Serious Sam is hard. We all know that. But one thing it's never been considered is complex. You have a gun, you run around, and you shoot waves upon waves of slobbering monstrosities. However, if you call Serious Sam simplistic, Croteam may have something to say to you, like what studio founder Roman Ribaric said to us when we asked why the game's simplicity was so profound.
Digital Foundry : Serious Sam is a classic PC shooter that's celebrating its 20th birthday this year - and software engineer 'sultim-t' has delivered a fully path-traced mod, similar to Quake 2 RTX. So how does it look and how well does it run? Alex checks it out.
Again, sure there are scenes where path racing looks realistic, but I just don’t know if it really looks better. And most of all, is it worth it everything considered (performance hit, heat and power consumption increase, hyper realistic lighting in a cartoon game.)
"is it worth it everything considered ... hyper realistic lighting in a cartoon game."
Because path tracing for a game with more polygons, details, and effects will result a nearly unplayable state of that game using even an RTX 3090, tanking the performance greatly.
Path tracing is freaking expensive calculation. Nvidia's own Marbles demo ran at 1440p@30 with DLSS 2.0 enabled.
Hence the path tracing experimentation is carried out in less detailed games like Quake II and Serious Sam, to analyze the final result, appreciate the said technology and still able to play it at a reasonable framerate.
Thanks for the comment. I completely understand why path tracing is so expensive and used in these low end games to show it off. To me, it simply shows how far we still are from any reasonable implementation of RT in games. I think realistically we can talk about ray tracing for consoles when PS6 and XSX2 releases in 2026-2027, or for PC when RTX 5000 - RX 8000 series are out in 2025-2026. That's when it becomes somewhat realistic, because we have to remember the rasterization requirements go up, and the reflections required also go up in parallel.
Meanwhile, I think the best bang for buck for highend is 6800xt OC'd 10% with MPT. I've got a 6900xt, and I run it raster 4K60 all maxed out, and when it doesn't run a stable 60fps, I can scale resolution down 10-20% or use FSR ultra quality or quality and it looks very good still. Ray tracing..? Not a chance, it's just a gimmick, and am not interested in it. Sure, it looks more realistic, but my question is, does it really look better? I mean better in most gamers eyes, not better in technically savvy analysts eyes who know what a scene should look like. Because there's a massive difference between those subjective and objective views. I actually like often baked lighting and reflections better, because they seem to be what the original artists were going for.
I really like this new lighting and metalish looks. Hopefully it just gets better and better. Btw, 20 years of Serious Sam development, damn. That's huge for not that big developer team.
Because... America – f*ck yeah!
I don't remember if you save the world in that game but Urban Chaos: Riot Response was one of the most american games back in the day, I've never even been to the country and that game was still rad.
Serious Duke 3D is a fan remake of Duke Nukem 3D in the Serious Sam 3 Engine. The project is now complete and is currently available for download.
its more linear than FF13
fan knows there is strategy involved, and has honored the brilliance of the game by playing on higher difficulties. I have beaten the games on Hard and the one I committed to on Serious (original First Encounter from 2001)...It takes mastery of your weapons, mastery of every enemy, mastery of the levels. You have to learn to ration or stock up when you get powerups and ammo, etc... You learn the EXACT things he is quoted on, specifically the handling of enemies and the weapon selection and thinking ahead, the order in which to kill enemies as to have the best chance to survive or take minimal damage. The game is too frantic and deadly to be "mindless" if you are a veteran of the game. You will know what I'm talking about if you're a major fan and have played it for dozens of hours on every difficulty. I've played and beaten all 3 of the first iterations, and am currently enjoying the HD release still from Steam...Great game, always will be, and can't wait for both Second Encounter HD and Serious Sam 3!
However, I DO wish there was an editor included (the Serious Editor from the other iterations) for the HD one. I don't see it anywhere in the HD release, unless there is some way to get it I haven't found yet. I have been going through this new one having a blast, and recalling all the building and designing I did in the editor years back. An editor is incredible with such an outstanding game, and it's one of the easiest and most robust ones out there for FPS games!