Serious Sam
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| Serious Sam | |
|---|---|
| Genre(s) | First-person shooter |
| Developer(s) |
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| Publisher(s) | |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, Palm OS, Xbox, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, GameCube, Game Boy Advance, Android, iOS |
| First release | Serious Sam: The First Encounter 21 March 2001 |
| Latest release | Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope 17 October 2016 |
Serious Sam is a video game series created and developed by Croteam. It was originally released for the Microsoft Windows market only but the rising popularity of Serious Sam resulted in the porting to a number of different platforms, including the Xbox, Xbox 360, Palm OS, Game Boy Advance, PlayStation 2 and GameCube. The main series was developed by Croteam.
Direct spin-offs of the first title in the Serious Sam series were created for PlayStation 2, GameCube and Game Boy Advance by Climax Solent and for Palm OS by InterActive Vision. All of these spin-offs were published by Global Star Software. The fan-made game Serious Sam Classics: Revolution was developed by online community Alligator Pit and released onto Steam Early Access in 2014.
The series follows the adventures of protagonist Samuel "Serious" Stone and his fight against the forces of the notorious extraterrestrial overlord Mental who seeks to destroy humanity.
Games
Main entries
Serious Engine
Serious Engine 2
- Serious Sam 2 (2005)
Serious Engine 3
Serious Engine 3.5
- Serious Sam 3: BFE (2011)
TBA
- Serious Sam 4 (TBA)
Spin-offs
- Serious Sam: Next Encounter (2004)
- Serious Sam Advance (2004)
- Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope (2016, Steam Early Access)
Indie series
- Serious Sam Double D (2011)
- Serious Sam: Kamikaze Attack! (2011)
- Serious Sam: The Random Encounter (2011)
- Serious Sam: The Greek Encounter (2012)
- Serious Sam Double D XXL (2013)
- Serious Sam Classics: Revolution (2014, Steam Early Access)
Development
Croteam created their own engine for use in both Serious Sam: The First Encounter and Serious Sam: The Second Encounter. Named the Serious Engine, it is designed to cope with large view distances and massive numbers of models, unlike most first-person shooter engines which are developed for a limited draw distance and only a few animating models (e.g. enemies) on screen at a time: It is very efficient, capable of maintaining dozens of moving enemies (often stampedes) even on a modest system challenging the well known id Tech, Unreal Engine or Source engines. The Serious Engine can render through both Direct3D or OpenGL and, while it does not support pixel or vertex shaders, it is optimised for Direct3D 7's hardware transformation, clipping and lighting. Serious Engine 1 is available as open-source software.[1] A more powerful iteration of the Serious Engine was developed for use in Serious Sam 2 and is known as Serious Engine 2. It supports many features of modern GPUs such as pixel and vertex shaders, HDR, bloom and parallax mapping. Serious Engine 3 was used in Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter and Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter. It includes detailed shading, and enemies are remodeled to look more realistic. This engine is also being developed to harness the full capacity of HDR and High Definition mapping. An updated version, Serious Engine 3.5, is used in Serious Sam 3.
Serious Sam is voiced by John J. Dick.
After the release of both HD remakes of the original Serious Sam episodes, the new publisher, Devolver Digital, acquired both classic encounters in 2010 and Serious Sam 2 in 2011.
References
- ^ "Serious Sam's Serious Engine source code released". Croteam. Retrieved 12 March 2016.
External links
- Official website at the Wayback Machine (archived 24 January 2003)
- Serious Sam series at MobyGames