Strife 1995 Prototype Released by Nightdive

[chemo]

Comes with an update to the Veteran Edition

 

https://twitter.com/Hendricks266/status/1299163532269883392

https://twitter.com/pripyatbeast/status/1299128781446152192

Edited August 28, 2020 by chemo

[Altazimuth]

It's in one of the Twitter threads but might as well state it here (though in different words since I'm not constrained to a character limit).
This was gonna be released later but given the leak we figured it might as well be released now. I broke out SLADE, had it remove Doom 1 & 2 IWAD lumps, noted it down, then replaced the offending lumps one by one with blank equivalents. This had to be done since if the sfx were missing it'd I_Error out.

Anyway hopefully I'll try sort out some sort of patcher that takes Doom 1 and 2 and churns out an IWAD that's more like the one prior to modification. A few non-Doom SFX had to be stripped out too.

 

The proto is pretty interesting though. Got some stuff like inventory sprites of weapons, which have somewhat different designs. one graphic has early designs for the Loremaster and Templar. Lots of other odds and ends.

 

If you have it on Steam you can find it there as a launch option.

Edited August 28, 2020 by Altazimuth

[chungy]

I don't see the beta. Is it not part of the Linux release files?

 

Edit: ok, it's there, under the DOS directory. Just lacks any kind of launch options from Steam itself.

Edited August 28, 2020 by chungy

[Edward850]

2 minutes ago, chungy said:

Edit: ok, it's there, under the DOS directory. Just lacks any kind of launch options from Steam itself.

Yeah, the files are on every platform but I could only get dosbox setup on Windows at such short notice. 

[Redneckerz]

This is the kind of news i like to read here. I knew Evan was holding back some beta stuff, but im impressed that it all ended up like this. Nightdive continues to embrace the fanservice concept with immaculate precision.

 

Will be good to find out any changes + support for the beta thru Choco Strife.

[Doom64hunter]

2 hours ago, Redneckerz said:

Nightdive continues to embrace the fanservice concept with immaculate precision.

After letting it catch dust for a while. I distinctly remember this exact build being sent to Nightdive over 2 years ago:

And apparently, nothing was done on this until shortly after the leak occurred. Funny how quickly a company can operate if they are under pressure!

Edited August 28, 2020 by Doom64hunter

[Edward850]

8 minutes ago, Doom64hunter said:

And apparently, nothing was done on this until shortly after the leak occurred.

Note true. All this did was just completely deepsix sll of our original plans. This was not a good move at all on the leakers part and has actually damaged schedules.

We only went through with pushing a build out now because not only did I have an existing depot ready to fire, I also actually respect the time of the moderators here more than we were annoyed with the sudden rug pulling. 

Edited August 28, 2020 by Edward850

[Doom64hunter]

6 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

Note true. All this did was just completely deepsix sll of our original plans. This was not a good move at all on the leakers part and has actually damaged schedules.

We only went through with pushing a build out now because not only did I have an existing depot ready to fire, I also actually respect the time of the moderators here more than we were annoyed with the sudden rug pulling. 

Judging from what was said on Twitter, part of this plan was to replace copyrighted material with assets from the final.

 

Maybe you guys wanted to make this a bigger release, a big PR thing for Nightdive with the whole beta being playable as its own small episode, but from a preservation perspective, and from a perspective of being curious about the unused content, I personally don't find that necessary at all.

[ReaperAA]

So has anyone made a video about this? What are the differences between this prototype and the released shareware version?

[cambreaKer]

1 hour ago, ReaperAA said:

So has anyone made a video about this? What are the differences between this prototype and the released shareware version?

here's this video i made showing some gameplay of the beta version

differences include: almost no sounds, and what few sounds are in the game they are just placeholders

different title screen

"intro" button in main menu which crashes the game

no music

episode selection screen

early map layouts

some skill levels names are different

and more

[ReaperAA]

Thanks for the video and info

[Altazimuth]

2 hours ago, cambreaKer said:

differences include: almost no sounds, and what few sounds are in the game they are just placeholders

I replaced those w/ blanks since they were all from Doom and Doom 2.

 

2 hours ago, cambreaKer said:

no music

Same here. It's largely E2 music from Doom, for whatever reason.

 

The "Intro" button not working is weird. It works if D_BUNNY is a proper MUS but unlike everything else it actively chokes if D_BUNNY isn't a valid MUS. I fixed that by doing to MIDIs what I did to sounds and replacing them with suitable blanks (silent MUS files). Hopefully an update will be put up soon.

Edited August 28, 2020 by Altazimuth

[Alper002]

I managed to figure out that this version uses the cheat codes that the demo version uses, and warped to a lot of the different maps. MAP03 didn't work(like in the video), but maps 04-09 did. They even have conversations approximately close to those in the final game!

Exploring the areas, I find it very interesting that a lot of the maps are very similar to their final counterparts aside from the town not having a starting area/power coupling quest area and some other differences which I'm not in the mood to directly compare.

Another interesting thing to note is that the maps that became "Audience chamber" and "Training Facility" share the same mapslot under the mapname "castle sublevel".

Everything up to the defeat of the programmer is essentially there, and defeating the programmer himself causes C1TEXT to appear as a text screen, and then transition into the first page of the help screen.

Attempting to enter any map above 09 closes the game immediately, whether through the entrance to MAP11 in MAP02(whose existance is interesting), or through using "goto10" or higher.

Edited August 28, 2020 by Alper002

[Blastfrog]

This is cool to play. I notice that the crossbow actually seems better here. It bobs smoothly despite being animated (redundant 1 tic duration states, perhaps?), it's more accurate, seems to cause more damage, and even appears to have smoother projectile impact animations with more frames. I also always suspected that you'd originally start in the tavern, lo and behold my suspicion was correct all along.

 

Not too pleased that the IWAD's been tampered with, however. I understand it was necessary to avoid the wrath of Zenimax, but still, can you guys provide an exact list of changes that were made, and the CRC5 or other checksum of the untampered IWAD? I'd like to be able to recreate the original IWAD myself as closely as possible so I can actually play this in its true form with music and sound.

 

Also worth noting that there are still (at least one) Doom 1/2 sound effects in the final game's IWAD, albeit unused.

 

Also, has anyone else been able to actually get into the Movement base? It freezes on the map transition for me every time.

[Edward850]

7 hours ago, Altazimuth said:

Hopefully an update will be put up soon.

Fixed, pushed, live.

[Redneckerz]

On 8/28/2020 at 12:19 PM, Doom64hunter said:

Funny how quickly a company can operate if they are under pressure!

I mean, if the thing leaked - ofcourse they have to react. Leaks usually aren't in the best of interests for the company from the game/assets are leaked from.

Besides that, a leak forfeits the entire negoiation scheldule or plannings that may or may not have been there regarding this. So obviously a company has to react.

 

Lastly, Nightdive is being put under pressure because of a beta of Strife? Now that i seriously doubt. If it were their System Shock Remastered assets, maybe.

[Edward850]

We've now published the proto-beta to GOG Galaxy as well, which will now show it and the original DOS release as new launch options.

[Blastfrog]

I'm releasing a patch to restore the original state of the IWAD, byte-for-byte, so long as you provide your own copies of DOOM.WAD and DOOM2.WAD.

 

https://coinsh.red/u/strifebetarestorationpatch.zip

 

Just for historical interest. I figure it's better for most users to get it this way than to dig around in unpleasant sections of the internet for a copy.