Hey everyone! It's been a while since our last featured mod article, so today I’m excited to share an incredible mod that faithfully recreates Serious Sam 2’s versus deathmatch in Serious Sam Fusion.
This mod brings all four of the original Serious Sam 2 maps into the Fusion engine, along with nine additional maps from the latest 2.090 update. And best of all, you get to enjoy it without problematic netcode!
The included maps are:
- Branchester
- Brkeen Chevap
- Catacombs
- Chanolin
- Cliff
- Cockaleekie
- Desert Temple
- Docking Bay
- Hoodlum's Backyard
- Little Trouble (which also includes a custom CTF version)
- Metropolis
- Yodeller
- Land Of Giants
In addition to these, the mod introduces three exclusive, unreleased Capture the Flag maps that were originally scrapped during Serious Sam 2’s development and two custom made ones! Ryason, the mod creator, has also made various tweaks and improvements to the maps and weapons for enhanced gameplay.
So what are you waiting for? Subscribe to the mod, explore the new maps, and experience Serious Sam 2’s versus mayhem without any netcode issues! But before you dive in, let’s have a quick chat with this veteran modder.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2993154487
BASEMENT CHATS WITH YASEN
⚪ Hey everyone! It's been a while since I’ve welcomed you all to my basement. Today, I’m honored to have one of the veteran modders from the Serious Sam community, who is still active in the
Hello, Ryason! It’s great to have you here. Can you tell us when you first started modding for Serious Sam and what inspired you to recreate Serious Sam 2’s versus mode for Fusion?
Heya Yasen. I got my start in Serious Sam modding with Serious Sam 2 when I was a teenager. I loved messing around with game editors at the time, so when I discovered there was an update for Serious Sam 2 (2.070) that included an editor, I just had to try it out. Roughly 18-20 years later, here I am still.
As you can imagine, Serious Sam 2 is one of my favorite Serious Sam games, though of course it has its problems—particularly the netcode. The online experience wasn’t the best, especially in Deathmatch. I never really played Deathmatch in Serious Sam 2 all that much, but I got more into Versus stuff with Serious Sam 3 and Fusion (typically on modded maps), as by then the netcode had improved significantly.
The first Serious Sam 2-related map I did for Fusion was in Procedural Skyways, a set of procedurally generated maps with different tilesets, weapons, and items, one of which was themed after Serious Sam 2's Kronor. Later on, I made two discoveries: One, the Steam version of Serious Sam 2’s editor was able to export AWF files (basically a list of all the entities on the map) that could be used with a custom editor script in Fusion.
And two, someone made a Blender plugin that could import meshes and such from Serious Sam 2, which had previously been a problem due to a lot of file types missing "edit data" in Serious Sam 2, so you couldn’t export them normally. These, combined with the 2.090 update for Serious Sam 2, which included the previously unreleased Deathmatch maps, pretty much jumpstarted this project.
⚪What an incredible journey—thank you for sharing it! You’ve done an excellent job with the Serious Sam 2 Versus mod, and you even managed to obtain some unreleased Capture the Flag maps. Could you tell us more about how that came about? Also, do you have any plans for future updates to the mod?
Pretty much I just asked if I could have the unreleased Capture the Flag maps for the sake of porting them, and 2 very cool fellas at Croteam responded. It took a while, but eventually they got into my hands. Funny thing: I did ask about all of the unreleased maps way back when Serious Sam 2 was more recent, but the response was "We might do something with them later", which was technically correct with the Deathmatch maps, but you know. I probably wouldn't have done the maps nearly as much justice back then though.
Currently the mod has 3 of the 5 unreleased Capture the Flag maps covered; I hope to get the remaining 2 done up eventually. As for the Deathmatch maps, I have 13 of the 16 done, and it's possible I'll do the remaining ones, though one of them is very rough, and I feel it'd be better to remake it entirely if I were to do it at all. In theory I should take a break and work on something else, but we'll see.
⚪As a veteran of the Serious Sam modding community, could you share some advice for other modders, particularly those who are just starting out? Additionally, do you have any plans for future Serious Sam modding projects you might work on?
Well, in general, it helps to look at what other people have done, whether it's from Croteam or other modders. There are guides and tutorials out there for various things, such as 7Smoke's Serious Editor Tutorial videos. If you really want to get into the weeds with scripting, there’s NSKuber and nano's Scripting Guide—which is for Serious Sam 4, but a lot of concepts still apply to Fusion, and to lesser extents, 3 and HD. And, if anything, you can always ask for help in modding spaces like the Croteam or 7Smoke Discord servers.
I have a couple of ideas for potential mods, but nothing concrete. We'll have to see what both interests me and what I can envision being able to complete.
⚪Thank you so much for visiting my basement, Ryason. It was a pleasure having you here. I hope we get to see many more mod releases from you in the future, as they’ve always brought me a lot of joy. To wrap things up, feel free to share anything you’d like with the readers!
The only thing is that I hope, at some point in the future, we’ll get a more recent Serious Sam game that supports Versus with bots. But yeah, thanks for having me!