Serious engine

A distinctive feature of the engine is good work with large open spaces, as well as high speed, which was criticized many times in reviews of games built using the Serious Engine ^{[4] [5]} . The engine was also popular among the community of players in Serious Sam , they created new maps and “full-weight” storyline modifications on it .

Initially, the engine was designed for PCs and supported Windows and Linux operating systems; with the advent of popularity to the Serious Sam series of games , the engine was ported to other platforms - the Xbox , GameCube and PlayStation 2 game consoles . The technology has been in development for three years ^[6] .

The game engine supports both a variety of technologies, which at that time were practically not used in other engines, as well as standard features that are actively used in the development of competitive companies. Some of the possibilities stated on the website of the engine were not used in any game on the Serious Engine. The list is listed according to the official wiki encyclopedia ^[7] .

Work with locations

It supports the processing of complex architecture, which allows developers to show in the game large buildings or objects with many details. Fast processing of large open and closed spaces allows you to create locations of very large sizes that will be displayed without loads, loading once before starting the level.

There is a possibility of automatic generation - the engine generates one huge map on which you can set objects or buildings.

Shadows — from characters or objects — can be dynamic or pre-calculated. The engine can work with dynamic shadows that change and are discarded in real time, as well as with pre-calculated shadows ( maps of shadows ).

Multidirectional gravity with six degrees of freedom ( eng. Full 6 DOF Physics ) is a specific feature that allows you to create multiple "gravitations" on the same level. Can be used at multi-user levels. Using this feature, you can implement, for example, a building at a location in which a player can move along the walls, and leaving the building will earn a “normal” model of gravity. The feature is used in the Serious Sam: The Second Encounter .

Portal technology allows you to implement portals at levels that can display some point created by the developers of the location, as well as used to move the player (but not objects).

Weather and Visual Effects

Implemented various weather effects, including a voluminous fog; It can be dynamically moved, with adjustable size, color and intensity. As in some other engines, it has a negative property to stand out against the background of the surrounding world, and from the side it is displayed as a transparent white box (however, while the player is in the “fog zone”, this artifact is not visible).

In addition, a change in the day-night cycle is implemented, which is achieved by changing the lighting and hues of the image, as well as replacing the background image ( background ) of the sky.

The list supports visual effects and particle effects: reflections and lens flares (an effect that shows traces of light and reflections of the sun on the monitor screen (“virtual camera”)), just as the sun beams off the lenses when shooting the sun with a camera . eye to illumination simulates the retina of the human eye and its reaction to light (in modern games such effect was used much later, for example, on the engine, the games the Source , with the HDR ). lighting effects include direct light, pop kselnoe coverage polygons, animation lighting, smoothed lighting, the effect of the frame, fire simulation, plasma, and water.

Reflective surfaces (can be used to create mirrors, or reflections on objects).

Object morphing helps to define a smooth transformation of one object into another. For example, a character can turn from an animal into a person or vice versa. In games of the Serious Sam series, the morph effect is used to transform one of the opponents of the main character - the lava golem . This feature is practically not used in computer games in general; It is worth noting that morphing is implemented in the game Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban ( 2004 ) on the Unreal Engine 2 .

Procedural mixing ( English Procedural Mixing ) and procedural particle system ( English Procedural Particle System ) are supported - for each object you can create several layers, thereby implementing various transitions and effects, such as transforming a room.

Working with textures

32-bit textures are supported. You can use animated, moving textures.

Relief texturing is a technique that allows you to depict a relief on the surface of various objects. So you can, for example, show the convexity of a brick wall, without having to work out each brick as a separate object. A feature rarely found in the engines of that time was added to the Serious Engine in version 1.5.

Several texture filtering methods: anisotropic filtering and trilinear filtering . The engine also uses a graphic filter that enhances image quality by giving the texture extra sharpening.

Detailed texturing - the technique allows you to impose several textures on one model. With the help of detailed textures, you can make it so that when a player comes close to an object, the texture with details (roughness, rust, etc.) is smoothly superimposed on its normal texture, thereby making the object more clear. This feature was implemented in the first version of the Unreal Engine (with the game Unreal 1998 ), as well as in the GoldSrc engine (with the game Counter-Strike: Condition Zero , 2004 ).

Custom backgrounds ( backgrounds ). The opportunity that was used in game engines for a long time and was present in the engines of the Quake engine and GoldSrc . With this feature, you can create a photo-realistic sky using high-resolution textures .

Other features

Optimization capabilities: LOD is supported for objects (the level of detail ( English. Level Of Detail ) is an algorithm that allows you to generate up to 32 model variants with increasing detail; thus, objects that are far from the player become less detailed, which means less computer resources, when approaching the model, its detailing smoothly increases), “smoothed animation” (a feature that saves computer resources by “blurring” objects and clipping “extra” animation frames).

Implementing a multiplayer game via a local network or an Internet connection; split screen support.

The sound engine can work with MP3 files for sound and music (using the Amp11lib library), distorted sound is implemented, according to acoustic conditions, three-dimensional sound, dynamic music (smooth change of music depending on the player’s actions).

Multi-language support for creating various localized versions.

With the help of the developers of Croteam , three editor programs were created to work with the engine. Fans of the game also created several unofficial utilities that can be found on the Seriously! Fan site ^{[8] [9]} .

• Serious Editor - designed to edit and create locations in real time, the editor interface is similar to UnrealEd . You can try the created map directly in the program window. The editor supports editing in four modes - Entities, Polygons, Sectors and Vertex . Each mode corresponds to the color of the indicator, which is located at the bottom of the screen. The view area can be divided into one, two or four windows, in which the level can be displayed from several angles: top, bottom, left, right, front, rear and perspective.
• Serious Modeller - to create and edit models. Supports the import of objects from 3ds Max and other programs for working with 3D-graphics.
• Serious SKA Studio - allows you to import models with skeletal animation from LightWave or 3ds Max and save them in the .SKA format .

For the computer game Serious Sam 2, developers from Croteam have created a new version of the engine - Serious Engine 2 . Unlike the first version, this engine was not used in third-party games, but technically it contained many changes: the developers focused on the new physics engine with rag physics , new graphic effects like HDR rendering , bloom and support for pixel shaders 2.0 (which allowed to make, for example, realistic water, which reflects the world). In addition, the number of available polygons for the model was increased, and the resolution of textures was raised ^[10] .

Also developed a third version of the engine, Serious Engine 3 , used in shooters Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter and Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter - these games are recycled versions of the first part of Serious Sam and its additions The Second Encounter ; the subsequent game of the series Serious Sam 3: BFE ^{[11] [11] [12] [13] was} also developed on its basis.

• 2001 - Serious Sam: The First Encounter developed by Croteam
• 2002 - Serious Sam: The Second Encounter developed by Croteam
• 2002 - Serious Sam: Gotham Games development Xbox
• 2002 - Carnivores: Cityscape developed by Sunstorm Interactive
• 2002 - Deer Hunter 2003 developed by Sunstorm Interactive
• 2003 - Bird Hunter 2003 developed by Sunstorm Interactive
• 2004 - Alpha Black Zero: Khaeon Intrepid Protocol
• 2004 - Nitro Family Development Delphieye Enterainment
• 2005 - EuroCops developed by Crazy Foot Games
• 2005 - Rakion developed by Softnyx
• 2006 - Last Chaos by Barunson Games
• 2014 - Serious Sam Classics: Revolution of Alligator Pit Development with the support of Croteam
• Canceled - Khaeon Negative Space
• Canceled - Cleric developed by Plutonium Games

• Serious Engine 2 - the second version of the game engine from Croteam
  • Serious Engine 3 - the third version of the engine
  • Serious Engine 4 - the fourth version of the engine
• Unreal Engine 1 - a game engine that competes with the Serious Engine 1

• Croteam (eng.) . - the official website of the company. The appeal date is November 5, 2010. Archived March 19, 2012.
• Serious Engine (English) (inaccessible link) . Croteam. - the official site of a series of engines. The appeal date is November 5, 2010. Archived July 23, 2002.
• Serious Engine (eng.) . MobyGames . The date of circulation is October 4, 2010. Archived March 19, 2012.

Download Source Code

• Croteam-official / Serious-Engine (Neopr.) . Github The appeal date is March 11, 2016.