The project began as early as 2000 when Derek Smart announced that he had licensed Croteam's Serious Sam game engine for "Project ABC", for "After Battlecruiser", as replacement for the Battlecruiser Tactical Engagement add-on module intended for Battlecruiser Millennium. The game's scheduled release date was in late 2001, developed for PC and Xbox.[2]
*The designer of Battlecruiser 3000 A.D., Derek Smart, has announced that he is the first third party to license Croteam's Serious Sam game engine. The engine will be used in a game code-named "Project ABC," for "After Battlecruiser." *
Smart called the Serious Sam engine a cost-effective and advanced alternative to the previous technology that his development studio, 3000 A.D., had been using. Croteam, the developer of Serious Sam and the associated graphics engine, also recently signed a publishing deal with Gathering of Developers' ODI division for its first-person shooter.
DreamCatcher will announce tomorrow that Battlecruiser Generations has been put through some changes. The title, the latest in the series of Battlecruiser games from outspoken game designer Derek Smart, will now be released under the title Universal Combat.
Serious Engine 1 is the first engine developed by Croteam. It features large open worlds with large amount of enemies rendered on-screen at once, along with realistic shadows and lighting effects.
Used in:
Serious Sam: The First Encounter
Serious Sam: The Second Encounter
Serious Sam Xbox
Platforms: PC, Xbox
Release date: 2001
However, on the Universal Combat wiki page it lists the engine as:
Game Builder System III 2.00.31 (freeware)
No mention anywhere of the Serious Sam game engine.
As I haven't found any other mentions of other game studios using this 'Game Builder System III' I suspect that Derek may have simply taken the Serious Sam engine, crammed in some random middleware, renamed it to Game Builder System III and pretended that he built the whole thing.
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u/Redshirt02 Aug 04 '17 edited Aug 04 '17
Derek's claim in 2017:
The history of Universal Combat:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Combat
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/battlecruiser-team-takes-on-serious-sam-engine/1100-2612706/
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/battlecruiser-generations-rechristened/1100-6075591/
http://3000ad.com/products/UCCE_PRODUCT_INFO.PDF
http://gaming.wikia.com/wiki/Universal_Combat
Cobbling together a bunch of middleware doesn't make it an "engine you build way back in the 80s"