Featured Mod - Dunes

How do you do, fellow kids? With so many amazing mods in the Serious Sam 4 Workshop, I would guess you’re doing great! And so are we.

We are less than a month removed from the launch of the Serious Editor, and the Workshop is already 150+ mods strong. The support our modding community has shown to the game has been unreal, but in all honesty, we knew you were amazing, so we expected it. In between of working on our next big thing, our team is checking out your amazing work, and enjoying it immensely, and while we have tried numerous cool mods in the last couple of weeks, we keep coming back to Dunes. That’s exactly why we decided to feature it in today’s post.

Dunes is an absolutely amazing mod that remakes one of the most iconic Serious Sam: The First Encounter maps, and adds a touch of Serious Sam 4 to it, along with some spicy additions courtesy of the powerful noam 2000. Noam has been living and breathing Serious Sam for years, so it’s no surprise that his mod managed to capture the emotion of the original game, and bring back many nice memories to many people, which is evident as soon as you play it and/or check out the comments section on the Dunes Workshop page.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2431956204

If you haven’t already, hit that subscribe button and go back in time, feel the sand between your toes, and the action on your trigger finger. It’s well worth it. While the mod is downloading, make sure to check out the latest edition of Basement Chats with Yasen, and find out what inspired Noam to take us back to where it all started.

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Basement Chats with Yasen

Welcome to the basement chat everyone! Today I'm sitting here in my little comfy basement with a community veteran and friend whom I've known for almost 10 years now – Noam2000!

⚪ Welcome Noam, please make yourself at home, and before we jump to talk about Dunes- please share with us your story with the Serious Sam community. How did everything start with you and the serious editor?

Hey, thanks for having me on! Serious Sam has been part of my life for about as long as I can remember, and even before I officially joined the community I still used to lurk around to snatch mods and cool custom maps. I joined at a fairly young age of 11, originally just for some help in regards to broken achievements in BFE, but somehow I got sucked into being part of the community when I felt I'm among people who share the same passion as I do.

As for the editor, it's pretty easy - the community was always very modding-focused, and I always enjoyed mods and custom maps. It was actually Pan, the person previously interviewed on here, who pushed me to start modding. When he started pumping out a bunch of tutorials, that sparked the lightbulb in me - "Hey, I wanna try this!" He was also extremely helpful and patient with me, not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed. From there, I just kept playing around with it and tripping a lot on the way until I got where I am today.

⚪ For 10 years in the community, you have released plenty of custom content for the people out there to have fun with. Which mod are you most proud of and why?

That's a good question - for most of my modding career, I was mostly messing around and just doing the things I felt like making or felt like would be fun to play. If I had to pick though, the Tennis 2018 projects (Blue, Red) are the ones I sunk the most time into, with trying to manage a large group of modders and working overtime to polish the campaign and give it that unique "new game" feeling.

Other honorable mentions would be I Hate Running Backwards for Fusion, which I worked on in collaboration with Binx Interactive to promote their shoot 'em down game of the same name, some of my Fusion campaign maps like Vortex Island and Ashenite 13, and of course, everyone's favorite, Serious Horsam, though "proud" is very much stretching it on that one.

⚪ Ah, Horsam... You may not be proud of it, but I’m very proud of you for that one. Now, let's fast forward to 2021 – Serious Sam 4 has launched, and you get your hands on the latest Serious Editor. Your first project for it is a Dunes port, which currently holds first place on the most subscribed workshop mods list with double the numbers of the second-placed mod. Why did you decide to create this Dunes port and were you surprised by how popular the mod has become?

Funnily enough, Dunes came to be just a few days before the editor's public release – since I'm mostly busy these days developing my indie title, I haven't had the time to sink deeply into mods, so I was mostly experimenting and learning about the new SED (as well as of course testing it). Dunes came to be part of the process when I wanted to see how possible it would be to port another map. It was both simple enough and iconic enough to be the perfect candidate.

I was definitely surprised by the reception. I mean, I didn't even want to release it at first. I debated with friends whether I should, out of fear that people would complain it's a port and not something original. Finally, I thought it would make for a nice entry-point mod for the workshop, and I'm glad people are enjoying it. How can you not enjoy some Dunes?

⚪ From modding to game development? Sounds exciting! A little birdie told me your upcoming game was inspired by a mod of yours for Serious Sam Fusion. Can you please share with us a bit more about the game you are creating and when did you decide that it’s time for you to go to the next level and start developing your own game?

MicroWorks is a fast-paced party game where you and a bunch of your friends are lumped together and compete against each other to complete "microgames" - tiny tasks with equally tiny amounts of time to complete. It's a concept that I personally adore and one that's been prominent in game mods, but never had its potential tapped into, which felt to me like the right direction to go in.

Around the time I was done with Tennis was also when I was fresh out of high school and needed to start thinking about a career path. I knew without a doubt that making games is where my passion lies, and my modding history left me with a lot of experience. Modding and actual game development are two completely different beasts though, and I felt I needed to conquer the next stage to prove my abilities

⚪ I wish you all the best in that endeavor and I hope you will still find time to create something with our Serious Editor every now and then. I do have something else to throw at you before I let you go. Is there a message you wish to relay to the community or something you want to end this interview with?

Thanks again for having me on! I've been waiting a long time for the editor to come out, and I can't wait to see the stuff people pump out. Serious Sam 4 is one of my most favorite in the series, and I'm sure the modding scene is only going to get stronger from it.

Thank you for taking the time, Noam. This was a great chat.

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Are you making mods yourself? We'd love to take a look and share it for everyone else to see. Reach out to our community team directly via Discord, or holler at us via Twitter - @croteam, @serioussamiam, @danny_hr, and @yasenstavrev.

Much love from Croteam! Danny