Bet you didn’t see this one coming! But here it is anyway. It’s been five billion years since the last proper update for Serious Sam 2. In the meantime, we have released a bunch of games, but Serious Sam 2 was always creeping in the darkest corners of our minds. So much so that when the ol’ Nate, aka Nathan Brown, aka DwK, mentioned how he’d love to give Serious Sam 2 another chance, we jumped right onto the hype train.
Nathan did some amazing work in the past couple of months and made sure we deliver the ultimate Serious Sam 2 update, changing the game forever. For the better, of course. With additions like dual-wielding, enemy multiplier, new weapons, and 12 brand new multiplayer maps, Serious Sam 2 gets a new life today. All hail Nathan!
Serious Sam 2 Update 2.090 is quite substantial, so make sure to check out the full changelog at the very bottom of this post. Before you do that, why not get to know Nate a bit more in the latest edition of Basement Chats With Yasen, and find out what exactly inspired him to make this update, how he got in contact with Serious Sam 2, to begin with, and what led him to become a full-time Croteam member.
As always, we'll be looking out for your feedback and acting on it. Feel free to report any issues in the tech-support subforum, and we're always open to suggestions via forums. We'll love you even more if you join our official Discord server.
Got a fun mod to share? Maybe some fan-art or a crazy Serious Sam video you made? 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.
Oh, almost forgot. The Serious Sam 2 soundtrack has been remastered! Soon, you will be able to find it on Steam, and all relevant streaming platforms. Drumjan is a god.
Much love from Croteam!
Danny
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BASEMENT CHATS WITH YASEN - NATHAN DwK BROWN
⚪ Hello Nathan, or should I say: Hello “DwK”, the guy with the Simba Avatar from the old Serious Sam forums! Now that I have mentioned your old nickname “DwK” and the forums, we have to start by asking you- back when the gaming forums were the place for everyone to hang out, when and why did you join the Serious Sam community? Also, what inspired you to start modding for Serious Sam?
Back in the spring of 2002, I was doing research online to determine what new video card I was going to buy. During that research, I ran across a review for the GeForce4 Ti4400 cards. In the review, they used a game for benchmarking I'd never heard of before, Serious Sam 2. I got curious, researched the game, and found out they had free demos for Serious Sam TFE and Serious Sam TSE. I downloaded them and played them, and that was pretty much all she wrote. I had to have those games.
After playing with a buddy via LAN for a few weeks, and since I had his computer at my house, I started hosting games with it. Then I started meeting lots of great people and joined the Seriously! community. About 5 or so months later, a group of us started playing Louva Deus's (Dev Mystic) "Odd World" mod. We all loved it, but there was a problem. It was only for The First Encounter. So half the time, we couldn't play it. One night we were hanging around chatting after a battle and they all ganged up on me and tried to convince me that I should make the Odd World mod for The Second Encounter. I'd never really programmed before, but I had made skins for us all, so they thought I could do it. This part still gives me chills, and still seems a little surreal. Louva Deus released the source code for Odd World the very next day.
I had no real excuses after that, so I learned how to create mods for Sam, and the "Dances World" mod was born. Then, later on, after a short-lived collaboration with Louva Deus, "Parse Error" was born.
⚪ After being a part of the community for a long time, and thanks to your amazing work as a modder, you became a part of Croteam and have been with us for almost 10 years now. You were also one of the first people, if not the first person, who got hired from the community. How did that happen?
When Serious Sam 2 was released, I wasn't sure if I was going to do a mod for the game. There wasn't an SDK available like there was with the first two games. But, I took a chance and reached out to Alen Ladavac, he gave me the source code so I could make one, and InSamnity! 2 was born. After about a year or so of just working on InSamnity, I started helping out with the Sam Forever mod. During its development, I reached out to Alen again to deal with some odd issues I had run into with the deathmatch bots, and we became friends. He offered me a job in the early part of 2008, but we just couldn't make it happen at the time.
When Croteam released Serious Sam HD, it kind of killed the Sam Forever mod. By this time I was doing contract web work, and just beta-tested the games. Working for them still seemed to be outside the realm of possibility.
Then in late 2011, Sam 3 was nearing release, and I beta tested it. Along the way, I started working with Alen to come up with ways to make the beta testing process better and did everything I could to help make them happen. After the game was released, and Croteam had caught their breath, I got my second job offer. This time we made it happen.
⚪ Many years later after you finished working on anything related to Serious Sam 2, you decide it's time for one last dance. You pitched your idea for a huge update to a million years old game to the higher-ups – and they said yes. What inspired you to do so, and what’s the idea behind this update?
I had some downtime after Sam 4 was released and was looking through the Serious Sam 2 Steam forum posts and I thought the game could use a little love. It's a great game. It's the game that really turned me into a game developer. So I suggested a simple patch. I was told to spend some real-time on it, maybe add a few options from my InSamnity! 2 mod.
Well, you know the saying... "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face". Needless to say, I got punched in the face. Hard.
I hope that all that was done helps keep the game enjoyable for a long time to come. If that works out, it was all worth it. Long live Serious Sam 2!
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Serious Sam 2 Update 2.090 Changelog
What’s new:
- Sam can now wield a brand new weapon called the BeamGun (aka The Ghost Buster from the original Serious Sam design document)
- Enemy multiplier option is now available in singleplayer and co-op. Go, create your own Legion System in Serious Sam 2.
- Duke it out on 12 previously unreleased multiplayer maps, coming to you straight from the dusty basement at Croteam HQ. Those include Yodeller, Stadium, Hole, Desert Temple, and more.
- A brand new Flame-Thrower weapon is now available to all you modders out there, and so is the napalm item, so you can feed it.
- Sam finally learned to dual wield all of his toys. That’s pretty cool if I do say so myself.
- You know what else is cool? The ability to sprint. Well, Sam can do that now, too.
- He can also Rocket Jump, just like in the classics.
- Get lost no more with the brand new Enemy, NPC, and Objective radar.
Stability and performance fixes:
- Fixed the notorious profile corruption issue. It’s been five million years, but we got there.
Gameplay changes and fixes:
- The RollerBall in “The Road to Ursul” level will no longer self destroy!
- Uzis firing speed has been doubled and the damage per bullet reduced from 10 to 9. Such balance!
- Fixed statistics menu not showing correctly when skipping movies.
- Colt Reloading has been added.
Visual changes:
- Hud, menu, and mic textures have been upscaled by 2x!
- All fonts are now available in shiny high definition, thanks to the House Of Sam.
- Improved animations for the Chainsaw, Rocket, and Grenade launchers.
- Screen and Bullets animation fix for Minigun.
- Menu fonts no longer force proportional shadow direction and shadow distance in the menu parameters.
- Fixed mapping for the Uzi weapon mesh.
- Fixed mapping for the Minigun weapon mesh.
General changes:
- Crosshair selection has been added, and it comes with different color and size options!
- New menu image and menu music have been added!
- Added a new "Special Thanks" section to the Extras menu.
- MODDING – Added the ability to specify mouse cursors.
- MODDING – Added saved cvars to show/hide the cheats info, and paused message.
- MODDING – Added debug menu available in the editor to control debug variables. Invoked with the '.' key.
- MODDING – Added "sam_bSkipMovies" saved cvar to skip the level intro and outro movies. Applies during gameplay and also stops the menu "attract" movies from playing.
- MODDING – Added visible version of Entity ID to the Serious Editor 2 entity properties panel.
- MODDING – Added ability to specify mouse cursors (In the Serious Editor).