Homebrew WIP Serious Sam TFE and TSE port

[fgsfds]

This is a port of Serious Sam: The First Encounter and Serious Sam: The Second Encounter (Classic, not HD) based on Ryan C. Gordon's fork of the Serious Engine source code release.
It is still very janky and barebones, but after not working on it for 4 months I decided to release it rather than leave it rotting away in the dark corners of my hard drive.

Github repo: /fgsfdsfgs/Serious-Engine
Latest version: v1 (Dec 28, 2019)
Download link: Github release page




To install The First Encounter:
- unzip ssam_tfe_nx1.zip into the /switch/ folder on your SD card;
- copy over all the folders and files from your game folder, except the Bin folder, to /switch/ssam_tfe/;
- do not overwrite anything if it asks, or you will lose the default settings.

To install The Second Encounter:
- do the same, but use ssam_tse_nx1.zip and /switch/ssam_tse/.


Known issues (as of v1):

• The game takes a long time to load.
• Performance is quite bad, especially on some particular levels, which seems to mostly be caused by dynamic lights.
• The stock demos desync. I'm not sure if this is because this is technically version 1.10 and those are from 1.07, or because of something I did.
• Because this is version 1.10 and most PC servers run 1.07, you can't connect to them. Not sure if I can just change the version number to 1.07, since that might cause desync if there are any significant differences.
• Low framerate/broken timing in menus.
• You can't control the NETRICSA menus (except for quitting them with the PLUS button).

Notes:

• This probably requires full RAM access, so don't run it from the Album.
• If the game hangs at the first NETRICSA screen of the level, that means it's still loading, wait a few seconds.
• Splitscreen seems to work and I have set up controls for 4 players, but it will probably run like ass unless you overclock or disable dynamic lights.
  
• I have enabled the "Precache shadowmaps" option by default, which results in less lag in game, but significantly increases load times. If you don't want that, you can disable it in "Advanced options" -> "Rendering options".
• You can turn dynamic lights off for a performance increase by setting shd_iAllowDynamic in Scripts/PersistentSymbols.ini to 0, but beware: dynamic lights are an integral part of some levels.
• You can bring up the console by pressing MINUS. Press A to enter commands.
• Play around with the Scripts/PersistentSymbols.ini file and Advanced rendering settings. I still haven't figured out the optimal configuration. There must be some kind of option that causes the dynamic lights-related stutter.
• The source release in itself is slightly different from the retail release, so it might contain some glitches. I have not played through the whole game using this port.
  
• If the game crashes, take a look at the log file in the game folder (ssam_tfe/ssam_tfe.log or ssam_tse/ssam_tse.log).

Credits:

• Ryan C. Gordon for cleaning up Croteam's source release, porting it to SDL and making it more or less 64-bit clean;
• ptitSeb for some ARM- and mobile GPU-related optimizations and fixes;
• devkitPro for devkitA64 and libraries;
  
• Croteam for Serious Sam.

 

[Milenko]

Holy shit!

 

[Milenko]

Serious Sam is on sale for around a dollar on Steam too

 

[Kryak]

And it will get official port on new Fusion engine too. So this is cool, but better Serious Sam port are coming to Switch.

 

[fgsfds]

Croteam's probably busy doing Sam 4. Also this is the classic version.

 

[Kryak]

Croteam's probably busy doing Sam 4. Also this is the classic version.

They recently ported Fusion engine and released The Talos Principle for Switch. With fully ported Fusion engine they don't need to do much work to port all Serious Sam (including 4) games to Switch.

Anyway you're doing great job by porting classic engines to switch. Keep 'em coming!

 

[Milenko]

Works great!

 

[jeferey]

oh yeah! serious sam is very good thanks for the job!

 

[VirgileVILE]

Strangely, 2nd encounter not working for me (instant crash) but I used the same method for both.

 

[fgsfds]

Check the log.

 

[Ninn]

Nice work man! I'll give this a try later.

 

[Deleted member 323844]

Oh yeah, now we are cooking.

 

[fgsfds]

So it works with 4 controllers?

 

[Deleted member 323844]

So it works with 4 controllers?

Yes! It works fine. I'm using sys-con for gamepad compatibility.

As you already said, stuttering is a big problem once the enemies fill the screen. I have played First Encounter for about an hour and performance drops a lot until you clean the screen.

I have played with the default settings, disabling dynamic lights helps a lot there. But it would be great if you find a way to improve the suttering, since the regular framerate is perfectly playable.

 

[fgsfds]

Sadly I have no idea why the stuttering happens at all. I've been playing with the settings, but none seem to change it that much, aside from dynamic lights.

 

[yitzhaka]

Can play deathmatch mode on split screen?

 

[fgsfds]

Yes.

 

[yitzhaka]

Yes.

how?

 

[jeferey]

I can't reverse axe y?

 

[fgsfds]

how?

"Split screen" -> "New game" -> change "Game type" to "Fragmatch" or something else.

I can't reverse axe y?

"Options" -> "Players and controls" -> "Customize controls" -> "Advanced joystick setup" -> find "look u/d" and change "Inverted".