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Serious Sam: The Second Encounter

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games

This page is for the original game. For the updated HD version, see Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter. For the version included in Serious Sam Classics: Revolution, see Serious Sam Classics: Revolution.

Serious Sam: The Second Encounter
Serious Sam: The Second Encounter cover
Developers
Croteam
Publishers
Gathering of Developers
Devolver Digital
Russia 1C Company
Engines
Serious Engine 1
Release dates
Windows February 5, 2002
Reception
Metacritic 85
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase
Modes Singleplayer, Multiplayer
Pacing Real-time
Perspectives First-person, Third-person
Controls Direct control
Genres Action, FPS, Shooter, TPS
Art styles Realistic
Themes Asia, Eastern Europe, Fantasy, North America, Sci-fi
Series Serious Sam
Serious Sam: The Second Encounter on HowLongToBeat
Serious Sam: The Second Encounter on IGDB
Serious Sam: The Second Encounter guide on StrategyWiki
Serious Sam: The Second Encounter on MobyGames
Serious Sam: The Second Encounter on Wikipedia
Serious Sam: The First Encounter 2001
Serious Sam: The Second Encounter 2002
Serious Sam 2 2005
Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter 2009
Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter 2010
Serious Sam Double D 2011
Serious Sam: The Random Encounter 2011
Serious Sam 3: BFE 2011
Serious Sam: The Greek Encounter 2012
Serious Sam: Kamikaze Attack! 2012
Serious Sam VR (series)
Serious Sam Fusion 2017 EA
Serious Sam's Bogus Detour 2017
Serious Sam Classics: Revolution 2019
Serious Sam 4 2020
Serious Sam: Siberian Mayhem 2022
Serious Sam: Tormental 2022

Warnings

GameSpy online services have been shut down (see Network for solutions).

Serious Sam: The Second Encounter is a singleplayer and multiplayer first-person and third-person action, FPS, shooter and TPS game in the Serious Sam series.

General information

Official game series site
Seriously! Forums
GOG.com Community Discussions for game series
GOG.com Support Page
Steam Community Discussions

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
US: Basic disc check
EU: SafeDisc DRM[Note 1]
Windows
GOG.com
DRM-free
Windows
Steam
DRM-free after installation through Steam client (notes may include more details)
Renamed to Serious Sam Classic: The Second Encounter.
Windows
SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows Vista and later (see above for affected versions).

Essential improvements

The game seems to choose the lowest screen refresh rate available to the monitor. In order to change the screen refresh rate, press ~ (or the key above Tab) to open the console, enter the line: gap_iRefreshRate=60 (or whatever refresh rate desired) then restart the game.

Source ports

Serious Engine: Ray Traced

Real-time path tracing support for Serious Engine 1.10.

Serious Sam Classic: Vulkan

Vulkan Serious Engine port based on open source version.

Game data

In-game player settings.
In-game player settings.

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\Scripts\[Note 2]
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/41060/pfx/[Note 3]

Save game data location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\SaveGame\[Note 2]
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/41060/pfx/[Note 3]

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
GOG Galaxy
Steam Cloud

Video

In-game video settings.
In-game video settings.
In-game general rendering settings.
In-game general rendering settings.

Graphics feature State WSGF Notes
Widescreen resolution
See Widescreen resolution.
Multi-monitor
See Widescreen resolution.
Ultra-widescreen
See Widescreen resolution.
4K Ultra HD
See Widescreen resolution.
Field of view (FOV)
See Field of view (FOV).
Windowed
Borderless fullscreen windowed
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
None, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128.
Anti-aliasing (AA)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Vertical sync (Vsync)
Labeled as "Wait vertical retrace".
60 FPS and 120+ FPS
High dynamic range display (HDR)
See the glossary page for potential alternatives.

Widescreen resolution

Steam version supports 16:9 and 16:10 resolutions from the in-game video options. Non-standard resolutions still need to be edited manually and can't be selected in-game, but FOV does not need to be adjusted for Hor+ ultrawide gameplay. Download the Steam executable here and replace the original executable located in <path-to-game>/Bin/ instead of the method below to get access to widescreen resolutions in-game. Alternatively, download Steamify (ignore the text saying The First Encounter, the link says TSE, the text the tab shows also says TSE and the ReadMe.htm also says "The Second Encounter"), extract the archive and copy SeriousSam.exe from the Bin directory and overwrite the executable in <path-to-game>.
Do not enable wide screen option from rendering menu. If it is enabled, game will add black bars on top and bottom of the screen regardless of aspect ratio or resolution.
This is what happens if the "wide screen" option in-game isn't disabled when setting a custom resolution.
This is what happens if the "wide screen" option in-game isn't disabled when setting a custom resolution.
Custom resolution[citation needed]
  1. Run game at least once.
  2. Open <path-to-game>/Scripts/PersistentSymbols.ini.
  3. Locate the following lines:
  4. persistent extern INDEX sam_iScreenSizeI=(INDEX)XXX;
    persistent extern INDEX sam_iScreenSizeJ=(INDEX)YYY;
  5. Change XXX and YYY to the preferred resolution.

Field of view (FOV)

Steam version has fixed widescreen FOV (and weapon FOV).
FOV resets to 90 when holding the sniper rifle.
Field of view (FOV)[citation needed]
  1. Run game at least once.
  2. Open <path-to-game>/Scripts/PersistentSymbols.ini.
  3. Locate the line persistent extern user FLOAT plr_fFOV=(FLOAT)XX;.
  4. Change XX to the preferred field of view.

Input

In-game general control settings.
In-game general control settings.
In-game key map settings.
In-game key map settings.
In-game axis settings.
In-game axis settings.

Audio

In-game audio settings.
In-game audio settings.

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
EAX support
EAX 2.0 reverb; no DirectSound3D support.
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
Croatian
Fan translation, download.
French
Retail release, download.
Italian
Retail release, download.
Polish
Retail release, download Details.
Brazilian Portuguese
Unofficial translation; download.
Russian
Retail release, download.
Spanish
Retail release, download.

Network

Multiplayer types

Type Native Players Notes
Local play
4 Co-op, Versus
Split-screen.
LAN play
16 Co-op, Versus
Online play
16 Co-op, Versus
Co-op supports 4 players. To play online with non-Steam versions apply the Master Server Patch.

Connection types

Ports

Protocol Port(s) and/or port range(s)
TCP 25600 - 25616
UDP 25600 - 25616
Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) support status is unknown.

Issues fixed

Text scaling

Use dgVoodoo 2 and force borderless

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
Direct3D 8
OpenGL 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4
Vulkan 1.2, 1.3 Requires Serious Sam Classic: Vulkan source port.
Executable 32-bit 64-bitARM Notes
Windows
64-bit support requires the Serious Sam Classic: Vulkan source port.[4]
macOS (OS X)
[5]
Linux
[4]

Middleware

Middleware Notes
Audio DirectSound
Multiplayer GameSpy

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 95 OSR2, NT 4.0 SP5
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium II or Celeron-A 300 MHz
AMD K6-3 400 MHz
System memory (RAM) 64 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 150 MB
Video card (GPU) 16 MB of VRAM
DirectX 8 compatible
Sound (audio device)


Notes

  1. SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows 10[1] or Windows 11 and is disabled by default on Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 when the KB3086255 update is installed.[2]
  2. 2.0 2.1 When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below %PROGRAMFILES%, %PROGRAMDATA%, or %WINDIR% might be redirected to %LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore on Windows Vista and later (more details).
  3. 3.0 3.1 File/folder structure within this directory reflects the path(s) listed for Windows and/or Steam game data (use Wine regedit to access Windows registry paths). Games with Steam Cloud support may store data in ~/.steam/steam/userdata/<user-id>/41060/ in addition to or instead of this directory. The app ID (41060) may differ in some cases. Treat backslashes as forward slashes. See the glossary page for details.

References