PC Gamer

ABOVE: Davor Hunski

demonstrates

Croteam’s unique

mocap solution.

BELOW: I mean, this

is pretty much

everything you need

to know about Sam.

Serious Sam 4: Planet Badass

COVER FEATURE

BOT FRIENDS

How Croteam uses bots to test its games

1

Croteam built a bot to help it

test The Talos Principle. The

bot doesn’t solve the problems,

instead it learns the key points

of the solution from a human

and then plays them through,

reporting any bugs or oddities.

2

The bots can be set to move

at high speeds. A human

might take ten or so hours to

solve The Talos Principle

without any help, but the bot

can complete the same task in

just one hour.

While visiting this part, Croteam’s

head of music, Damjan Mravunac,

sang a sad song about not wanting to

go to E3 with the communications

team because of their merciless

ribbing about said unfinished studio.

Strumming along also helped him

keep his guitar out of the comms

team’s hands as its members

threatened to cut the strings in the

manner of siblings determined to get

a rise out of an older brother. Serious

stuff... Anyway, back to the hands-off

time I had with the game:

The demo deposits Sam ‘Serious’

Stone in the middle of the French

countryside. He’s about three

kilometres away from his target; the

town of Carcassonne. He heads to the

road and procures a motorbike by

blasting an alien who is busily

munching the bike’s original owner.

Moments later a charging werebull

sends Sam flying.

Soon after dispatching the

werebull I’m watching a horde

ambush Sam from all sides, running

towards him, flailing. If I had the

controls this is probably the moment

my muscle memory would kick in

and send me jogging backwards in

circles while lining up shots.

HORDE MODE

As the demo progresses we hear from

other survivors, one of whom chucks

a sniper rifle out of a church tower so

Sam can lend a hand disposing of

monsters. It’s a little after this that we

end up in that cornfield atop a

combine harvester, listening to a

jaunty banjo tune and mulching the

heck out of orange jumpsuited folk.

I figured that would be the

centrepiece of the demo. It’s

definitely emblematic of the

franchise’s daft shooteryness. But it’s

the next (and final) sequence which I

think will be the most tantalising – a

full army of enemies appearing over

the crest of a hill. My experience of

Serious Sam is of this omnidirectional

drip-feed of screaming jerks – this is

more akin to a Total War battlefield.

This charge is where the demo

ends, but the uptick in scale speaks to

the scope of Serious Sam 4. Croteam

says that the game will feature the

biggest individual levels the franchise

has ever had, and that this and a new

terrain engine will support the epic

battles which the demo hints at. As

Alen Ladavac, Croteam’s chief

technology officer and the lead on

Serious Sam 4, tells me: “Terrains are

not just rocks and flora, but a

stomping ground for the brand-new

feature – Legion System – that can

render hundreds of thousands of

enemies in a single scene. So we can

have human armies clash with

Mental’s troopers in huge battles.”

This change in scope is part of the

‘Planet Badass’ theme of the game.

3

The reports are marked by

putting pins in the level

with text to explain the issue.

Devs can then easily see when

an object is falling through the

floor, a door won’t open or a

tree is floating in midair.

4

The bot for testing Serious

Sam works similarly, but

it’s smarter. Croteam points out

that it can play the game better

than humans, so if it dies before

finishing a level then the team

knows the difficulty is too high!