Croteam: HD remakes take a lot of work

HD remakes are all the rage these days, and Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter was but one of them. Since the groundwork for a remake has already been laid out, one could be forgiven for thinking that they’re easy to develop. However, studio boss Roman Ribaric has told us just how much work goes into a game like Serious Sam HD. 

“Funny how some think that HD is achieved by raising the resolution and that’s it,” states Ribaric. “Well, that’s not what HD actually means in the games development. At least not when it comes to Serious Sam HD. It’s changing key aspects to a higher quality level, adding some new things like leaderboards and achievements and making it possible (financially and technically) to have the continuous future improvements.

 “A lot of work had to be done to achieve HD mark. We first had to code the converters to import the old levels, so the gameplay could stay intact. Then we redid most of the levels geometry to get more details and also increased the quality or created the new level textures. Further, we recreated enemies in high poly, since we only have them previously modeled in low poly. Same was for enemy skins, first newly created in Zbrush and then finalized in Photoshop. Same procedure was also done for weapons. Key with all that work was not to loose that original feel.”

Ribaric also tells us about the new Serious Engine used in Serious Sam HD and reveals that Serious Sam 3 shall show off its true power: As for Serious Engine 3, it’s built from the Serious Sam 2 engine, but it was also heavily recoded. Multiplayer code was also heavily recoded. And a lot of work was invested to get that true HDR lighting, which calculates in a matter of minutes and not days or long hours as with other such engines. Although, you can’t see all the bells and whistles of new tech just yet. All that will be shown in full color in Serious Sam 3.”

So there. Not easy work.