Serious sam 4

[leffereality]

Is this official ? i read it online but the internet is lying 90% of the time so could i please get confirmation ?

[AlenL]

Terepin explained most of it well already, but let me repeat, from the horse's mouth. ;)

Originally posted by huskydog17:

What exactly do you mean with single app?

Everyone who owns either TFE HD, TSE HD, SS3, or their VR counterparts will receive a bonus free app in the library called "Serious Sam Fusion 2017". That app will have a non-VR and/or VR version (depending on which you own), moddable versions of those, and the non-VR and/or VR versions of the editor as well.

Running that app you will be able to play any of the games you own within that app, updated to the latest engine, with all features, and VR/flat cross-play.

What will Fusion look like in the practice?

It will look most similar to SS3 or TTP in terms of menu layout, with different "skins" depending on whether you are running TFE or TSE or SS3. See SSVR:TFE menus for an example. As you switch between levels from different games, the menu and HUD auto-adjust to the color scheme of that game.

Inside the gameplay it will be nearly identical to the original games (HD/SS3), at least at first. Later on we might be further improving/tuning the gameplay and visuals if resources will allow, of course (read: if the games continue to sell enough to justify having some team members dedicated to working on them more than just for basic maintenance).

The Vulkan support in Fusion is still beta or it's stable now?

It is still beta. We can't guarantee stability yet as the drivers are still too buggy, and our code is still changing a lot. For example, we are working on a native multithreaded renderer which is a huge rework, and some other things will need to be improved as well.

It's newer Vulcan code than in Talos Principle?

TTP Vulkan code is continually being kept in sync with 2017. In the future (probably around, or after Talos VR is released), I think we will be bringing Talos over to the 2017 engine codebase. For now, they only share the Vulkan module.

What about Serious Sam 2 (2005)? Do you have plans to add Fusion also to this title or is the Serious Engine 2 too old for this upgrade?

When the rework that Terepin has mentioned is done, it will be on the latest engine and included in the latest Fusion. Whether that will be 2017, or some later, we'll see. Depends on when the rework will be released. :)

[AlenL]

Originally posted by TJ Terepin:

Alen, come to think of it, which version of SE will Fusion have - 4.0 or 4.5?

2017. :) This thing with numbers between games and engines was getting too confusing. For now, let's keep engines with years and games with their own schemes. (Which I must agree is also quite confusing, but it's not up to me, unfortunately. :P That's a "creative marketing" legacy we are dragging from the GoD/Take2 days.).

Originally posted by PootularMayonnaise:

Good to hear. SF2017 for BFE must be a long way from now, right?

Actually, not at all. I won't give any dates or seasons, as that will most certainly cause problems if missed, but let's just say it's much much closer than you'd expect. Most probably everyone will be as surprised as it was with TFE VR release. :)

Originally posted by edo:

Are all of your Fusion games going to use the same version of the engine? Would that mean than any improvement than you would make on the vulkan renderer would be reflected on all the Fusion games, no matter if its (the future) SS4, TTP or SS:TFE? Because that would be very cool.

That is correct. We are aiming to be able to keep all past games on the latest engine, in the future. As long as resources allow it, as mentioned above.

[FreeCore_DATA]

Alen, I suppose there's going to be a FAQ thread for each game in their respective forums, isn't it? This is just to let people know about these specific questions regarding this update.

[TAW|REA]

Slightly off-topic;

As far a I know, Serious Sam HD games use Serious Engine 3 while Serious Sam 3 uses Serious Engine 3.5. As Fusion 2017 update was announced as a single app for both titles, does that mean SE3.5 is just a new branch of SE3?

Will there be OpenGL support for SSHD titles on Linux, or will they directly jump to Vulkan. In my opinion, keeping OGL for older hardware would be a sound idea.

By the waY, what version of the engine do SSVR games use?

[AlenL]

Engine versions go like this: SE3 (HDs), SE3.5 (SS3), SE4 (Talos), SE2017 (TLH, VR and all Fusion games). They were developed in sequence.
What is happening now is a conclusion of a longer side-project that brings all those to the latest SE2017 engine. All the games will use the latest engine.

Yes, OpenGL is supported just as well, both on Linux and Windows.

SSVR games already use 2017.

[Terepin]

Originally posted by AlenL:

Terepin explained most of it well already, but let me repeat, from the horse's mouth. ;)

Your lack of trust in me is disturbing.

Originally posted by AlenL:

When the rework that Terepin has mentioned is done, it will be on the latest engine and included in the latest Fusion. Whether that will be 2017, or some later, we'll see. Depends on when the rework will be released. :)

Wait, is this the first official acknowledgment that SS2HD is in the works?

Originally posted by AlenL:

This thing with numbers between games and engines was getting too confusing.

For who exactly? It was simple, straightforward and clear as a sky for me. In fact, regular Joe doesn't care about engine's version. But I do. And I hate it.

But since you're communicating with us in this thread, I'm gonna ask this: WHY DO YOU KEEP TORTURING ME SO MUCH?! Why you didn't add support for all 4 SMAA modes? Your engine is currently the only one that has the possibility to have them all! Heck, it is the ONLY AA methods you need! Furthermore, it's open-source, documentation is available for everyone and it works on every hardware.

And I believed in you... ;(

[AlenL]

I'm sorry to see that you are sad, Terepin. :(

[The Laughing Cow]

Thank you AlenL for all those explanations, it is a lot clearer now. I think most of those could be grouped together in a big Q/A section, as I see that you had to repeat yourself multiple times.
I am very excited about your new releases. Looks like I will need a new GPU (at least to enjoy Vulkan's benefits), and maybe even some VR gear in the future.

Terepin, as I see it, it is not that AlenL did not trust you.
First, there's no trust involved: as a developer, he has access to first-hand information, so it's more a matter of confirming what you said. Which he did.
As for trust, it's more regular users like myself that have a trust problem: I would like to trust you, and you seem pretty knowledgeable, but on the Internet, first-hand sources are a rare and valuable thing. And having a developer confirm something upgrade it from rumors to... facts.

(And it seems that people are not doing enough fact checking on the internet lately, but it seems and always seemed primordial to me; don't blindly trust everything people write on wikipedia, as the saying goes )

[Stabbey]

Still just sitting here... patiently waiting for Serious Sam 4. No, no, no rush. Don't mind me. I like sitting quietly. Really.

[Terepin]

Originally posted by AlenL:

I'm sorry to see that you are sad, Terepin. :(

Uhm, you do know I was overreacting, right? It was meant as a joke.
I am however disappointed that you didn't add SMAA. Can you explain why?

And can you officially confirm that SS2HD is in the works?

[Terepin]

Originally posted by M@yeulC Fr:

Thank you AlenL for all those explanations, it is a lot clearer now. I think most of those could be grouped together in a big Q/A section, as I see that you had to repeat yourself multiple times.
I am very excited about your new releases. Looks like I will need a new GPU (at least to enjoy Vulkan's benefits), and maybe even some VR gear in the future.

Terepin, as I see it, it is not that AlenL did not trust you.
First, there's no trust involved: as a developer, he has access to first-hand information, so it's more a matter of confirming what you said. Which he did.
As for trust, it's more regular users like myself that have a trust problem: I would like to trust you, and you seem pretty knowledgeable, but on the Internet, first-hand sources are a rare and valuable thing. And having a developer confirm something upgrade it from rumors to... facts.

(And it seems that people are not doing enough fact checking on the internet lately, but it seems and always seemed primordial to me; don't blindly trust everything people write on wikipedia, as the saying goes :smartsam:)

It was a joke, man. Calm down.

[huskydog17]

Terepin and Alen, thank you very much for the detailed answers!

Alen, how is the Vulkan renderer progressing? What do you think when can the Vulkan renderer move to stable phase?

[kwahoo]

Originally posted by TJ Terepin:

I actually like both APIs, but DX12 in RotTR actually helps me, whereas Vulkan in both TTP and DOOM is just a gimmick, that has worse performance than DX11/OGL.

Congratulations, you just have implemented a new term called "post-truth" on Steam Community. Facts:
Vulkan is much faster than OpenGL both in Doom and TTP except some rare corner cases (eg. fast CPU and slow nvidia GPU).
Vulkan is slower or comparable to DX11 in TTP - depends from current hardare configuration.

https://www.computerbase.de/2016-07/doom-vulkan-benchmarks-amd-nvidia/#diagramm-doom-mit-vulkan-2560-1440
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=D3D11-OGL-Vulkan-Radeon-AUG

Also, I can reverse your argumentation ("gimmick blah, blah blah"), posting something like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApvTaSAG--4

[AlenL]

I know, Terepin, I was just playing along. :)
Vulkan, currently most work is in native multithreaded renderer.

[Terepin]

Too bad Steam doesn't parse images; I'd turn this into mene galore. 😀
Can you finally give answers about SMAA and SS2HD? Pretty please?