13 files left to hand-merge with the Serious Engine open source release. It's kind of funny to me that I'm back on this .plan file writing about my progress on Serious Sam, just like how I started writing here. Everything old is new again!
The nostalgia of all this is overwhelming. I spent so much effort on this project, at a time when everything was in transition.
At the time, I was working a cash register and scrubbing toilets at a cybercafe, and racing home to my parents' house after to work on this game until I passed out from exhaustion and then repeat again the next day.
Everything I was struggling to change in the world evaporated with Loki. Serious Sam was the only evidence I had that the last two years weren't a huge waste. The rest of the Loki crew went and got real jobs, either doing interesting work on important games or got the hell out of the industry entirely.
But I kept tilting at the windmills, stubborn idiot that I am.
I was broke as fuck, living with my parents, doing menial labor for less than minimum wage under the table, and holding onto a hopeless dream. I was never happier in my whole life.
It's nice to revisit. Looking through the diffs, I can see some wild decisions that I made in response to wild decisions Croteam made. I can see where I learned so much during that project, and I can see how much more I still had to learn.
Most people won't care about this source code because they don't have to. Someone will make sure it works on new platforms and such, the same way that someone got Quake 3 running on Raspberry Pi, and everyone will benefit without having to dig deep themselves. And that's great and how it should be. But I'm pretty grateful to be given this opportunity to excavate the past and live in this time for a little longer.
I still tilt at windmills. Every goddamned windmill I see. If I'm lucky, I'll be writing this post again in 2031, too.
--ryan.