I'm super happy with how it turned out.
⚪ Indeed, so many good mods that people should give a try if they still haven't! But If I'm not wrong, so far, the Resource Manager is the only mod that you ported from previous Serious Sam titles to Serious Sam 4. Do you have any plans of bringing other existing mods to Serious Sam 4? And if so, what are the ones we can expect to see?
Lazy Interviewer! There are quite a few other SS4 mods which I brought over from older games, most notably PIKD-4000. The monster spawning gun, which has roots back in the original SS3:BFE. I have plans for SS4 mods, of course, but I must warn readers that that's what they are right now - plans, with indefinite due dates and a possibility of never becoming a reality. I have plenty of other work to do currently, so SS4 modding has, sadly for it, dropped down my priority list, though I have hopes I'll return to it one day. As for which mods I was planning to bring over, I wanted to add some of my popular game modes from Fusion into SS4 - namely, Shopping Encounter, which adds an interesting layer of replayability to any map or campaign, and the Serious RPG, with a number of new mechanics/features to improve the experience. But, once again, I shall remind the reader not to expect anything from me in the nearest future.
⚪ Okay okay, my bad three mods instead of one! You better return that man-hunt mod... or else.
But we don't have Versus maps to play it on.
⚪ That has been fixed by another modder who I will soon drag down to my basement, so have no worries. But enough talk about other mods, let's return to the highlighted resource manager mod. It is such a helpful mod, not only for the regular players but also for the modders in the community. How did it strike you to create it?
It all started with the release of Serious Sam Fusion 2017. If memory serves me right, the ability to create custom weapons was proudly announced by Croteam themselves, but then, how do people use custom weapons if they aren't pre-placed on some map? But wait, there are some new scripting functions added in Fusion that allow managing player's weapons and ammo...
The issue and the tools to solve it were lying on the surface, so I immediately started working on a solution.
The first version of CWM (Custom Weapons Management) saw light very quickly after the release of Fusion, but it was very far from what we have now in NRM - you had to configure it through the console! CWM for Fusion has received a huge number of updates since its initial release (checks workshop 102, to be precise), and transformed into a way more functional and user-friendly mod with a database of more than 500(!) weapon resources. But because it started so long ago from a rather simple mod which I was constantly building upon, it was also rather "messy" and hard-to-work-on internally.
The resource manager for SS4 was an opportunity to re-create the mod from scratch, on a new engine, so to speak. I also felt this is the one mod that I have to make as my duty for the SS community - it seems not many people in the Sam community are into advanced scripting yet. (There's a guide for scripting now, guys! Help yourselves!) I worked some extra to lift the weight of adding new resources to the database myself (which took quite a bit of my time for Fusion, if we sum it up, 500+ weapons). The mod took quite some time, but it paid off - the internal system itself is way easier to work with, upgrade and sustain now.
⚪ Thank you for the great answer! But tell me, what does the future hold for NSKuber?
I don't feel comfortable sharing my life plans with the general public (at least yet), but I hope that in a few months I will be able to get back and enjoy some more SS4 modding
⚪ Thank you for this interview Kuber, it's been a pleasure! For the finale, I give you the stage to say whatever you want to our dear readers.
Please make sure you have all required workshop items subscribed and enabled, all required DLCs installed and that you're launching a moddable version of the game.
⚪ And enumerate game files before the event starts if you are playing older Sam titles!
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Are you making mods yourself? We'd love to take a look and share it for everyone else to see. Reach out to our community team directly via Discord, or holler at us via Twitter - @croteam, @serioussamiam, @danny_hr, and @yasenstavrev.
Much love from Croteam!
Danny