Bakshra: Please introduce yourself and give us a little background about your job at Croteam.

Admir: My name is Admir Elezovic and I am “3D guy” as they call me here. I do 3d modeling and working with Tomislav on animations for characters that will appear in game.

Bakshra: I’ve heard many people comment about the name “Serious Sam”, saying it’s quite an odd name for a FPS. Where did the name originate, and have you ever been under any pressure to change it?

Admir: I think name came up from one brainstorming night, Roman suggested that name, we accepted it and liiiiiiike it a lot. In the beginning some people in feedback asked to change name because it wasn’t “right” for FPS game but now everyone likes it.

Bakshra: Whenever someone thinks Serious Sam, they automatically think about hoards of enemies, a flashback to the early FPS games. What else do you think will draw people to the game?

Admir: Besides that, variety of environment (open bright outside and closed darker inside), cool weapons, many different enemies you will encounter, that arcade feeling, with adrenaline pumping and you hear sounds all around you. With engine capabilities, if you have fast machine you will experience maximum joy of playing and if your machine is slower there will be options to turn some texture/geometry details down so everyone could play. Environment are rich with details, effects and complex geometry, that should be enough for people to love Serious Sam.

Bakshra: Do any of the levels that have been made to date, or are currently in construction, take advantage of the day/night cycle feature in the engine? If so, to what scale is the cycle in the game in comparison to our 24 hours cycle?

Admir: We are working on levels that will have atmosphere transition, from day to night, from sunny day to storm…, obviously you wont have to wait 24 hours for the shift, it will be smoothly timed with game progress. Can’t say more, don’t want to spoil the surprise 🙂

Bakshra: A number of pictures showing the Serious Sam level editor can be found on the Croteam website. Has the decision been made to include or exclude the editor from the final game package?

Admir: We are getting emails from people whom are working or have worked on MODS for other games like Unreal, HL and Quake. There is large interest on the internet to make conversion and MODs for Serious Sam. We are working parallel on game and tools (tutorials, help, examples) that will be included with Serious Sam and on our site with SDK so people will be able to learn and work with them.

Bakshra: How simple would it be for someone to use if they were familiar with editors such as UnrealED or QERadiant?

Admir: Well, tools (both Editor and Modeler) are polished and really cool features have been implemented to make the designers and artists life easier. Serious Editor’s realtime editing/testing features will be joy to anyone who’s ever tried other editors. No compiling needed, everything is almost realtime, you can build and play from editor.

Bakshra: It seems like every game company has to cut features out of their product to keep it on schedule. Are there any features you’d really like to see in Serious Sam that won’t make it into the final product?

Admir: It’s hard to say now, we have some cool ideas that we try to include in Serious Sam, will see how it all ends because of time deadlines.

Bakshra: Have any companies shown interest in licencing the Serious Sam engine? Is it being used in any non-FPS software titles?

Admir: Yes, we have talked with some gaming companies about licencing Engine, but until they are finalized I cant say anything.

Bakshra: Are there any melee weapons planned for the full game? Are you at liberty to discuss any of their features?

Admir: You have military knife which is only one so far. For this type of game more wouldn’t be any point. Other weapons that will be included in final version of game are really cool and well balanced, hope people will like them like ones from Test version.

Bakshra: Is there a Linux port of the game planned? If not, what are the reasons behind the decision?

Admir: It’s in plans, some porting has been done but nothing is sure for now, we will see how it all ends.

Bakshra: Thank you very much for taking time out of your busy schedule to chat with us!

Admir: np, thank you for your interest.

Related Links
   • Croteam website
   • Serious Sam Public Test 2