There's not much left to do on Serious Sam Double D.. and then there's a lot left to do. We're currently finishing up the last area, which is actually two distinct envrionments. The time period and region for both environments is Pompeii around 79AD just before Mount Vesuvius erupts.
The first area is an exterior view of the city of Pompeii with the volcano in the background. And *naturally* the second area is in the volcano itself! Turns out that the evil Mental's henchmen have built massive power sucking devices which hover over the lava and aborb the heat, transferring the energy through time to the Big Bad himself! Sam's job isn't so much to disable the devices, but rather make his way through this area to the final boss.
Early construction of the Pompeii exterior area. Art is still being tweaked, plus there's no cool enemies shown yet. (Click to ZOOM)
Currently I'm finishing up art I had roughed in before, Hamdija is still working on music tracks, Richard is coding background effects, and AJ is tweaking story elements and dialog.
What's in the Pompeii area? Well not to spoil everything but the enemies in final levels are more consistently BIG. As in, giant, walking caterpillar as big a building BIG. A caterpillar that stands up and acts like a massive wall. And has 3 different guns. And has a detachable head. Yeah, it all makes sense in the game. Serious sense.
Serious Sam games are famous for the fun secrets, and we're working to make some great ones. We wanted to make sure you get the most enjoyment out of those unique secrets. To that end, we're also implementing a special Secrets Menu. Instead of the typical version of completing a level and seeing you found 4/7 secrets, now you'll be able to look any time at this menu and see any level you've been in, and all the secrets you've found. There will be the full name and full description of each secret.
And we're even looking at a way for you to visit them! For instance, if you find one of the 'comedy secrets' and really want to show a friend, you can just open the Secrets Menu, find that secret and click 'Visit' and you'll be loaded into the level just before the funnies. Still working out the kinks but so far it's pretty cool.
And then there's installation, localization and all that fun stuff. Oh and still the final boss. So we're close, but still a little ways to go. But we're getting there!
Pompeii are looking pretty awesome.
My history geekery requires me to point out that if this takes place just before the eruption, then the mountain should have a tip, not a crater. The crater only appeared after the top of the mountain was blown off during the actual eruption.
Not to criticize, it looks good, just needed to point that out.
Yeah, at first I thought the scene was just after the eruption.
The AD79 eruption of Mt Vesuvius was the last eruption it had, not the first, with records of there being craters previous to the AD79 eruption.
@CMDKeen
Thanks! The new enemies are coming into being currently. Still finishing art, fixing up some code bugs.
@Pompeii accuracies
Right, so the tip of the mountain is off with smoke coming out to simply look more interesting, via artistic license. It's meant to quickly and succinctly convey the situation to the player, while hiding the action (actual eruption) for later.
This screenshot is from the first level in this area. The next level here is during the exterior eruption, then you get to travel inside (for even more inaccuracies! Via Mental and his band of mongrels.)
@makemeunreal
Thanks! We're targeting a July release on the PC, 360 to follow. I'm going back to making, making, making right after this comment!