As said by H.P. Lovecraft, fear is the oldest and strongest emotion of mankind... It's a natural reaction of every living creature to something dangerous and threatening. Unknown, mysterious, crawling horror, hiding in the depths of mind — it's what both scares and attracts us. This is why we decided to choose horror as the leading theme of our new contest.
SeriousSite.ru proudly (and fearfully) presents a new, 10th anniversary mapping contest! And as you've probably already guessed, it's a horror-themed mapping contest. We would like you to dive deep into the darkest pits of your imagination and bring back to life the scariest and creepiest things you can even think of, but were too frightened to make. It's time for some good spooks y'all — but craft them masterfully, as only the worthy mappers will get a chance to be called the real Masters of Horror!
Rules and guidelines:
The main goal of this contest is to create a scary survival horror map. This is a genre with an emphasis on either horror graphics or scary ambience. Although combat can be part of the gameplay, we strongly recommend you to leave the regular Serious Sam action behind the door: the player must be scared of something unknown and creepy, not doing your usual shoot-'em-all stuff. In other words, no fun allowed, only scares. If you need some good examples of survival horror, you can look at some of the classic horror genre tropes and media, be it games, movies and books. For example: games like Silent Hill, Forbidden Siren, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Dead Space, movies - "The Thing", "Alien", various japanese horror movies, books by Stephen King or H.P. Lovecraft etc.;
Craft the horror masterfully: build the suspense, creepy ambience, use the dark tones, mystery, contrast between light and darkness etc, not cheapjumpscares and sudden loud sounds/faces. The number of jumpscares and screamers must be kept minimal — usually, things like that are considered to be lazy and their effect starts getting stale and annoying after the 2nd or 3rd use. You can loose some extra points for the aggressive usage of these tricks;
Other than that, you're absolutely free to decide how exactly you want to scare the people, but we'd still recommend you to keep it down to the norm when it comes to depicting offensive, gross and explicit stuff. You probably wouldn't want to traumatize some underage women or pregnant kids, do you? After all — blood and gore are disgusting, but not all that scary;
You're free to create any environment and location for your map as you want, just make sure it brings some spooks.
Horror and long, dark, empty spaces are common things, but it doesn't mean you must use them all the time. There's just one step from horror to boredom, so be careful with what you think can bring a more suspenseful pacing. If you played Disthimya-6 and liked its boring long corridors to death, it doesn't mean you should put the same thing into your horror map. Try to find a perfect balance between something that will entertain & scare both the casual players and hardcore horror fans.
Singleplayer mode only! If you want to make a DM/coop/survival map — do it after you finish the singleplayer version;
You're allowed to use SDK and extra DLLs in your map, but make sure you distribute all the source code with your map. Workshop items are allowed as well, but you must attach a ReadMe file containing the list of all the links to the needed files. You can use any resources from other maps/mods, but make sure that you have a permission from the respective authors.
Your map must be packed in a .gro-archive and launch correctly on a clean installation of Serious Sam. Don't use non-latin letters and spaces in the filenames. You can use AutoGRO to make a correct package;
Keep your development progress a secret. There are no potential strikes regarding thieves in case your unique idea will be leaked and used by some other contestant;
No mappers' teams are allowed, but you can have testers, composers, writers and other people to help you out (under your own responsibility);
Anything that can be considered illegal or prohibited in any civilised country of the world is prohibited;
Your map must have a beginning and an ending. Make sure there are no critical and game breaking bugs. If the contest judges will have to use cheats in order to finish your map, it will result in lowering your total map score;
It's highly recommended to make some long (over 1 minute long) cutscenes skipable;
If your map has a sequence where players could potentially die a lot of times, we strongly advice you to make this sequence as a standalone map. You can also make a map-pack in case you need to optimise your project; other than that, map-packs are not allowed;
If your map has a feature that can be considered a bug (f.e. there is an enemy that you must lead behind you in order to make it stuck at certain place), or just some hardcore brain-damage puzzle, make sure you provide a useful solution & explanation for solving it. It's a survial horror contest, not puzzle challenge;
If, by any means, you need to break one of the contest rules that stand on the way of your genious idea, please, contact one of the judges;
The contest organizers are free to withdraw/remove a particular contestant from the competition due to systematic rule violations on this or previous contest (or if this particular contestant has been banned);
The contest organizers can change some contest rules in any time and period up until its ending;
The judges are free to participate in the contest but won't get any prize in case of victory (they can share some games that are left unused among themselves though);
Games acceptable for mapping:
Serious Sam Classic: The Second Encounter
Serious Sam Classics: Revolution
Serious Sam 2
Serious Sam HD: The Second Encounter
Serious Sam 3: BFE
Serious Sam Fusion
Prizes:
1st place: 6000 roubles
2nd place: 3000 roubles
3rd place: 1000 roubles + a game from the list (transfer via PayPal or Steam, as you wish)
Other contestants can choose any prize from this pool:
- Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain - Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite - Batman Arkham Origins - ENSLAVED™: Odyssey to the West™ Premium Edition - Scribblenauts Unlimited - Impact Winter - Sakura Beach 1 + Sakura Beach 2 - Sakura Spirit + Sakura Angels
You can apply for the contest up until September 1st, 2020.
All the maps must be finished and submitted prior to September 15th, 2020. To submit your map contact the organizer via PM or any other way (Discord, Steam).
Contest arrangement:
All the maps must be finished and submitted prior to September 15th, 2020. On September 15th - September 21th judges will check out the submissioned maps and provide personal feedback & recommendations to the respective mappers for content improvements. On September 22 - September 28 all the contestants must take the jury's recommendations into consideration and fix all the issues. On September 29 - September 30 judges will give their final scores. October 1st, 2020 - end of contest, announcement of winners.
UPD: Contest is being extended for 15 days! Participants must submit final versions of their maps October 10 or before, and on October 15 - end of contest, announcement of winners.
You can leave your comments and questions re. the contest in this thread.
Tips and advices:
1. Don't start the work late. 2. Don't pay too much attention to details instead of gameplay. 3. Don't make anything that can shorten the length of the map, but don't concentrate on prolonging it too much either. Find the balance. 4. Try to keep a single style and idea. You can draw you map layout on a paper, then write the story and move on to Serious Editor next. 5. Don't be afraid to try things. Any action is better than no action at all.
FAQ:
Q. Can I make a map for Serious Sam: Revolution? A. Yes, stop asking.
Q. Can I make a mappack or just a single map? A. One sumbition - one map. If your map has become too big, you can divide it into multiple maps.
Q. Can you prolong the contest duration/Can I submit my map later? A. Absolutely not.
Q. My PC/hard drive/favorite dog died and I can not continue participation in the contest? Can I withdraw my application? A. No. Make backups. Any unforseen circumstances are first and foremost your personal problems.
Q. Can I use this model/texture made by author X in my map? Will it affect my final score and results in the contest? A. Nothing of that is prohibited, but all the responsibility for using such stuff lies on you. It doesn't affect your final score and the results in the contest. Just make sure all the resources are placed in a single .gro file.
Classic 
Egypt 
Sirius 
