Strife - Bloodbath difficulty and GZDoom

[idbeholdME]

So, I found an old thread on the ZDoom forums saying that Bloodbath difficulty in the original Strife was different from the way it behaved in ZDoom.

 

Namely this: https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=45675

 

Basically, Bloodbath in ZDoom was way harder than was originally intended. It just applied the usual -fast from Doom but Strife originally did not have that behavior. I played through the game on Bloodbath in Zdoom some 2 years ago and I do remember that the start took me a few tries to get through, leading me to believe that this issue was still present (at least in ZDoom, which is now discontinued). The thread I linked seems like it died before a solution was implemented and I also didn't find anything about this in the ZDoom version history.

 

Was this inconsistency ever solved? How does it behave in GZDoom? Did I play through the game on much harder hardest difficulty than I should have?

[Gez]

No, I stumbled a bit on the best way to do the changes, then I had computer issues and lost motivation for hobby programming altogether.

[idbeholdME]

Thanks for the confirmation.

 

I guess people should avoid playing Strife on Bloodbath in GZDoom then. Believe me, if you do, you are in for one hell of a tough time. I somehow did it but some parts were extremely difficult. The respawning alone requires some stupid stuff like having to clump up all the Crusaders in Programmer's Keep level and killing them all before the first one respawns to trigger a wall which lowers only when all Crusaders in a level are dead. I spent hours there looking for a way forward and then I remembered Doom uses a check to see if all monsters of a certain type are dead in some levels. Watching a Youtube video confirmed my suspicions and then I just had to execute it.

 

I suspect that the level Proving Grounds uses the same trigger, but it is impossible to do there with respawning enemies and I had to do a definitely unintended rocket-jump to get to the end. I feel like the game wasn't tested on Bloodbath at all.

 

And the -fast from Doom made the game even more brutally unforgiving.

[chungy]

Play with Veteran Edition if you want bloodbath to work properly. (In general, I'd say VE is a much superior Strife experience than GZDoom in just about all regards)

[idbeholdME]

I tried Veteran Edition but did not like how the sounds sounded like.

 

In fact, I don't like any of the allegedly HD or remastered sound packs for any Doom engine games out there. I just hear this "hissing" (don't think I can describe it better) in every single "remastered" sound which is quite frankly unbearable. The moment I talked to the first guy in Veteran Edition was the moment I switched back to the original because it was simply grating on my ears too much.

[Gez]

18 hours ago, chungy said:

Play with Veteran Edition if you want bloodbath to work properly. (In general, I'd say VE is a much superior Strife experience than GZDoom in just about all regards)

The one thing I don't like about Veteran Edition is how they changed the very overcast sky over Tarnhill into some dazzling summer sky so as to show off the new lightmaps. So play in classic mode.

Sky is basically a solid wall of clouds

 

Blinding sunlight and sharp shadows like you'd expect from an empty summer sky