Strife Returning To Life

FP in epic thread. ;)

Now that info is coming out left and right, I'll be putting out more stuff on this really soon.

Crunch time!

Interesting. Did you help make this happen Quasar?

Are these engine updates (mostly the really nice shadow lighting) going to be capable with other Doom engine games anytime soon? (Doom for example).

looks interesting!

YES






YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

This was also recently ported to the Wii and Wii U via Chocolate DOOM. I've been playing it a lot lately and still find it to be one of the best action RPG's ever. Indeed a predecessor to Deus Ex and Chronicles of Riddick amongst others. I can't say enough, this is what a DOOM MOD should be like, I just hope I live to see the day when I could create something with such detail.

Creaphis said:

Interesting. Did you help make this happen Quasar?

He's been dropping hints for a while that he was working on a "community-related" project and that was why there haven't been any update to Eternity in a while.

Then he said that Strife was in good hands but that he had an NDA.

And also Kaiser posted this and while the screenshots are super-blurry, you can tell from their color palette and if you squint a little that they are from Strife.

Now what do Quasar and Kaiser have in common? Chocolate Strife.

Quasar said:
All new or modified resources are in their own WAD file. The IWAD is v1.31, SHA-1 unmodified.

Give us maximum faith. We've tried to do the exact opposite of every kind of mistake made with BFG Edition and other re-releases.

There are new features, some are in the WAD as scripts and others are hard-coded because we didn't have time.

The project will be open source. You will receive the source code with the game.

There is not cooperative, but there is a new game mode. I'm not going to say what it is, you need to wait and find out. Three new maps are included for play in this mode. Due to problems with P2P netplay and lag, they are not promoting multiplayer as a feature, but it is supported in the code both through Steam lobbies and via UDP (if you use command line params only, not officially supported).

The new game mode, I think, is "Capture the Chalice". It's listed on the Steam page:

Steam listing:
The Original Strife is back!
Hailed as the original FPS-RPG game that spawned countless imitators, Strife: Veteran Edition is a love letter to the classic from 1996.

New Features Include:

• Support for high resolutions, with proper aspect ratio.
  
• OpenGL for video backend to provide portability and support for vertical sync.
  
• Dynamic lighting and bloom
  
• Widescreen support.
  
• Ability to freely rebind all keyboard, mouse, and gamepad inputs.
  
• Steam Achievements
  
• Steam Trading Cards
  

Completion of missing and unfinished options in the original game, such as:

• The planned "Capture the Chalice” multi-player mode.
  
• Marking of current objectives on the auto-map.
  
• Special HUD for the Torpedo weapon

More info:

FishyClockwork said:
So I decided to see if Night Dive released their trailer on YouTube. (I was more interested about the comments than anything else, to be honest.)

Some guy/girl asked them 3 (relevant) questions and this is what they answered:


Questioner: Do you guys have the source code or did you reverse-engineer it?
Night Dive: We are using a heavily modified version of Chocolate Doom. We are working on releasing the original source code from Strife to the community for free.

Questioner: How did you obtain the rights when the original developer Rogue is dead?
Night Dive: We're working with ex-Rogue employees who retained the rights.

Questioner: Aren't you concerned about the MOBA named Strife or is that already resolved?
Night Dive: We are not concerned.


Link to the comments section: https://www.youtube.com/all_comments?v=6BxbAP6bLZo

So if they aren't concerned about the MOBA then I guess we shouldn't be concerned as well?

Even more info:

Convex said:
Shot a quick email to Night Dive who said that "Yes, we have plans to offer a DRM-free version through GOG." Can't wait to play through this again!

We are working on releasing the original source code from Strife to the community for free.

...what?

I am quite happy.

Time to actually finish the game! I know way too much about the first hub without ever progressing.

This engine though, it seems related to both Doom64 EX and Chocolate, so I wonder if a similar "Chocolate doom EX" will be a result.

Gez said:

Even more info:[/b]

Convex said:
[b]Shot a quick email to Night Dive who said that "Yes, we have plans to offer a DRM-free version through GOG."

Hopefully sooner rather than later.

Just posting to say, hell yeah!

MOTHER OF GOD!!...is this a thing?! O_o

Linguica said:

...what?

Best kept secret of the whole thing because it's not certain it'll happen. There are two known possible copies...

One is in the hands of an assets holding LLC that I am not allowed to name as per contractual details.

The other is *possibly* on a very old NeXT backup. (We *think* it's the ones that Peter Mack earlier hinted he might have in his basement, as mentioned at Strife source code, but there has been opaqueness around the matter so far).

I didn't want anybody to get their hopes up. It's still pretty likely that it'll never see the light of day.

Also if I can interject something slightly unrelated right here before the possible witch hunts start, fraggle was aware of this from the start and gave his blessings.

I wonder if it will be possible to make maps for Strife because of this. I personally don't care much for it's fps-rpg like gameplay, but the weapons and enemies look cool. It would be interesting being able to create a Doom like level but with strife stuff.

hardcore_gamer said:

I wonder if it will be possible to make maps for Strife because of this. I personally don't care much for it's fps-rpg like gameplay, but the weapons and enemies look cool. It would be interesting being able to create a Doom like level but with strife stuff.

http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?dir=levels/strife/ ???

Quasar said:

Also if I can interject something slightly unrelated right here before the possible witch hunts start, fraggle was aware of this from the start and gave his blessings.

Yep, I'm really glad to see this released. Congrats to you and everyone else involved, it looks like you've done a great job and I'm looking forward to playing it myself.

I did not see this coming.

BlackFish said:

Are these engine updates (mostly the really nice shadow lighting) going to be capable with other Doom engine games anytime soon? (Doom for example).

Doomsday offers visual effects that are similar to most of the visual effects in this Strife port. Dynamic lights, bloom etc.

Doomsday doesn't offer the shadow lighting, though it does have bias lighting that offer's somewhat similar visual effects based off sector lighting. Though bias lighting isn't enabled by default ('rend-bias-grid 1' and then 'rend-bias 1' in the console), due to it being incomplete.

That said, as I posted in the other non-news thread about this, I am looking forward to seeing the enhanced port, though I think the original Dos version should be included as well, so everyone is happy.

Vermil said:

Doomsday offers visual effects that are similar to most of the visual effects in this Strife port. Dynamic lights, bloom etc.

Doomsday doesn't offer the shadow lighting, though it does have bias lighting that offer's somewhat similar visual effects based off sector lighting. Though bias lighting isn't enabled by default ('rend-bias-grid 1' and then 'rend-bias 1' in the console), due to it being incomplete.

That said, as I posted in the other non-news thread about this, I am looking forward to seeing the enhanced port, though I think the original Dos version should be included as well, so everyone is happy.

There's more to this than just a new renderer. A lot more. We haven't even mentioned some of the stuff we've hidden away because we want people to have fun finding it.

I don't deny that, hence why I said 'visual effects' :)

Admittedly I should have said visual effects that have been shown. described thus far, as well. As it's not out yet.

Game is released. Source code available here

Already downloaded it and given it a whirl; it's cool that the original avi is in the intro :p

It's cool so far; the shadows fit well and really add a lot to the appearance.

It's also very fast FPS wise suggesting high optimization. Seems it's frame rate is uncapped (well, it's not 35fps)?

I'm surprised there one can only bind one control for each action; I play Doom engine games with the 'classic' arrow key's, so I remapped a bunch of them (being able to bind two controls to each action would perhaps allow both classic and modern control settings to be there by default). Is there no control for centring ones view (I'm not seeing it with the look up/down controls)?

I might have made a new graphic for health on the full screen hud though; just because it means the inventory and health display can end up using the same graphic.

Is there an option to turn off the objective indicator? It's naturally cool for when you get lost, but in universe, it seems like something that might have been better tailored to be on/off depending on specific missions (i.e the Front (let's assume it's part of the com unit) may very well know where the Prison is, but why would they know exactly where the assassination target's within are?), rather than all missions? Objective items being highlighted are cool as some of them could get lost amongst all the other stuff on the floor.

I noticed that the character names could perhaps stand to be moved a pixel or two to the right (i.e so they don't overlap the portrait border).

Obviously though, all the above is really nitpicking; it's looking great so far. I'm enjoying playing.

Awesome and well worth all the money. The music is very high quality and I really like the special effects with lights.

Here are a couple of questions:

1. did you remove the absurd "no thanks/you die!" dialog choices? They always felt like I was dealing and allying with assholes anyway. On my last playthrough I didn't see them on guys like Macil.

2. Did you fix the Bloodbath skill level? As I remember it was a copy of Doom's Nightmare skill, but buggy. You'd have twice the ammo, but most enemies wouldn't respawn (acolytes and other common enemies just decay to nothingness), and they'd have no fast reflexes either (unlike Doom and raven games). They'd have hasted gun autofire, which would get lost between game sessions (the only way to return to game would be by loading from the start screen). All in all it became easier than skill 4.

printz said:

did you remove the absurd "no thanks/you die!" dialog choices?

They did. You can still say no to some characters, but it acts no differently than the "bye" option and you can still go back to them.

printz said:

They always felt like I was dealing and allying with assholes anyway.

Remember that the tagline was "trust no one"? They are all assholes, and the player character is no saint either. If you've ever looked through VOICES.WAD, you'd see that Rowan was originally intended to kill the player if you kept talking to him after the "if we hang around here, we're both dead" line.

Can someone compile the source?

printz said:

2. Did you fix the Bloodbath skill level? As I remember it was a copy of Doom's Nightmare skill, but buggy. You'd have twice the ammo, but most enemies wouldn't respawn (acolytes and other common enemies just decay to nothingness), and they'd have no fast reflexes either (unlike Doom and raven games). They'd have hasted gun autofire, which would get lost between game sessions (the only way to return to game would be by loading from the start screen). All in all it became easier than skill 4.

1. Only robots still respawn, that's how it's intended to work. Would be almost impossible otherwise since Acolytes are so overly lethal.

2. Monsters only get the "fast reflexes" if you also use the -fast option (or enable fast monsters in the frontend before starting your game)

3. Skill properties are no longer lost and are restored when loading saves.

Sodaholic said:

If you've ever looked through VOICES.WAD, you'd see that Rowan was originally intended to kill the player if you kept talking to him after the "if we hang around here, we're both dead" line.

You should document this kind of thing.

Oh never mind, insulting question, I forget it is on Steam.

Is Strife Veteran Edition (and not just classic mode) moddable? Does it support PWADs and maybe even SEHs?