balance? never heard of it.

@Mielus One Just follow the edge of the starting area and you'll find all three. One is up on a raised area of land and the other two are at the bottom of the cliff edges.

@Celestialray This map was tested on and designed for Serious and is balanced for Serious. That said, it is designed to be played with checkpoints on, as are all the maps I make. This is a map intended to be difficult where you bang your head against the wall until you succeed.

Can you people balance your maps on normal difficulty at least? I can run ng+10 on serious difficulty effortlessly, but your map is borderline impossible on serious difficulty.

Any one knows where the third skull is?
Even in fly mode I can't see it. It just isn't there. I even tried the totem itself.

it works, thanks.

Uploaded the fix now and it works, at least for me. Resub to Venerable Arachnoid to make sure you have the update and the level should load as normal.

This is an issue with the Venerable Arachnoid resource - it seems the recent update got rid of the .wav version of Scorp_General_SS4_Vox01, which is completely and utterly bizarre, idk why they'd do that, especially when they haven't removed the .wavs for the other vox sounds. I just need to change the path to use Scorp_General_SS4_Vox01.ogg instead of .wav and it'll be fixed, I'm working on it right now and will upload as soon as I'm done.

Content/SeriousSamSM/Levels/01_EUV/01_WinterOfDiscontent.wld: Content/SeriousSamSM/Databases/Puppets/Enemies/SS4/Arachnoid_Elder.ep: Content/SeriousSamSM/Models/Enemies/ArachnoidAdult/Arachnoid_ElderSM.mdl: Cannot open file Content/SeriousSamSM/Sounds/Enemies/Arachnoid/Scorp_General_SS4_Vox01.wav

After a long time, I passed an updated version of this map and I’ll say that the update did NOT save, the balance was slightly corrected at the start, and towards the end of the level, the balance crap himself again, and a new 2nd side was added - so-so, but the ONLY pros I'll put this map - this is music, and the rest is nothing at once and forgot!

nice improvements

But realy need more ammo.

RULES OF NATURE!

https://youtu.be/A4r2-9U63S4 Here's the Serious 100% run as promised.

Damn, now that is a hard map, but totally beatable! It may seem unfair at first, but intelligent play is required to win. Hint: dual-wielding is your friend.
First map? Good job!

This is a great map.

For a first map though, you did an awesome job! Can't wait to see what comes next (hopefully it's a bit easier, lol)

Damn, I think this is the hardest map I've played yet. Ammo is scarce, fights are difficult, and it always seems like you barely have enough resources to scrape by. I don't hate it but I'm thankful I never have to play it again! Serious 100% run coming out soon.

I do intend to make more maps and I have begun the foundations of a new one already. This map was always intended basically as a learning exercise to teach me how to use the Serious Editor and how to script with lua, as well as to get feedback on what I may have missed or done incorrectly so I can avoid making the same errors the next time around. Now that I know how to use the editor, I plan to put in a lot more time and effort to make something of a higher quality.

It's possible that the biomechs were disappearing because they were shooting each other, I haven't confirmed this but it could feasibly happen if you run at a sharp enough angle for their projectiles to hit each other. In any case, it is intended to use the black hole to kill them all, since there is no way in hell you could take the biomechs out with the weapons you are given - that is why the objective points out picking up the black hole, as I hoped this would imply to players that it's the only way to survive the fight.

Part 2/2

I liked the gimmick where you have to run against various rockets. But I didn't exactly understand that part. Sometimes, as I got closer, the Biomechs would start to disappear until there were fewer of them left. I then used the black hole and then the drone to kill the reploids. I don't know if I used the right strategy, but I didn't have much of a choice due to lack of heavy weapons.

Finally, I did what you intended in the last battle and used the time thing and killed all the Khnuns as fast as possible. Then I had to use a kind of lame strategy of sprinting in big circles and eventually turning around to kill some enemies, then repeat the procedure. The feeling of winning the battle was good because it's hard, but the process of winning is not exactly the most engaging gameplay in the world.

Anyway, I had fun with the map. I hope you create others, they will surely get better and better.

Part 1/2

Hi, I played it again. I think the map has improved considerably after the adjustments you made.

The first battle without getting the three skulls is much better. I think you made the right choice in preventing the player from unlocking everything at once because even if it was harder before, it wasn't the fun kind of difficulty.

The castle part now makes more sense. Maybe to keep the other players from being stuck outside, you can put in a teleport that throws them inside the arena. That battle is still insane and I could only win after some trial and error until I found a part in the arena where I forced all enemies to come from the front. I personally prefer battles that don't force me to look for ways to "cheese" it, but well, it's Serious Sam and there's always room for that.

The map is intended to be difficult, and it is pretty ball-busting on Serious, but I have reduced some of the enemies that are downright annoying. The final fight, however, is intentionally a little unfair because it is balanced around using the time stop you get from the side objective. My tactic is to use this to take out the khnums and reptiloids in safety before taking out the other enemies with the shotgun grenades and AK.
(2/2)

Thanks for your feedback. I have updated the mod and corrected some of the issues you brought up. It is no longer possible to activate multiple skulls at once (I have learned enough lua now to actually be able to script this), the enemy count is lowered in some fights (mainly the end fight, with fewer trash enemies and one less khnum, and the corridor fight before it) and I have added walls to lock the player into the arena in the castle fight and final fight. It is possible that these walls could lock players out of the fight in co-op, but if the game is set to respawn at checkpoints rather than respawn in place you can fix this by suiciding.
(1/2)

Part 2/2:

In fact, the last battle was too easy because I did that and killed all the Khnuns from a distance. However, I don't know if your intention was for the player to stand in the middle of the Khnuns, in which case I think the level again becomes unbalanced if played in Serious.

I had fun with the map, but I think you can improve a lot of things on it. Maybe trying to force the player to stay in the arenas is more interesting than making him run backwards, but you need to balance the monsters better because the way it is, at least for my skill (I consider myself a little above average, but not a great player) the arenas are too chaotic and unfair..

Okay, I didn't read the description and thought that the three skulls in the first part was the standard. Because of that, the beginning of the map was insane on Serious difficulty. Dealing with three bulls coming from the middle of the woods where you can't even see them while there are kamikazes, grenadiers, spiders, all at the same time doesn't seem reasonable to me.

The second part after the bridge is pretty unbalanced too, in my opinion, especially if you try to stay inside the arena. But if you just go back to the gate you will have ample room to deal with everything without too much difficulty.

After that, the map gets pretty easy because you have ample room to run backwards while doing crowd control with the shotgun grenades, ak and eventually two pistols.

Всё понятно, Сэм связался с Кхорном.

very nice, and very difficult and spicy. Although the weapon variation was pretty low (although could've been intentional), but overall i didn't run into any bugs other than the lighting bugs you have mentioned. The mgr reference was pretty epic too while running past the rockets