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Serious Sam handled massive amounts of enemies on 56k modem connections

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Re: Serious Sam handled massive amounts of enemies on 56k modem connections

#51
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's assume, just for laughs, that I know a little history. Many people have been burnt alive, Bruno included, Galileo excluded. Bruno was a singular immolation for multiple heresy's, the Cathari were immolated en masse along with non heretics (for God to sort out) .. but none for claiming the earth traveled about the sun, Bruno (IIRC) made waves for denying actual core beliefs. ( Wikipedia cites Bruno not accepting…

You somehow missed it was the highly educated, clerical class not some illiterate peasants, who burned him at the stake.

I don't agree with your implied 1:1 isomorphism between "traditional societies" and "illiterate peasants".

Many would argue that the "highly educated, clerical class" of those times represented a rigidly traditional society that punished any who deviated slightly from their norms.

Re: Serious Sam handled massive amounts of enemies on 56k modem connections

#52

Impressive writeup. The deterministic aspect is not super popular anymore, I guess, but this entire post does make me wonder how the networking layer compares to a slightly more modern multiplayer game.

It's very common in RTS. StarCraft 1 and 2 also use rolling lockstep.

Re: Serious Sam handled massive amounts of enemies on 56k modem connections

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found devastating that in The Talos Principle 2 they had dropped their own engine and used Unreal Engine instead.

Me too. I think the main reason is that the lead render developer left, and switched to google to work on Stadia.

Ouch.

Re: Serious Sam handled massive amounts of enemies on 56k modem connections

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too. I think the main reason is that the lead render developer left, and switched to google to work on Stadia.

Ouch.

So now that lead is looking for a job? :)

Re: Serious Sam handled massive amounts of enemies on 56k modem connections

#55

I was one the developers responsible for implementing the netcode on Serious Sam. We often slept under the desks in the offices at croteam after lurking usenet. One post in particular described the QuakeWorld prediction system which inspired us. That night we coded a simplistic mvp as a colleague (hi dan) tested it over an old 486 nix machine acting as a router that we could simulate lag with. This was well before th…

Awesome.

I loved that game.

I was a huge fan of co-op games and shooters, but all my friends wanted to play Counter Strike all the time.

With Serious Sam I could at least sometimes motivate them to play something I liked.

Thanks for your service! :D

Re: Serious Sam handled massive amounts of enemies on 56k modem connections

#56

Serious Sam was such a fun game - this was a really interesting write up too. I wish this kind of dedication to low latency and efficiency was more widespread.

totally agree. it was revolutionary at the time for the number of enemies on the screen. even at the time the vibe was very much, “croteam knows what they’re doing”. really neat to be reading about this so many years later.

It still is revolutionary. Serious Sam 4 still doesn't take itself seriously. Best money i've spent on a shooter since ... Serious Sam 3.

I do miss the sledgehammer.

Re: Serious Sam handled massive amounts of enemies on 56k modem connections

#58
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You somehow missed it was the highly educated, clerical class not some illiterate peasants, who burned him at the stake.

I don't agree with your implied 1:1 isomorphism between "traditional societies" and "illiterate peasants". Many would argue that the " highly educated, clerical class " of those times represented a rigidly traditional society that punished any who deviated slightly from their norms.

The original point was about the evils of traditional religious societies and brain washing. Religion is a convenient way to kill people, and a way to brain wash the masses. Of course it is both easier and harder than the meme religion is bad because of its apparent need of traditional catharsism through burning people. You seem to agree with this so what are we discussing?

Re: Serious Sam handled massive amounts of enemies on 56k modem connections

#59

Croteam is such a talented team of game developers. I really enjoyed the Talos Principle (1 and 2) and they were some of the early pioneers of a completely custom Vulkan game engine for the first game.

I found devastating that in The Talos Principle 2 they had dropped their own engine and used Unreal Engine instead.

Talos 2 was a great game. Except the awful TAA. Made some of the meta puzzles almost impossible for me, because I literally couldn't see certain things.
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