Hello, I've been playing this mod on and off for the last couple of weeks on Serious Difficulty and have a couple bugs and suggestions to post.
First I just want to say this is one of the coolest mods for Serious Sam I have ever seen. The visuals are incredible, the music by Senmuth compliments the maps brilliantly, and I really like how weapons with secondary firemodes are balanced around needing to have the alternate ammo type. The environments are absolutely gorgeous and are hands down the most visually unique since probably Next Encounter.
Onto the bugs:
- If playing with the Classics Patch the XM8, SS2 Plasma, Flamethrower, and a couple other automatic weapons will have incredibly fast fire rates. This can be fixed in the Classics Patch options via "Gameplay Customization" and disabling the "Fix Timers" option that prevents the slow down bug. Even though the user can fix this issue, I hope it's something that will be looked into.
- Cluster Grenades fired by the Grenade Launcher's secondary fire can randomly fly in random trajectories, usually above and slightly behind the player for some reason. It doesn't happen every time but often enough that it can make using Cluster Grenades feel like a gamble.
- In the first level, Ancient Cambodia - Overgrown Ruins, the door leading to the final arena doesn't open after beating the fight with the 2 Next Encounter cannon statues.
- The level Planet Atlantis - Crystal Mountains cannot be played. Trying to open the map results in the following console message: File 'SoundsF\Destruction\Impact_StoneLarge01.wav' does not exist
Suggestions:
- If possible, please add input buffering for secondary attacks. If switching to a weapon like the Rocket or Grenade Launcher, holding down the secondary attack key doesn't do anything. You have to release and re-press the secondary attack key to make the weapon fire once it's finished being fully drawn.
- Please please please, for the love of God and all that is holy, remove/disable "fast monsters" on Serious Difficulty. I think the idea itself is really cool and could make for an interesting custom mutator. Being on by default for Serious Difficulty though feels like complete bs, especially in the case of large monsters like Highlanders or that one blue Bull Soldier from the end of that one fight in the Angkor Wat level. In the span of it firing off 3 rocket volleys it's pretty consistently able to run up and one shot Sam with an undodgeable melee attack.
- The final fights of Forgotten Temple & Warrior's Way, the Ghostbuster fight of Bayon Temple, the last 2 arenas of Angkor Wat, pretty much the entirety of Fungal Caverns (especially the room where you pick up the statue with all the faces on the wall) are very over tuned and have quite a few things in common. Commonalities include Serious Speed pickups that are either absent entirely or don't respawn after being used, spawning 5~7 waves of monsters in a row without any pauses or meaningful resupplies, and spawning additional rushing enemies in largely projectile based waves that immediately follow a large wave of rushing enemies. I haven't mentioned any of the Planet Atlantis levels purely because I haven't spent much time on them yet so will probably comment on them at a later date.
- Fine tune enemy melee attacks to ensure they match the attack animations. The Snake & Poison Crab enemies from Fungal Caves and the SS2 Neanderthals with shields in particular have melee attacks that far exceed the range of their melee animation and can hit the player from pretty considerable distances. Of course this is super noticeable because of fast monsters which if nothing else gets changed please at least change this, I beg you.
Sorry for the long rant. I'm honestly in love with this mod and think it has potential to be one of, if not, the greatest Sam mod to exist. It takes elements from all the Sam games and manages to stand alone as a completely unique experience. I really hope you will remove fast monsters from Serious Difficulty and will consider reviewing how some of the fights play.
The best way to summarize my experience with this mod would be something like this: The levels are extremely fun to play up until you get to that one arena fight that takes 26 retries and some secret Serious Bombs I thankfully stumbled across in order to beat.