FreeStrife?

Now I know what you were thinking but no this is not a question about Strife and if it is for free. In fact, I had an idea and was wondering if the doom community would like to take part. Now we've all heard of FreeDoom and Blasphemer but as far as I'm aware there is no project like them made for Strife. I was thinking of maybe making a community made free version of Strife (obviously with our own custom made textures and sprites) seeing as Strife is not freeware and cannot be obtained by legal means. So what do you guy's say, you up for this idea?

Springy said:

seeing as Strife is not freeware and cannot be obtained by legal means.

It most certainly can be obtained legally.

FreeStrife would have an ever hardier time getting anywhere than Blasphemer.

The engine's features are less well-known, there are only exactly two people out there who have ever made custom maps for Strife (Kaiser and Khorus), resources would also include full-screen illustration for the slideshows and character portraits; as well as voice acting for the dialogues; there's no "Brife" or "Strife+" out there to serve as a baseline that doesn't have the constraints of vanilla/Chocolate Strife without having too many additional features as well...

Gez said:

FreeStrife would have an ever hardier time getting anywhere than Blasphemer.

The engine's features are less well-known, there are only exactly two people out there who have ever made custom maps for Strife (Kaiser and Khorus), resources would also include full-screen illustration for the slideshows and character portraits; as well as voice acting for the dialogues; there's no "Brife" or "Strife+" out there to serve as a baseline that doesn't have the constraints of vanilla/Chocolate Strife without having too many additional features as well...

Damn, never really thought of that. I best start learning more in depth coding so I can make a source port, on a serious note I just thought it would be a good idea seeing as Strife (in terms of modding) is one of the least modified games in the doom community.

Having a completed Free Strife would be a good thing.

Making it, however, is quixotic. Freedoom works because there's only loose guidelines. Contributors are free to submit anything they made.

Strife, however, features a story. There's a ton of conversations and voice acting, there's a few exposition slideshows throughout the game (including different ones for the three possible endings), there's the whole quest system which is completely built on hardcoded events and inventory checks, the levels are designed so that transition areas look seamless, etc.

So, a lot of planning would have to be done first. Create a new story that could be told, using the same quest hooks as the original game; create the various characters with which the player will interact, perform auditions for their voice actors, etc.

All this in addition to creating textures, sprites, music, etc. Oh, and there's a lot more weapons in Strife than in other games (including the five-stage Sigil).

It seems unlikely an informal modding team recruited from random Doomworld forumgoers could pull this off. You'd need to start with a modding team that is already cohesive and dedicated -- or hire a company of professionals who will not have anything else to do for a while.

Okay thank you Gez. I guess I didn't really think to do a lot of planning before even asking. I think I'll finish my Strife map, get some of my doom maps completed and maybe consider coming back to this idea in the future a lot more prepared. I completely forgot about voices a I have never played Stride with voices.wad.

For reasons Gez said, I think you'd be better off just making an original game based on ZDoom (or even another engine) than trying to recreate Strife.

We should try a FreeHacx sometime.

And then, Freefreedoom.

Gez said:

And then, Freefreedoom.

An actual Freedoom (that is not actually Freeboom) would suffice.

What would be the purpose of FreeStrife? You can't recreate the story because that's copyright infringement. You can't use it as a base to play wads like FreeDoom, because there are all of two wads. And if you just want to make a Strife-like game, then even a port of Strife probably isn't the best place to start.

I could see a use for FreeQuake or FreeHalfLife. Those would open a world of mods to people with no apparent ability to acquire copies of ancient, but well-supported FPS games.

Maes said:

An actual Freedoom (that is not actually Freeboom) would suffice.

That's what this episode was going to be for:
http://doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?id=16691

It's not bad (some minor bugs though, and game balance issues) but there's no story or anything to tie it together. And of course, it's just E1...

A while back I had this crazy idea of something completely different, based loosely on Quake's method of four separate dimensions, one for each episode (but using a completely different story than Quake). Would also have worked-in some Blasphemer textures, and maybe even a few sprites too, so that the game ends up science-fantasy themed. I might follow-up on this someday and flesh out an actual design doc like the DOOM Bible, if I get any cool ideas.

And as far as DOOM II is concerned, there's FreeDM, but that's deathmatch-only though.

I actually asked about this and tried to start something about seven months ago, it didn't really go anywhere. I think convincing whoever owns the rights to the game to make it freeware would probably be more fruitful and less time-consuming in the end now.

Also just gonna chime in and say that Freedoom should totally have Vanilla compatible maps and whatever instead of Boom.

Maybe we should put a vote to a FreeHarmony

Death Egg: Did you do any more work on your Freestrife past that test pwad?

I was actually meaning to at some point, after Igot some other projects out of the way first. Sodaholic was supposedly working on a pallete for it, I'll have to ask him how far he got with that.

I'd rather just see some other people have a go at designing some strife maps.

Khorus said:

I'd rather just see some other people have a go at designing some strife maps.

Nobody on DW has Strife, because it's evil abandonwarez and you have to sell your soul and newborn children to the lords of ebay if you want a copy. ;-/)

It's a nice idea, but I suspect that just making a mod for ZDoom would be easier, as chungy says.

I also agree with Gez to an extent. Freedoom has been relatively easy to put together because there's no real story to it - it's just a collection of random levels. For a FreeStrife you need a story that fits everything together. I think it's probably possible, but defining the story should be the first thing you do - before you start making anything else.

Khorus said:

I'd rather just see some other people have a go at designing some strife maps.

Very much this. DO IT PEOPLE O:


Also, at risk of being an attention-grabbing bastard, I just want to throw out there that for those who want to get involved in a standalone Doom engine game, Hacx 2.0 could always use some quality contributors. :)

Xaser said:

Very much this. DO IT PEOPLE O:


Also, at risk of being an attention-grabbing bastard, I just want to throw out there that for those who want to get involved in a standalone Doom engine game, Hacx 2.0 could always use some quality contributors. :)

Oh, I was meant to ask you if you wanted any additional beta tester's for Hacx 2.0.

What's really the point of a standalone Strife map anyway? I mean, is there big advantage to it that you can't get from the other engines? I didn't play the full game, so maybe I'm missing something... It just seemed to me like an FPS/RPG hybrid, where the overarching story is important, with various quests that span different maps, etc. But apart from the NPC dialogue, you can get the same effect in Hexen, and actually one of the Hexen hubs I played did have some form of primitive NPC interaction (even a shop where you can buy stuff). Of course in Hexen you can also pick your character class, and Strife doesn't have that for some reason.

Well, the point was to make a version of Strife in the same vein that FreeDoom was made as a free version IWAD for Doom, if that made any sense. Also I just thought it would be a good idea to get the community involved with a project for a game that doesn't see many maps and mods made for it.

Sure, I totally get the point of making a FreeStrife IWAD, so long as someone comes up with a really good kickass plan for it that takes advantage of the engine's features. I was just questioning the logic of making a single standalone map for Strife as opposed to say, Hexen, or even ZDoom. The only thing I can think of it so the mapper can use Strife textures, enemies and weapons in his map, but it's not like the other engines can't use those or similar resources, particularly if the mapper is using scripted ZDoom (and I think all the /idgames Strife PWADs are for ZDoom anyway?)

But the sad thing is these open projects don't tend to get much attention, instead 99% of stuff is made for regular id/Raven IWADs. So there have been lots or projects like DTWID and other cool stuff, but still Freedoom is missing tons of maps. Maybe it's because people think Freedoom is too ugly to map for or something, I don't know. But the fact remains very little gets submitted, so getting this FreeStrife project off the ground would probably require one very motivated dude to crank out maps like Sandy on speed.

I think it'd make more sense to track down whoever has copyright control and persuade them to re-license Strife as "freely distributable for non-commercial usage", that would eliminate the "nobody has a (legal) copy" issue and hopefully spur some interest in mapping for the game.

Let me get this straight.

Nobody maps for strife because outside of Ebay you really cna't get a legal copy. So almost nobody makes content for it (well that and the fact strife is apparently hard to make stuff for.)

Because of this there are only two pwads.

Yet there won't be any more pwads because apparent interest isn't there because nobody can get a legal copy.

Yea I'm with the chorus of people wanting to find who holds the rights to the game and have them make provisions for non-commercial use.

scaled said:

Let me get this straight.

Nobody maps for strife because outside of Ebay you really cna't get a legal copy. So almost nobody makes content for it (well that and the fact strife is apparently hard to make stuff for.)

Because of this there are only two pwads.

Yet there won't be any more pwads because apparent interest isn't there because nobody can get a legal copy.

Yea I'm with the chorus of people wanting to find who holds the rights to the game and have them make provisions for non-commercial use.

Moses Ma, former CEO of Velocity, Inc., might be the one who can grant that permission.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/mosesma

Emailed the guy asking if he has any plans for the property (if indeed he is the rights holder.)