Development
Development of Serious Sam II began in mid-2003 with the decision to create the game on a new engine. Croteam planned to release the game in the second quarter of 2004, but this was later pushed to the second half of 2004 and finally to fall 2005. For a period of time, Croteam posted weekly updates, but these became bi-monthly, then monthly, and then stopped completely after August 2004, as 2K Games, Croteam's publisher, wanted to handle the release of information from that point forward. In April 2005, the game was officially announced by 2K Games, at which point the release date was set as Fall 2005.
Shortly following the game's official announcement, Serious Sam II was featured as the cover story for the June 2005 issue of Computer Games Magazine, and was later showcased at E3 in May 2005. Shown at the E3 Expo was the official trailer for the game, and an early build of the game was playable on the show floor. A result of the E3 presentation was a 30 minute video preview of the game featuring gameplay footage while a question and answer session took place between fansite Seriously! owner and director Jason Rodzik and Fernando Melo, the game's producer. In the time following the game's official announcement, 2K Games released a steady trickle of screenshots showcasing the vibrant colors and wide-open spaces that characterized the previous games and helping to build up hype as the game neared release. A demo of the PC version was released on September 21, 2005, and a second demo was released on October 17, 2005.
On October 11, 2005, Serious Sam II was released for PC and Xbox, and a patch for the game was released the day before, bringing it up to version 2.064b. Croteam stated that a substantial list of features were cut due to time constraints.
Serious Engine 2, the game engine for Serious Sam II was developed alongside the development of the game itself, and was a brand new revision of Croteam's prior Serious Engine that was used for their previous games, such as Serious Sam: The First Encounter. The more advanced features of the engine include detailed refraction effects, high-resolution textures, high-dynamic range lighting, and light bloom effects.
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