Serious Sam: The Second Encounter

Release 1.07

Release notes

Developed by: Croteam


IMPORTANT: Voodoo3 users, please see Voodoo3 drivers.

Contents:

1. Introduction
2. System requirements
3. Troubleshooting
4. Tips and tricks
5. Gameplay difficulty problems
6. Hardware compatibility issues
7. Updates
8. Legal Information


IMPORTANT:
If you have any problems running the game, please see troubleshooting.
If you feel that the game is too easy or too hard for you, please see difficulty settings.

1. Introduction


If you are eager to start playing right now, we recommend that you skim through the manual first, and get familiar with the game's interface. Make sure you don't miss out on how to use the NETRICSA!

For those who like to read the game background before they jump into the gameplay, we recommend to visit the Croteam site and take a look at the loads of materials we have prepared there for you.

For discussions about the game, tips, news and general chat, take a look at the Serious Sam forum.

2. System requirements


Minimum:
AMD K6-3 400MHz, Pentium II or Celeron-A 300MHz
64MB RAM
Fully OpenGL compliant 3D accelerator
100% Windows compatible sound card
Windows 95 OSR2, Windows 98, Windows 98SE, Windows ME, Windows NT 4.0 (with Service Pack 5), Windows 2000 or WindowsXP operating system
150MB free hard disk space

Recommended:
AMD Athlon 650MHz or Pentium III 650MHz range processor
192MB RAM
3rd generation full OpenGL compliant 3D accelerator with 32MB RAM
Creative Labs SoundBlaster Live
450MB free hard disk space

For full experience:
AMD Athlon 1GHz or Pentium III 1GHz range processor
256MB RAM
4th generation full OpenGL compliant 3D accelerator with 64MB RAM




3. Troubleshooting


Although Croteam has invested all efforts to provide maximum compatibility with all hardware configurations, there are some cases that cannot be remedied programmatically, but require an intervention from the user. We are sorry for the inconvenience, but those problems are beyond our control and are usually caused by limitations imposed by the operating system, faulty drivers or other problematic software installed on your machine.

Here is the list of the cases and suggested remedies:

FatalError: 'Cannot set display mode'

Sometimes "Serious Sam" won't start, and will report the above error message. Here are the possible reasons and suggested remedies:

- You run the game on 8 bit, 15 bit or 24 bit desktop on Windows 95.

Windows 95 do not allow applications to change the display color depth at runtime, and some 3D cards will not allow OpenGL acceleration at the listed color depths. You should set the desktop bit depth manually, in 'StartMenu/Settings/ControlPanel/Display/Settings'. The recommended color depth is 16 bit (64k colors, or 65536 colors).

- You do not have a proper OpenGL or DirectX driver for your card installed.

See here for a list of recommended 3D card drivers.


Game crashes at startup

If you have incompatible video card drivers installed, if something else is bad in your system, or if you have changed some of the advanced rendering options, the game might not be able to start at all.
This especially can be the case with Voodoo1 and Voodoo2 cards if your primary video card has broken OpenGL support.

To remedy this:
a) Make sure you have all the proper drivers installed, and
b) try to start one of the two predefined Safe Modes.

Choppy performance or 'stuttering'

On some mis-configured systems, you may experience extreme slowdowns, or game playing very unsmoothly. Here are the possible reasons and suggested remedies:

- Old motherboard drivers for AMD or VIA chipsets.
See here on how to update your motherboard drivers.

- Old or incompatible 3D card drivers.
This happens often with the Voodoo3 cards, but can also happen with other models.
See here for the list of recommended 3D card drivers.

- Misconfigured or incompatible joystick drivers.

"Serious Sam" tries to auto-disable joystick reading if it detects faulty drivers, but this mechanism might fail in some cases.

Even if you think you don't have any joystick installed, please double check in the Game Controllers configuration in the Windows' Control Panel. Maybe you don't remember that it was installed once, or maybe it was autoinstalled without you knowing it. Also, it may be possible that you have installed a driver that is not compatible with your operating system. (E.g. this can happen if you install some Win98 joystick drivers on WinME.) To uninstall a joystick driver, go to Control Panel and open Game Controllers. Select the joystick/controller. Press Remove.

- Too high quality settings

Unless you have a very fast 3D accelerator, your system may not be capable of running "Serious Sam" in 32 bit modes, at high resolutions or at high sound quality settings.
See here for information on how to configure the game for improved performance.


No sound in game

- If this happens to you, you probably have some other application running in the background that has taken control of the sound hardware. Usually this happens if you run some MP3 players, or other multimedia programs in the background. - It can also happen if you play over the Internet using GameSpy Arcade, and you have sounds enabled in the GSA. Please see GameSpy help on how to disable sounds in GSA.


Sound crackling or stuttering

This symptom is usually due to either:
a) Sound hardware incompatibility
Some sound cards do not work well with some interfaces, or sound output formats.
- Try selecting a different sound driver in the 'Options->Audio Options' menu.
- Try lowering the sound frequency. Some drivers do not work properly at higher frequencies like 44kHz.
b) or performance problems
If the game has an overall slow framerate, the sound output quality will suffer. See here on how to improve the overall performance.


DualHead/TwinView/HydraVision and multi-monitor not working under Win95, Win98 and WinME

This is a known limitation of those operating systems. Windows 95, 98 and ME cannot support OpenGL acceleration if multi-monitor support is enabled.
To be able to take advantage of the multimonitor support in "Serious Sam", you must have Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 or Windows XP, and proper 3D card drivers that support OpenGL acceleration with multiple monitors.
Known cards that support this feature are:
- All Matrox cards with DualHead technology
- nVidia GeForce 2 MX TwinView
- ATI Radeon HydraVision
However, there might be some issues regarding this feature caused by some system configurations and/or improper drivers.


Crashes when switching between full-screen and window modes

On some operating systems (especially Win95) and/or hardware setups, switching full-screen and windowed mode might not work properly. This is a driver issue and cannot be fixed from our side.
See here for the list of recommended 3D card drivers.


Crashes when switching resolutions

Some systems crash in the display driver if you change the resolution from within the game. This doesn't appear to be directly connected with the display driver version, but rather with the overall Windows setup.
To remedy this, first go to the windowed mode (by pressing Alt+Enter) and then change the resolution back to the full screen resolution that you desire, in the Video Options.


Mouse feeling laggy

Some people feel that the movement-smoothing system used in "Serious Sam" makes their mouse movements feel laggy and not sharp enough. To disable that, turn the 'Sharp Turning' option ON. See here on configuring your mouse controls.


Mouse wheel scrolling or the 3rd mouse button not working

"Serious Sam" supports both mouse wheel scrolling and the 3rd mouse button. However, you must have proper drivers installed and configured properly. Here are the tips:
- Make sure that you don't have the 3rd mouse button bound to behave as double-click. You can adjust that option from within your mouse configuration program or from the Windows 'Control Panel'.
- Your mouse driver must support true mouse wheel scrolling. Emulation modes are not supported.
- For Logitech mice, if you experience problems with the mouse wheel, install Logitech Mouseware version 9.22.


Joystick stopping to work after changing levels in a network game

If you are a client in a network game, and you use a joystick to control your character, when crossing to another level, the joystick may report an error and stop functioning.
This is driver dependent, and it happens only in network and only with some joystick models.
To prevent this, immediately after you have started the game, invoke the game console (by pressing F1), then type:

/inp_bAutoDisableJoysticks=0

and press Enter.

Cannot connect to an internet game

If you cannot connect to an internet game there are several possible reasons:
- You are using personal firewall software, or a hardware firewall or NAT. Such software or hardware can block game data traffic between your computer and the server that you are trying to connect. It all depends on how it is set up.
You should configure your firewall to allow "Serious Sam" to access the internet, and forward the ports 25600-25601 (both TCP and UDP). You should check the firewall's documentation on how to do that.
Also note that a firewall might add additional lag to the network packets transferred and that might make the game unplayable for you. You should always try to play without the firewall if possible.
- You have a 33.6k or slower modem, or cannot connect at 56k speeds.
If you have a slow modem or poor connection, you will usually not be able to connect to a network game, especially if it is a cooperative game on a large level. This is due to the great amount of data that needs to be transferred. You can try to find a server that runs some smaller Deathmatch worlds, like the Desert Temple.


Poor performance in a network game

See network tips on how to improve the network gaming performance.


Error messages in network

Below is a short list of error message that can occur in network games and their meanings:

When connecting:

- This server requires password to connect!
- Wrong password!
The server administrator has configured the server so that only people who know the password can play on it.

- Server full
- Too many players in session
The server has every allocated player spot filled. Look for a server with open spots.

- Wrong CRC check
- CRC error in DIFF
Game installation on your computer differs from the one on the server.
It may be that one of the installations was damaged accidentally, that one of the computers is infected with a virus, or that one of the installations was modified with new levels or models that don't match the other one.


While playing:

- Admin: some_message_text
The server administrator has kicked you out of the server for some reason.

- Gamestream synchronization lost
- Connection timeout
- No valid SYNCCHECK received for too long
The link between your computer and the server has difficulties and cannot transmit the game traffic at necessary rate.

- "Level change in progress. Please retry.
You have tried to connect while the server was changing between two levels. You must wait a bit for the server to finish the transition and then try again.


Screen Tearing

On some systems, when standing in place and rotating your view left-right quickly with the mouse, it might seem like the bottom of the screen is lagging behind the top of the screen. It can appear as if the screen is divided into stripes by one or more horizontal lines.
This is a usual effect known as 'Screen Tearing', noticed only if you concentrate on it, and doesn't really affect the gameplay.
It is caused by the rendering not being synchronized with the vertical refresh rate of your monitor. The option is usually present in one of the advanced settings options in the Display Preferences in Windows. It is driver-dependent and will be different for each video card. You should consult your video card driver manual for details on this (if any available).

There is an option to turn the vsync on/off from "Serious Sam" in the menu 'Options->Video Options->Rendering Options'. But this will work only on some 3D cards.
Note that, even though turning the vsync on might remedy this, it will as well limit your framerate in game.

Strange graphics glitches in the distance

Sometimes you can see strange graphics artifacts in the distance. It will usually appear as areas with small moving stripes and will change as you move your view, or as two objects sorted wrong. This is called 'z-fighting' and appears always on larger distances if you are running any 3D game in 16-bit display mode. It is a hardware precision limitation. We try to patch as many of these as we can to make them less visible. Try running at a 32-bit display mode, it should disappear. Note that, on some older 3D cards, 32-bit display modes might not be supported, or may cause slowdowns.



4. Tips and tricks


Network Tips

- When playing cooperative on slower computers, you might experience slowdowns. This is normal. Minimum required configuration is tested for single player gaming. If you play cooperative with lot of players, more action goes on on the screen, and your computer might not be capable to process it all.

- Cooperative games with lot of action and players might experience overall slowdowns on all computers. This is usually due to the server being overloaded.
Please try running a dedicated server. You can do that by selecting the Dedicated option when starting a server in "Serious Sam", or you can start the real dedicated server application from the Start menu.
If you are playing over internet, try to find servers that give you a better ping and have fewer players.

- If lot of different player models are used by other players in the game, and your computer has too little RAM, your performance might suffer. To remedy this, you can make all players appear as "Serious Sam" on your computer, regardless of which settings they use. Before joining the game, invoke game console by pressing the F1 key, type:

/plr_bOnlySam=1

and press Enter.

- Poor performance in a network game can sometimes be caused by not so good overall performance of your game setup. See general performance tips on how to improve the overall game performance.


How to run a true dedicated server

Although there is an option to run a dedicated server from within the "Serious Sam" game application, a separate 'true dedicated server' application is also included. This application is a fully automated server that runs in a console window. It does not require any 3D acceleration or sound resources, and is therefore suitable for running on network server computers.
You can run it from the Start menu, using one of the shortcuts in the 'Serious Sam/Start Dedicated Server' Start menu folder. Four predefined configurations for running deathmatch or cooperative games are included. 'Demo Cooperative' runs the 'KarnakDemo' level, cycling difficulties between Normal, Hard and Serious. 'Default Cooperative' runs the entire game on Normal.
If you want to reconfigure the server or add new configurations, you should take a look at the configuration scripts in the 'Scripts\Dedicated\' directory of the installation. Each subdirectory is named after one configuration. Feel free to add new subdirectories. To run a server with one of the configurations, start it with the name of the configuration as a command line parameter. For example:

DedicatedServer.exe DefaultCoop

The file 'init.ini' defines initial parameters for the server. The scripts with numbers (1_begin.ini, 1_end.ini and so on) are run before and after each map in the cycle, as their names suggest. Please see the comments in those files for more info.

Also, when running an internet server, you should enter some info about your server that the players will be able to see from GameSpy Arcade. See the configuration file 'Scripts\Dedicated_startup.ini' for that.

Note that if you want to run more than one server on a single machine, you should assign a different port to each server. You can see how to do that from the comments in the configuration files. Make sure the servers are at least 3 ports away from each other, because a port range of up to 3 ports might be used.


Why can't I play with some other player model in the Single Player mode?

Only the "Serious Sam" model is available for single player, because other models have been optimized for lower memory usage, and they do not have animations of collecting items, putting items, and similar.


Safe Modes

"Serious Sam" offers two 'safe mode' startup shortcuts.

a) Serious Sam - Safe Mode
If you have changed something in the video options, and the game won't run any more, or if your display drivers have heavy problems running the game, you can use this to reset all the options to their most safe settings.
This will revert the display mode to 640x480 16 bit full-screen, and turn off all possibly problematic rendering options.

b) Serious Sam - 3Dfx Voodoo2 compatibility
If you have Voodoo1 or Voodoo2 as a secondary 3D accelerator card, and your primary card claims to have OpenGL support, but it is broken, use this shortcut,
It will bypass your primary card and directly start the Voodoo1 or Voodoo2.
If using this, make sure you have the proper drivers for your Voodoo card.

After starting in safe mode, if you wish to revert to normal settings, just select 'Normal' under 'Preferences' in the 'Options->Video Options' menu.


How to configure the game for improved performance

"Serious Sam" tries to auto-adjust the configuration to match your system. If you feel that the game is still too slow on your computer, you can try to configure it manually. You should try the suggested options in this order:

1) Make sure you have all the proper drivers installed.
See here for more instructions and driver lists.

2) Try reducing the resolution to 640x480 and the color depth to 16 bit.
If you run Windows 95, you will not be able to change the color depth from within the game. In that case, you should set the desktop bit depth manually, by going to the Windows 'Start' menu and choosing 'Settings/ControlPanel/Display/Settings'. The recommended color depth is 16 bit (64k colors, or 65536 colors).

3) In the 'Options->Video Options' menu, try setting the 'Preferences' option to 'Speed'.

4) Reduce the audio quality settings.
Go to the 'Options->Audio Options' menu and lower the 'Frequency' option to '11kHz'
This can offer a major performance improvement if your CPU is not very fast, or especially if it is an older AMD K6-2 or AMD K6-3.


How to configure the game controls

To change your controls setup go to the 'Options->Players and Controls' menu and select 'Customize Controls'.

- If you have inadvertently set something wrong and you cannot set it back, just select 'Load Predefined Settings' and choose to load the 'Default controls'.

- If you want to use a joystick, it is recommended that you go to 'Load Predefined Settings' and choose to load one of the predefined joystick controls.
Note that, even though your exact joystick model is not mentioned by its name, most joysticks are cross-compatible. Try each of the available joystick settings and see which fits your joystick best.

- More settings for different joysticks might become available in the future. See Updates for more information.

- If you want to manually tweak the controls, examine the '.ctl' files in the 'Controls\' directory. Those are just plain text files with control configurations.

IMPORTANT!
Never turn on 'Sharp Turning' if you use keyboard commands for turning left/right or looking up/down!


How to configure the mouse options for optimal aiming

"Serious Sam" offers a range of different options for tweaking mouse-aiming precision. By default, these options are set up to provide the smoothest motion on all configurations. However, this might not give you the same feeling as in other FPS games. Here are the options that you can use to reconfigure the mouse-look feel:

1) Sharp Turning
This option is in the 'Player and Controls' menu and can be configured separately for each player profile. If 'Sharp Turning' is ON, you will have maximum possible mouse movement response. The player view will react immediately to any mouse movement. However, this may not be desirable if you have low framerates, or if your mouse driver has low polling rate, or some other problems.
If 'Sharp Turning' is OFF, the view rotation will always be smooth, but you may feel a slight 'lag' when moving the mouse. This lag is usually only noticeable by seasoned deathmatch players.

2) Smooth Axis
This option is in the 'Player and Controls->Customize Controls' menu, can be configured separately for each player profile. 'Smooth Axis' makes your mouse feel smoother even when 'Sharp Turning' is turned on.

3) Mouse Acceleration This option is in the 'Player and Controls->Customize Controls' menu, and it is global for all player profiles.
If you cannot get comfortable playing with mouse acceleration, you can tun it off, but we recommend keeping the mouse acceleration ON to enable very precise movements when aiming at enemies far away.


Here are several possible combinations that you might like to try:
1) SharpTurning=OFF, SmoothAxis=ON, MouseAcceleration=ON
This is a default setting. It will provide you with the smoothest feeling.

2) SharpTurning=ON, SmoothAxis=ON, MouseAcceleration=ON
This will provide you with very sharp reactions, it is the optimal setting if you don't like the above one.

3) SharpTurning=ON, SmoothAxis=OFF, MouseAcceleration=ON
This will provide you with the sharpest possible reactions, but it might really feel too jumpy.


Observing options

When replaying a demo from a network game, or observing in a network game, you can view different players.
Use the following shortcuts on the numeric keyboard to change the observing configuration:

Num 1 - view only one player
Num 2 - two players (split screen)
Num 3 - three players (split screen)
Num 4 - four players (split screen)
Num + - view next player
Num - - view previous player


Also, when playing in a cooperative game, you can choose to view other players in small screen-in-screen displays.
To enable that, type:

/gam_bEnableAdvancedObserving=1

at the console prompt, and then use the above shortcuts to choose the players to observe.



5. Gameplay Difficulty Problems


Choosing the right difficulty

The most important thing is to choose the right difficulty, the one that will perfectly challenge your skills. Choosing a too easy or too hard level of difficulty can harm the enjoyment of the game. Consult the manual for choosing the right difficulty. Here are some quick tips:
- Tourist mode is the easiest, and it's for absolute beginners, the ones who are still battling with the
game controls.
- Easy mode is for FPS beginners, the ones that play games but are very casual FPS players.
- Normal mode is for experienced FPS players, the ones that played many FPS games.
- Hard mode is for experienced "Serious Sam" players, the ones that have already finished the Normal mode and possibly for the ones that have finished our Demo many times on the Serious difficulty. Choose this mode on your own responsibility.
- Serious mode - for the really serious ones.

Generally, it is good to save the game often. So, if you die, you won't be thrown far back in the game. We advise you to use F6 for Quicksave, and F9 for quickloading the last quicksaved game. If you can't remember to save often, you can always use the auto-save option from the 'Players and Controls' menu.


Changing the difficulty 'on the fly'

If you find some level too hard or too easy to beat, you can always restart it on lower or higher difficulty, from the 'Custom Levels' menu. But in that case you will lose your score, which will be counted from there on.


Adding new elements to the gameplay

There is one tweak that you can use for a totally new gamestyle. You can start a split screen cooperative game just for yourself (from 'Split Screen->New Game' menu). While playing that way, when you die, you will just respawn and continue your mission from that point, so we can say that it is some kind of god mode. In that case, you can also adjust the enemy strength if you want to fight against tougher enemies. This mode is especially good for complete beginners (the ones that find even the Tourist difficulty too tough to beat), but can also be used by more experienced players who want to add something new to the gameplay.


Cannot read messages

To read the in-game messages using the NETRICSA, you need to double-click your Use button. If you have reconfigured your controls and you cannot find the Use command, you need to reset your controls and bind them again.


Door not opening

If you cannot figure out what you have to do to open some door, you might want to use this cheat:
Face the door (so that you target it with the crosshair), invoke the game console (by pressing F1), then type:

please open

and press Enter.


6. Hardware compatibility issues


3D accelerators

"Serious Sam" has been tested with many different 3D-accelerator boards and drivers. The game will try to recognize your board and adjust optimal settings for it. If you experience any problem, please make sure you have the correct display driver installed.
You can download drivers from 3D board chipset manufacturer's site or any driver repository on the internet.

All boards have been tested with Windows 98 SE operating system, unless noted otherwise. For compatibility with other OSes (WinNT/2K/XP) please read sections below.
Here is the list of tested hardware:


o 3Dfx Voodoo Graphics
- driver version: 3.01.00
- supports only 16-bit rendering modes
- no vertical lines in computer screen and menu
- support for this board has been DISCONTINUED

o 3Dfx Voodoo2
- driver version: 3.02.02
- supports only 16-bit rendering modes
- support for this board has been DISCONTINUED

o 3Dfx Voodoo Banshee
- driver version: 1.04.01 beta (Voodoo5-unified Voodoo series driver)
- supports only 16-bit rendering modes
- runs very slow in windowed mode
- if unified driver doesn't work, please install Voodoo Banshee driver version 1.04.00 (or newer)
- support for this board has been DISCONTINUED

o 3Dfx Voodoo3
- driver version: 1.04.01 beta (Voodoo5-unified Voodoo series driver)
- supports only 16-bit rendering modes
- this board has too small texture memory to display textures in full size
- runs very slow in windowed mode
- if unified driver doesn't, work please install Voodoo3 driver version 1.07.00 (or newer)
- support for this board has been DISCONTINUED
- WARNING: The current version of glSetup does not contain "Serious Sam" compatible drivers for Voodoo3. - see here for more information

o 3Dfx Voodoo4 & Voodoo5
- driver version: 1.04.01 beta (Voodoo5-unified Voodoo series driver)
- runs very slow in windowed mode
- support for this board has been DISCONTINUED


o 3DLabs Permedia2
- some of required blending modes are not supported
- insufficient hardware power
- support for this board has been DISCONTINUED

o 3DLabs Permedia3
- not tested

o 3DLabs Oxygen VX1
- not tested


o ATI Rage Pro
- insufficient hardware power
- supports only 16-bit rendering modes
- support for this board has been DISCONTINUED

o ATI Rage 128 and 128 pro
- driver version: 4.13.7202
- lens-flares might not work in full-screen mode

o ATI Rage Maxx
- driver version: 6.40 cd15
- might have occasional triangle popping artifacts

o ATI Radeon, 7x00 and 8x00 series
- driver version: 4.13.7197
- occasional slowdowns

o ATI FireGL2
- driver version: 5.12.2195.2078
- works only under WinNT/2K/XP - DOESN'T HAVE A DRIVER FOR Win9X/ME OSes
- color bending artifacts when 16-bit textures are used (32-bit textures are recommended)


o Intel i740 & i752 (i810/i815 motherboard chipsets)
- driver version: 4.0
- supports only 16-bit rendering modes
- some polygons in mirrors/portals might not work
- support for i740 has been DISCONTINUED


o Matrox G200
- driver version: 6.70.008
- might have occasional crashes on some configurations
- polygon flickering and colorization artifacts
- support for this board might not be possible in the future

o Matrox G400/G450
- driver version: 6.72.016
- occasional polygon flickering and colorization artifacts


o nVidia Riva128
- some of required blending modes are not supported
- supports only 16-bit rendering modes
- several compatibility problems
- support for this board has been DISCONTINUED

o nVidia RivaTNT, TNT2, GeForce256, GeForce2 and GeForce3 series boards
- driver version: Detonator 21.83
- no known issues


o PowerVR Kyro/Kyro2
- driver version: 1.3 (1.09.31)
- some gradient textures might not be rendered properly


o S3 Savage2000
- driver version: 9.51.12
- support for this board has been DISCONTINUED

o S3 Savage4
- driver version: 8.20.33
- might have some triangle artifacts and/or z-fighting problems
- occasional texture corruption might occur (can be fixed with '/RefreshTextures()' console command)
- support for this board has been DISCONTINUED

o S3 Savage3D
- has not been tested but might work
- support for this board has been DISCONTINUED


Following 3D accelerators are not supported due to lack of proper OpenGL driver and/or hardware power:

3Dfx Voodoo Rush
ATI Rage II (and older)
Rendition Verite
S3 Trio3D
SiS
Trident


Official download locations for display drivers

3Dfx
ATI special purpose drivers (recommended)
ATI official drivers
Intel
Matrox
nVidia
PowerVR
S3 Graphics
WickedGL Voodoo drivers


Display driver internet repositories (also contains unofficial and beta drivers)

Beta or unofficial driver sometimes works much better than official. These drivers tend to be updated on a monthly basis. So, in case of any compatibility problems it is a good idea to browse a bit thru following sites.

ReactorCritical
SavageNews
3DChipset


Motherboard drivers

On motherboards with chipsets that don't have native support in Windows, you'll have to install the corresponding driver manually.
Complete explanation on how to do that can be found in the motherboard's manual. Here are the links to the driver pages of most chipset manufacturers.
Even if you have the correct display and sound drivers, you can still have some problems with "Serious Sam" in case you don't have proper motherboard drivers installed.
IMPORTANT NOTE FOR VIA USERS: In case you have a motherboard based on VIA chipset, please install latest VIA 4-in-1 drivers!

ALi
AMD
Intel
SiS
VIA unofficial (recommended)
VIA official


WickedGL Voodoo driver (home page)

WickedGL Voodoo driver is a 3rd party driver for Voodoo boards, provided by Wicked3D as an alternative for 3dfx' driver. It performs very well with "Serious Sam" and it is highly recommended, especially in case of problems with 3Dfx drivers.


glSetup (home page)

It is highly recommended that you use glSetup to install corresponding OpenGL display drivers for "Serious Sam". In most cases, it will work just fine, but if you experience some problems, please download the latest driver for your 3D accelerator from the aforementioned links.

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR VOODOO-3 USERS: Voodoo3 driver in glSetup doesn't work properly with "Serious Sam". You can either install WickedGL drivers, latest Voodoo5-unified 3Dfx referent drivers or check glSetup site for update.

Yes, that is correct, you should install the Voodoo5 driver, because it is a 'unified' driver and it supports the Voodoo3 as well. Note that the 3Dfx company cannot support its hardware anymore, and you should not expect that any new 'official' drivers will be released in the future.


DirectX 8 (and 8.1) compatibility

"Serious Sam: The Second Encounter" also supports MS DirectX 8 for rendering (Direct3D portion, infact). However, we cannot guarantee that there won't be any problems using D3D under some configurations. Generaly, OpenGL is more polished, but on some boards you might find Direct3D faster and/or more stable to use. The choice is yours.
WARNING: There is a great chance that the boards which have been discountinued (3Dfx, S3, ...) won't have efficient DirectX 8 support! In that case, using OpenGL for rendering is the only logical option.


Windows NT compatibility

"Serious Sam" has been tested with WindowsNT 4.0, in OpenGL mode (since this OS doesn't support DirectX 8). It works just fine, but since this platform is not targeted for gaming, we cannot provide support for problems caused by incompatibility.
Just make sure that you have latest drivers installed for display, sound and motherboard chipset.

Windows 2000 & XP compatibility

Normally, there should be no problem running "Serious Sam: The Second Encounter" on these platforms. Both OpenGL and DirectX modes works fine, but in case of DirectX problems, you should revert to OpenGL. Still, that depends on hardware you're using (especially 3D-board).
However, WinXP might enocunter some compatibility issues due to immature drivers. As always, it's very good idea to keep the drivers up to date.


Serious Tools

Although "Serious Tools" ("Serious Editor" and "Serious Modeler") works fine with majority of 3D accelerators, we cannot guarantee that there won't be any problems. "Serious Tools" requires fully functional Direct3D or OpenGL ICD driver that supports multiple-windows applications.

IMPORTANT: On some operating systems (especially Win95) and/or hardware setup, switching full-screen and windowed mode might not work properly. This is a driver issue and cannot be fixed from our side.


7. Updates


Improved versions of the game executables, additional driver information, extra game content (like new multiplayer levels, or player models and similar), add-on scripts, etc. might become available with time.
You should visit the Serious Sam Update page periodically to see if something interesting for you appears.



Croteam and the Croteam logo are trademarks of Croteam, Ltd. Serious Sam, the Serious Sam logo and all related titles, logos, and characters are trademarks of Croteam, Ltd. Serious Engine, Serious Editor, Serious Modeler and the Serious Engine logo are trademarks of Croteam, Ltd. Copyright © 2010 Croteam, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

Serious Sam uses Ogg Vorbis libraries. Copyright (c) 2001, Xiphophorus. See file COPYING in the Bin\Ogg subdirectory of the installation for more information.

Microsoft and Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows ME, Windows NT and Windows XP are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. All other trademarks and trade names are properties of their respective owners.