The classic Strife Hint Page:
http://www.vavoom-engine.com/strife/velocity_hints/index.htm

The Strife page at Doom wiki, includes maps:
http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Strife

The guide from GameFaqs:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/198834-strife/faqs/25482

And the cheats:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/198834-strife-trust-no-one/cheats

Also useful to know: [url=http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Category:Strife_ports]source ports that can run Strife[/url]. Drawbacks compared to the updated SVE engine: no achievements, and you won't get the same graphical enhancements; however it's always nice to have alternative choices and some of these ports can be required to play the few Strife mods that exist.

And yes, there are Strife mods! Here you can browse through most of them. There are few enough that you can very well try them all, but I can especially recommend those made by Samuel 'Kaiser' Villarreal (who is also one of the programmers who worked on SVE, by the way) and those made by Adam "Khorus" Woodmansey.

Is it not possible to get the high res textures from the SVE edition and use them in a source port like GZDoom then?

There are no high res textures, but there are some fixed textures.

You could extract them with slade and use them with a source port, but you will miss the other updates (e.g. the removed dead end, some secrets and the super strength update).

You can get some, like the enhanced textures, but the enhanced lighting and shadows are something unique to strife-ve at the moment.

I'll stick with SVE for now then. I got it on Steam when it came out, and got about halfway through. What I did notice, though, and I know that this is more correct in terms of how the original Doom engine worked, was that sprites would overlap other sprites.

For instance, you have a table with some bottles and objects on it. The bottles and objects are overlaid on the sprite of the table, which sometimes looks fine, but at other times they don't look right as they can be in front of what would be the leading edge of the table.

Similarly, objects in little recesses in the wall appear to be hovering in front of the ledge they would actually be on, instead of resting on the ledge in the recess. GZDoom never seemed to suffer this issue, but then GZDoom doesn't render the same way as the original Doom engine did.

If I remember to get some screenshots I'll post them for comparison.

Okay, I have some screenshots showing how GZDoom's handling of sprite clipping is far better than SVE, although SVE is true to the original Doom engine.

First up, three screenshots. Two for SVE, one showing how a bottle is placed on a surface with sprite clipping off, the next with sprite clipping on. And for comparison, a screenshot from GZDoom showing the same bottle with sprite clipping set to always.

Notice how that with sprite clipping off, the bottle sinks into the surface, but with sprite clipping on it seems to float in front of the surface. GZDoom, however, places the bottle so that it appears to be standing on top of the surface, looking as it ought to.

Next up, two comparisons in one.

Firstly, another bottle as displayed in SVE with sprite clipping on. Notice how from a distance it appears to float in front of the surface, but when moving closer to it, it them moves on top of the surface. This can be quite immersion breaking when there are many sprites close together - there is one example a little later in the game where there is a table with a number of objects on it, and as you move around the table the effect is that the objects move in relation to each other, completely unnaturally.

Then the same bottle viewed in GZDoom with sprite clipping set to always. It isn't floating in front of the surface it is on when viewed from a distance, and as you move closer to it, it doesn't move around on top of the surface. A much more accurate representation.


So, GZDoom handles sprites far better than SVE, though SVE is showing the limitations of the original Doom engine.


I'd love to have all the enhancements of SVE but within GZDoom where sprite clipping is improved.

Yes, this is an effect that was deliberately coded in Strife VE to make the rendering closer to the original. It was actually a bit complicated to get it to work: the developer wrote a bit about it here.

The behavior in GZDoom is more accurate but it cuts off bits of sprites unless you use sprite clipping adjustments that shift the sprite up (or down, for ceiling sprites) as required.

Yeah, I've seen that page before. I just wish SVE had an option to handle sprites how GZDoom does, because it looks so much more real in GZDoom. There are times in SVE where I've seen sprites showing through holes in walls because of how they are overlaid, and it breaks the immersion of the game for me. Similarly, when objects on a table appear to move around as you walk around the table, it is distracting and jarring.

I found a mod that allows the SVE.wad file to be used in GZDoom, but it doesn't add everything from SVE into GZDoom.

It did that for me too, but I remember Doom have similar issues, after a while I got used to it, but I can see why it would ruin the games immersion for you, it can be a bit jarring.

Yes, it is how the original Doom engine handled sprites, and that's why the SVE edition purposefully did the same, so that it handled it just like the original Doom engine. Personally, I prefer progress with improvements, not repeating the limitations and bugs of the past, so if I could get all of the SVE content and graphical niceties and such into GZDoom, that'd be perfect.

yeah hopefully Gaerzi or someone can do a more complete allowance of SVE.wad into G(Z)Doom.

As far as i understand, GZDoom and SVE handles the lightning stuff completely different. So if GZDoom should use all graphical enhancements of SVE.wad, it have to be coded into GZDoom, maybe by adapt the code from SVE.

The graphical stuff is out of question; the engines are too different and there would be license conflicts anyway when trying to adapt the SVE code into GZDoom.

The gameplay elements are much easier to do because they're simple changes so they can be done through writing new code without copying from the SVE source. This is because they're relatively simple things (the degnin ore spawner is probably the most complex), not complex things with sensitive subtleties like new monsters or weapons.