[Danukem]

Ninety-Six, on 28 August 2020 - 12:05 PM, said:

I wonder if we'll ever get a semi-basic breakdown of how the legion system does its magic. I'm oddly intrigued.

It's described as a "trick" and it's clearly rendering related. It must be beyond simply having lower poly versions of the enemy models to be used at long distance.

[Ninety-Six]

Danukem, on 28 August 2020 - 12:58 PM, said:

It's described as a "trick" and it's clearly rendering related. It must be beyond simply having lower poly versions of the enemy models to be used at long distance.

I'd assume so which is why I'm so curious.

[PikaCommando]

From what I heard, only enemies close to you are rendered as 3d models and all the ones further away are sprites. However, legion system enemies are not counted as part of the level's kill count and all they do is run forward and shoot.

NightFright, on 28 August 2020 - 12:40 PM, said:

Also heard stories that SS3 was actually supposed to be Doom 2016, but in the end things didn't work out and they converted it into a Serious Sam game. Which is why some enemies still look surprisingly close to Doom enemies (there's at least one that looks like a Baron of Hell).

Not exactly true. During the early stages of SS3's development, Croteam faced some financial issues so they tried to get some work for hire. They got a chance to have a meeting with id Software back in 2006 and tried to convince id to let them do Doom 4 with a presentation on Serious Engine but ultimately it fell through because of time zone and language barriers. The only things we know that were made for that presentation are the Canned Cain player model (the one that looks like a Doomguy) and the Khnum enemy (Baron of Hell). Since it's just a small tech demo to show to id what they can do, it does not appear that anything more was made for Croteam's Doom 4 presentation. Things like Cloned Soldiers' shirt color and the Scrapjack's resemblance to the Mancubus seems to be nothing more than paying homage to Doom.



By the way, new gameplay trailer's out!

[Ninety-Six]

PikaCommando, on 29 August 2020 - 12:50 AM, said:

From what I heard, only enemies close to you are rendered as 3d models and all the ones further away are sprites. However, legion system enemies are not counted as part of the level's kill count and all they do is run forward and shoot.

Y'know I was actually legit worried about if there would even be a total kill count with this system.

That being said, with the apparent scope of these levels, I wonder how they'll block access to the more distant locations. Or it the total kill count is less in regards completely clearing the level and more of just a number of overall kills to reach to consider it "complete."

[NightFright]

Has anyone seen the recommended system specs for SS4 on Steam yet?

8-core CPU @ 3.3 GHz
16 GB RAM
Nvidia 1080/2060 or AMD Vega64/5700 (8 GB)
40 GB disk space

That's surprisingly high for a title like that. Then ofc, if we'll really see "thousands" of enemies on screen at the same time, one could have guessed it doesn't come without a price. On the other hand, it also might mean Croteam will fail this time to provide an efficient engine. I gotta say I'm a bit disappointed since the game doesn't look THAT great so far to justify these specs.

[MusicallyInspired]

Serious engine has always been nicely scalable though. It might resemble a potato but I'm sure you can get acceptable performance on lower end systems.

[PikaCommando]

Are you all prepared for the biggest battle in FPS history?

[Ninety-Six]

Well, looks like they're definitely intractable, so not purely decoration.

Damn does that look awesome.

[NightFright]

German PC magazine gave 79% for the new Serious Sam game. Basically it's fun, just nothing really new and no real story. I guess we all expected that.

[Jimmy]

I watched a good chunk of FrameRater's pre-release livestream and GMan's video... it looks like Serious Sam's DNF. I don't even know if the patch can help the game recover from how bad it is.

[NightFright]

Well, Steam reviews are at 69% right now. Seems the game looks like SS3 but runs 3x worse. According to users, they released this one year too early.

Another fine example why you shouldn't buy anything on day 1, and never pre-order. Question is whether Croteam will still be around by the time I'm actually willing to buy. If they don't take their time any more to finish developing their titles, they must need money badly. Fingers crossed Shadow Warrior 3 will do better (also Devolver, but other devs).

[OpenMaw]

From what i've been hearing on the grapevine, the game is actually better than some of the reviews are indicating, because they were running a pre-patched pre-release version. The game is, apparently, much better now. Still some jank, and not the prettiest...

I don't know. I'm gonna wait a few weeks on this one and see what else people have to say.

[NightFright]

I wouldn't buy it right away one way or the other, it's the same to me. Anyway, Croteam can't afford to drop the ball on this. Serious Sam is all they got.

[Jimmy]

I really don't see how a patch can fix so many fundamental problems.

[NightFright]

Jimmy, do you happen to have the links for those videos you watched? I only know the promotional stuff and hardly anything critical.

[MusicallyInspired]

Jimmy, on 25 September 2020 - 12:47 PM, said:

I really don't see how a patch can fix so many fundamental problems.

Which are what?

[Jimmy]

Take a look for yourself;

[Steve 64]

Wow just wow the game out like that.

[Player Lin]

It seems they tried make something new which some of them are interesting but rush works and buggy engine ruined them all...wow, it's not good...

And it still like SS3, but worse...that's looks bad to Croteam...

[MusicallyInspired]

I liked SS3 quite a bit so if it's like that but for the bugs I'll at least enjoy the gameplay even if the graphics aren't as nice.

[Fantinaikos]

Duke Legacy, on 26 September 2020 - 03:45 AM, said:

Wow just wow the game out like that.

Player Lin, on 26 September 2020 - 05:47 AM, said:

It seems they tried make something new which some of them are interesting but rush works and buggy engine ruined them all...wow, it's not good...

And it still like SS3, but worse...that's looks bad to Croteam...

If this were true, this should be true for everyone right? Then what kind of complete Twitch playtrough I saw?

I'm talking about a playtrough with a vanilla copy at launch, with max graphic setting, with the penultimate Serious difficulty from begin (that also means more enemy on screen that SHOULD create all those framerate problems), on a very good PC but not super low-end tier.

No significant frame drops/freezes (max three times in the entire playtrough but literally less than 10 seconds), bugs or glitches happened. Only consistent complain from the player was unbidable weapon wheel keys and fixed sky.

This guy has done some kind of mumbo-jumbo to run his specific pre-patched copy almost flawlessy?

I have more reason to suspect a mixture of nitpicking and overestimation of problems.

Out of context, but not that much, GGmanlives is not exactly the best guy who ask if a game is already good enough with fixes or not: It is the same guy who overprized that bug messy of the pre-patched version of Blood Fresh Supply port.

[Jimmy]

I'd take FrameRater's word for it though. He's like the Serious Sam YouTuber. Anyway, you don't have to take GMan's word for it; It's very apparent how broken the pre-patch version was. But even if all the bugs and glitches are patched, it's still a boring, poorly paced game that forgets what makes Serious Sam fun. Serious Sam 3 had this problem, but this one takes it to a whole new level.

Furthermore why should we take your word for it? What Twitch stream did you watch?

[gemeaux333]

All the reviews I saw titled (in substance) "Certainly the worst FPS of 2020, will make you regret Duke Nukem Forever", I cannot say if this is true, personnally I am waiting the game to be available on Serious Sam Fusion with VR support...

[Player Lin]

Do not underestimate the damage from initial buggy versions of game, first impressions matter.

Yeah it'll getting better with patches but as Jimmy said, FrameRater's review hits the nail on Serious Sam 4's head, mostly, like the NPCs and dialogues...hell, I even feel Serious Sam 2's "over funny bullshit"(And I still like them.) was better than that...and I'm not sure they can be fixed by patches...

Still, I haven't buy and play the game so it just my own bullshit, but FrameRater's review seem made me re-considering about should I get SS4 or not.

[Jimmy]

FrameRater seemed to like the patch quite a bit. So at least it's not a buggy jankfest anymore. Still not sure if it looks worth buying or even playing to me though. Oh well, it's not like I can play it anyway so maybe by the time I get around to it they've patched it further.

[NightFright]

I have watched both FrameRater videos now. What I am filtering out is this:

1) The preview built he reviewed first was borked. Big surprise.
2) Day 1 patch sucks, though. That usually means devs were rushing things and the whole thing wasn't ready for release yet.
3) Many of the initial problems are fixed now.
4) "Standard" color setting sucks, go with "Vivid" (I really don't know how they can set the game to such a boring color scheme by default.)

In general I don't think I can criticize the game by myself without having played it. Since that won't happen before I buy it, which in return won't happen before I have the feeling it's sufficiently fixed, I can't really comment on it too much at this moment.

However, I still believe after watching all this footage that the game looks very much like its predecessor. Its standout feature, the huge enemy hordes, doesn't seem to be really used (probably out of concerns for system performance) and the skill/upgrade system is just something that Doom 2016/Doom Eternal already did and they basically copied it over. Whether it belongs into a Serious Sam game is certainly debatable. Some areas like that forest scene look nice, though, but I am sure it's nothing they couldn't have done in SS3 already.

So yeah, for me this means: Wait with the purchase until Xmas or next summer sale even - which I would have probably done one way or the other since I am not exactly playing much these days, anyway.

[Dzierzan]

Serious Sam games are often on sale, so untill it gets at least -50% on Steam, I am not going to buy it.

[Outtagum]

Maybe I'll grab it when it's $10, if I bother at all. SS3 tried my patience and I wasn't a big fan of the series anyways.

[William Beavis]

God, sounds like a massive letdown.

[gemeaux333]

Having plenty of time and Croteam having no plan to expand SSFusion I have decided to get it, and this is pretty good this far (I expected worst), just surprised I had to update the graphic driver to make it work...