Serious Sam mapping contest (looking for beginners)

[StormCatcher.77]

Hi, everyone!

 

I'll risk paying the attention of members of the forum to my Serious Sam mapping contest. How can it interest you? Mmm ... probably is no way. But still try to get acquainted with the conditions. In advance, I apologize for the wall of the text. In short, the point is that by the end of the year, you need to make a map for The Second Encounter under the style of Egypt and Sci-Fi. The idea itself resembles the Doomworld Mega Project, only with significant limitations, and it should not be mapping only for interest (although it is welcomed, there is simply no one), but for prizes. From DMP here only a minimum quality control to attract newcomers. Actually, I created this topic in the search for some participants. As prizes are Steam-keys (I can not offer anything more valuable so far). All the details, and a list of prizes in the main topic.

 

Actually, if you've never before mapped for Sam (which is 100% true), here's a short list of what you can expect if you step on the thorny path of mapping with Serious Editor:

 

1. "Ancient" engine with a very peculiar attitude to optimization, which is achieved by a heap of crutch-methods. It should be remembered that no matter how powerful your computer is, the Serious Engine brings you brazenly lags, for example, when drawing terrains from more than 3k polygons, illuminated by dynamic light.

 

2. The map editor is like a minefield. Strives to crash almost with any awkward movement. Without any backups. Of course, you get used to it over time, but for any newcomer it will be ultra-violent to watch how the hours of work suddenly fly into the abyss. And no, not any DB build will give you the same violent experience. Beginners can also "please" a very original system of undo/redo. When, for example, you are trying to correct a texture, you understand that you did not do everything right, try to undo the action... and together with it "canceled" about half an hour of the work done ...

 

3. The gameplay of Serious Sam is different from Doom. Monsters behavior much restricted for battles outside big arenas. With them, it's difficult to create a fascinating gameplay, different from the "waves of monsters". But they have the potential. Actually, I propose to try to disclose it within the framework of the contest.

 

4. Significant shortage of custom resources. I prohibited the use of commercial games resources in the rules. This is done so that participants try to show skills, rather than show, who will put more stuff into *.gro, inflating it to 9000 mb.

 

The mappers who decided to try, has one "trump card" (very conditional, because of difficulties): exports from GZDB. The bottom line is that you can draw the geometry of the map in a familiar DB, DB2 or Slade, and then export it to *.obj. It is important to take into account the "Scale" parameter, setting it equal to 0.0500, so that the geometry in GZDB matches the one in SED. Then you will have to import *.obj into any convenient 3D editor, for example Blender, and then save it back to *.obj, just triangulating all the polygons, because SED swears if it is fed surfaces when importing. And then ... a lot of nuances. If someone really agrees to try, I'll create a manual ... There's a lot of "fun"... The main thing is that after you will only learn how to texture and do the mechanics (scripting\coding isn't needed).

 

I will be infinitely happy if at least about 1.5 people agree to just try to make something for competition, during this year. Agree only if you really have time for that...

And, what do you think?

Edited April 9, 2018 by StormCatcher.77

[StormCatcher.77]

Hmm... Absolutely no one? Ok...

 

If someone still wants to participate during this year, then these people can rely on my help of any technical issues.

I will continue to hope that I will find here at least one participant ...

[StormCatcher.77]

@Voltcom9

Perhaps I unnecessarily thickened the paint describing the editor. Serious Editor is not an extremely unstable program and never crashes spontaneously. Simply, the program has annoying crashes that arise under the same circumstances. While beginner will not remember them all, having meet in their experience, the experience of mapping may be negative. For me, now Serious Editor, a familiar and stable program, although when I started to study it, I was often just in despair ...I just want to mentally prepare anyone who to will participate in contest is needed create backups when working in front of almost any meaningful action .

The most important thing in the editor at first is to remember the combination of hot keys and learn how to handle the camera. It is possible that when creating the simplest level, a new one will not encounter any bug. Also worth mentioning is that the x86 version of the editor does not work correctly on x64 systems.

Despite the almost complete miss of English, I could support anyone who tries (just tries) to create something in the editor. I am ready to create manuals and example maps, if they can not be found on seriouszone.com

 

Here is a very useful threads...

And, big thanks for reply!