FE and SE maps to Rev - Complete Porting Guide

Found some old map for Classic FE or SE? Want to play it with Revolution but it's somehow not working, or you just simply have no idea how to make it work? Read this complete step by step guide for nubz how to make it work!

Why do we actually have to port the map?

You might try simply launching the FE and SE maps in Rev, but there might be some problems with making them playable. Most common things are:

• Crashes
  
• Maps with bugged enities (like doors not opening)
  
• Strange cutscenes displayed from first person which after you cannot even move
  
• Map not even being visable in main menu

Why is this happening? It is pretty simple. FE and SE are old engines, while Rev is pretty much fixed version of them both. That means lots of enities have been fixed, or added new options. Without map converting, old enities are just bugging up the map, so it's unplayable. What are we gonna do today is to make these enities ported to Rev, so map is gonna work just fine!

For the guide, I'm gonna be using Battle of Year 2003, from SeriousZone[www.seriouszone.com] site (it is a nice place for getting some maps btw). Link for the download of that exact map is here[files.seriouszone.com].

Extracting the Map Files

When you have downloaded a gro/zip/rar file of the map open it with any file archivers, like WinRAR or WinZIP and just put all of the files to your main game folder (my example is D:/Games/Steam/SteamApps/common/Serious Sam Revolution/). To be 100% sure you are doing it right see if folder names are the same in gro file and game directory. Some of the might be different (like Textures and TexturesMP visable on screen below), but if there's a Levels folder in the archive, and the Levels folder in the directory we're in, it's the right place.

BTW. Sometimes people put .gro files in zip/rar files. Be sure to extract the .gro file from the rar/zip first, then extract stuff from the .gro like we just did.



After extracting, check the Levels folder in archive, so you'll know what map file is called. We are looking for the file with .wld extension. Knowledge of where it is might help us later.

Editor Fun

Now, launch the Serious Sam: Revolution Toolkit tool in Steam Tools. If you haven't downloaded it yet, DO SO QUICKLY OR WE'LL ALL DIE!

When you're in application, launch Serious Editor.

When launched, click File->Open, and look for the .wld file we extracted from the map archive. Game directory has a lot of maps and it might be hard to fine our downloaded map in it and that's why we checked where the map is placed before.

PROTIP: Your map cannot have spaces in it's name. If there are any empty spaces in the .wld file, editor won't be able to read it, and we won't be able to convert it. If your map has any empty spaces, go to it's directory, and change the name.



Now, all we actually have to do is to click File->Save. Editor will resave old FE and SE enities with new, super cool great Rev configuration and map is now almost ready to play!

Visability File

Our map might work now, but in same cases it might not be visable in menu of the game. To fix that, we need to go to the directory where the .wld file is stored, and create an empty file with the same name, but with .vis extension. We can simply do it by opening a notepad, and saving it as an .vis file. The trick is to make the name of that file EXACTLY the same as the map file. So, if your map .wld file is gonna be called super_map.wld, the .vis file has to be called super_map.vis.



(btw. the .tbn is a thumbnail for the map automatically generated by the editor. just sayin)

It works!

If you have done everything right, your map should be visable and playable in the game. I wish you the best of luck in playing these cool custom maps! Cheers!

(on that screen you can also see thumbnail I mentioned before)

[dragon99919]

Try clicking the Pause button on your keyboard.

[ginmitz]

cannot get game to run keeps saying paused after update

[dragon99919]

No problem, tried my best! :)

[vodkins]

Found the root of my problem! My ogg files were with 22kHz of the frequency of discretization. But game want only 44kHz. What a stupi hidden limitation! I think we need to add this issue and solution somewhere here. Thank you for your helping!

[vodkins]

Does all files must be in correct folders in the root of the game for editing time? Or i can work and test it from any place? I forgot about that...

[dragon99919]

No idea, cannot help there. :C

[vodkins]

Ok, i fear i am going nuts with that:)
Just working in new empty room for clear try. Using MusicHolder i gave it all 3 music files. When i am using mp3 - still silence. When i am using ogg - editor freezes/crushes everytime. Any limitations on ogg files maybe. Frequency, size, bitrate?

[dragon99919]

Oh, sorry about telling you about that WorldInfo, I thought it worked the same way as it is in SSHD. xD

Tho MusicHolder should do the job... Try to re-add music there.

[vodkins]

Files already unpacked. Also i tried to make music in a new level/room - no luck also.

[vodkins]

As i see now i haven't any WorldInfo entity in the map. I used MusicHolder and few MusicChangers. And that worked in old game. Looking now into WorldInfo properties i don't see any Music related option there - only scores for medals, Parent and Flags. Where is a music options here?