What is Strife's equivalent to "Hurt Me Plenty" difficulty?

[Dweller Dark]

I've been considering trying a playthrough of Strife VE lately, but I don't know (or may have forgotten) how the difficulty options relate to Doom's. Hurt Me Plenty difficulty is what I typically play Doom/Doom 2 on (barring things like Russian Overkill, etc), so I'd like to figure out what the HMP equivalent is for Strife (and possibly Heretic/Hexen). 

 

Thanks in advance if you have an answer!

[Enzo Carozza]

The difficulty options are in the exact same order as Doom in all three of those.

[Dweller Dark]

1 minute ago, Enzo Carozza said:

The difficulty options are in the exact same order as Doom in all three of those.

 

Ah, I understand. Thank you!

[T-Rex]

Yep, the difficulty options in Strife are the same as in Doom, Heretic and Hexen since they both use the same engine. Funny enough, Blood uses the same Build engine as Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior and Redneck Rampage, yet it has five difficulty settings; Still Kickin' (easiest), Pink on the Inside (easy), Lightly Broiled (medium), Well Done (hard), and Extra Crispy (expert) as opposed to four like the other three Build games.

[ReaperAA]

On 2/29/2024 at 8:49 AM, T-Rex said:

Funny enough, Blood uses the same Build engine as Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior and Redneck Rampage, yet it has five difficulty settings; Still Kickin' (easiest), Pink on the Inside (easy), Lightly Broiled (medium), Well Done (hard), and Extra Crispy (expert) as opposed to four like the other three Build games.

 

In Build Engine games, while the engine/rendering code is similar, the game code between the games is very different between the games. Unlike in Doom engine games where all the games have like 90% similar code.

 

Duke, SW and Blood all have very different code and the fact that Duke and SW have 4 difficulties may be a coincidence. Also unlike Duke (and SW as well I think), the enemies in Blood not only increase at higher difficulties but they also become stronger by being more durable and having more dangerous attacks.

 

Redneck Rampage however does share a lot of code with Duke since it is based on Duke's codebase.

[FistMarine]

For more information about the skill levels in Doom Engine Games, you can always consult the wiki: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Skill_level

 

I agree with @ReaperAA when comes to the Build Engine games having different codebase and the skill level is handled differently in each game as well. But also when comes to Duke3D and SW having four difficulties, what most people don't know is during development, they each had FIVE difficulty levels available (not really the case in LameDuke but it was the case in Duke3D Beta 0.99).

 

In case of Duke3D, they cut the easiest skill available (Skill 0 remains unused in final game and can only be accessed by command line parameters, features even less enemies than Piece of Cake), while in case of SW, it seems like they removed either skill 4 or 5 and made No Pain No Gain have the maximum amount of enemies present, which is why there is a huge increase in enemy count compared to Who Wants Wang (the default difficulty).

 

If you don't believe me, you can read here for more details:

https://tcrf.net/Proto:Duke_Nukem_3D_(PC)/v0.99_Beta

And one comment at Duke4.net forums mentions that in SW, NPNG skill is actually 5!

https://forums.duke4.net/topic/11406-shadow-warrior-scriptset-for-mapster32/

But I'm not fully sure if in SW, the skills are really counted from 0 to 4 or 1 to 5. This is important to remember because the behavior differs between some Build games/versions.

 

As for the difficulty equivalents (compared to Doom) in each Build game, in order of release date:

 

Duke Nukem 3D

Spoiler

 

Piece of Cake = Hey, Not Too Rough

Let's Rock = Hurt Me Plenty

Come Get Some = Ultra-Violence

Damn I'm Good = Nightmare! (Ultra-Violence with respawn)

 

The only thing changed between first three difficulties is the amount of enemies present at map start. Enemy damage/health is the same and the enemies that spawn later in the level are completely unaffected by skill settings. Damn I'm Good makes monsters respawn after 30 seconds unless their corpse is blown up. Maps can have enemies that only appear on DIG difficulty but in most cases the enemy count is the same between CGS and DIG, with exception of E1L3: Death Row that has an extra trooper present on DIG skill. User maps without tagged enemies render most difficulties useless, since there is no benefit in selecting anything lower than Come Get Some.

 

Fun fact: On Duke Nukem 64, Piece of Cake is changed so that Duke takes half damage, making it the I'm Too Young To Die equivalent. But due to a glitch (this glitch is present in all Duke versions and all games based on it), Duke will still die if an attack deals damage that is equal or higher than his current health, which is why Duke dies quickly when his health falls below 50, he can get one shot by pig cops that not even armor will save him. And probably the reason why you may have noticed that when Duke dies, the armor disappears.

 

 

Redneck Rampage

Spoiler

 

Wuss = Hey, Not Too Rough

Meejum = Hurt Me Plenty

Hard Ass = Ultra-Violence

Killbilly = Ultra-Violence with cheats disabled

Psychobilly = Nightmare! (Ultra-Violence with both cheats and saving/loading disabled!)

 

While RR skills are mostly the same as Duke3D (including the armor glitch), it is important to note that the alpha demo version only featured four skill levels, while the final game features five skills. In the original RR game, skills 3 to 5 feature the same enemy count (except the final level that seemed to have even more enemies present on Killbilly than Hard Ass did), so Killbilly and Psychobilly are mostly just variations of Hard Ass. But in the expansion and sequel (ESPECIALLY the sequel), Killbilly and Psychobilly feature even more enemies.

 

As with Duke3D, Skill 0 in the main game is unused and features even less enemies than Wuss. And again, the damage taken is identical on all skills, while first three skills only change the enemy count at map start. Here is where things get interesting in the sequel (Rides Again). The skill levels are now counted from 0 to 4 rather than 1 to 5. This makes each difficulty different enough in terms of enemy count but as a side effect, playing on Killbilly can let you use cheats, while Psychobilly is the difficulty disabling both cheats, as well as saving and loading. This also means that Meejum in Rides Again is the equivalent to Wuss in the main game and so on.

 

 

Blood

Spoiler

 

Still Kicking = I'm Too Young To Die

Pink On The Inside = Hey, Not Too Rough

Lightly Broiled = Hurt Me Plenty

Well Done = Ultra-Violence

Extra Crispy = Nightmare!

 

Unlike most Build games, Blood's difficulty settings are directly comparable to the ones in Doom, plus each difficulty in Blood changes the game in some ways, ranging from the damage/health of enemies/player to some enemies having extra attacks, like the Cultists having increased accuracy and throwing sticks of dynamite on LB and dynamite bundles on WD and EC. This makes the difficulties much more unique and interesting, unlike the lazy approach of only changing the enemy count but as a result, the game can be either too easy or too hard.

 

Lightly Broiled is fine for a first playthrough and highly recommended. Then if you want to play on Well Done, I recommend first playing through the game on an easier setting and then you can attempt to do it on this difficulty, as it's a big difficulty spike. When you feel like you have mastered the game, then you can jump on Extra Crispy, although this difficulty was designed for COOP. You have been warned!

 

Though it is important to note that in the original DOS version of the game, loading a saved game will invert the difficulty level, so for example when playing on Well Done and loading a saved game, it will make Caleb take the same damage he would take on Pink on the Inside, making the game slightly easier. The only unaffected difficulty is Lightly Broiled and the bug exists in ALL DOS versions (though I only played OUWB 1.21 and the bug was present), it was only fixed in source ports and the remaster.

 

 

Shadow Warrior

Spoiler

 

Tiny Grasshopper = Hey, Not Too Rough

I Have No Fear = Hurt Me Plenty

Who Wants Wang = Ultra-Violence (with less enemies?)

No Pain No Gain = Ultra-Violence (with maximum amount of enemies?)

 

It was difficult for me to find an exact equivalent because I think TG would be more similar to Duke3D's unused Skill 0, IHNF would be more similar to Duke3D's POC, WWW would be more similar to Duke3D's LR, NPNG would be more similar to Duke3D's CGS (or DIG if it had even more enemies present, obviously without respawn) as there is a huge difference in enemy count, just look at the fourth level of the shareware episode when doing the carpet ride, there's only a few ninjas on WWW but on NPNG, there are lots of them in that room.

 

As far as I know, the only difference between the difficulties in SW is the amount of enemies encountered. Like Duke3D and all games based on it, Lo Wang takes the same damage on all skills but unlike Duke3D, the enemies that spawn later in the level are ALSO affected, which can be seen in the first level of the shareware episode, there is only one Shadow Ninja present on WWW but on NPNG, there is a second one that spawns inside the train tracks.

 

 

Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy. I know I went a bit off-topic but seeing as Build Games got mentioned, I thought I'd try to describe their difficulties in detail and give their equivalents compared to Doom. As I haven't seen a similar topic before and some people might enjoy knowing exactly what each difficulty does in some games. And personally, I kinda wish that DUKE3D, RR and SW had each difficulty slightly different, at least when comes to damage taken and enemy health.

 

EDIT: I also forgot to mention that in Duke3D and games based on it, tagging an item will make it appear on that skill and above. This example can be seen even in some original maps (such as E1L5: The Abyss), where some Atomic Healths only appear on CGS and above. But this is also taken to the extremes in RR:RA, where playing on easiest difficulty will have much less health supplies available, while playing on higher skills will get you more health pickups as well. Seriously, just look at how many health pickups you get in first area (only one on easiest difficulty, three on rest difficulties).

Edited March 1 by FistMarine

[idbeholdME]

36 minutes ago, FistMarine said:

Though it is important to note that in the original DOS version of the game, loading a saved game will invert the difficulty level, so for example when playing on Well Done and loading a saved game, it will make Caleb take the same damage he would take on Pink on the Inside, making the game slightly easier. The only unaffected difficulty is Lightly Broiled and the bug exists in ALL DOS versions (though I only played OUWB 1.21 and the bug was present), it was only fixed in source ports and the remaster.

There is a workaround, where you can freeze the damage scaling value through DosBox memory editing, using DosShark:

https://www.gog.com/forum/blood_series/glitch_damage_scaling_changes_when_loading_fix_inside

 

Played through the game like that several times. Works perfectly, although it wrecks demos of course.

Edited March 1 by idbeholdME