Strife/Gameplay

Gameplay
Strife is far more hub-like in its maps than Hexen, in that you can go back to nearly any of the maps you've been to before (with few exceptions). It is the most non-linear of the Doom-based games, with the possibility of doing several things out of order coupled with multiple endings.

Unlike most games built from the Doom engine, Strife allows for conversations with other people in the game (with voice acting for the more important ones) as well as a special "Query" key. This button lets the player know how long they have been playing Strife, as well as the current mission that has been given to the main character. There are also decisions that the player must make in order to progress through the game that change the ending of the game. There are three such endings as a result: the "good" victory ending (aka the "best" ending), the "bad" victory ending, and the failure or "worst" ending.

Strife is one of the few Doom-engine games where what you do in a level can directly affect other levels; this is most drastically seen when the Programmer is killed, which replaces the Castle with the New Front Base and causes several other changes. See the latter article for details.

Another innovative feature is that trigger linedefs are sometimes marked; those which operate lifts or open doors by yellow and black stripes, and alarm triggers in doorframes by yellow lights (activated unless the player is wearing an officer's uniform) or green lights (activated regardless). There are also forcefields, in green or orange (though there is no other known difference), which must be disabled in order to progress.

On modern machines, Strife is best run using a source port such as ZDoom. One thing to beware of is that sometimes "Falling Damage" is set to "Off" by default, even for Strife (and Hexen); for these two games, you should set Falling Damage to "Strife" or "Hexen" respectively, matching the way the original EXE worked, so that if you fall into a deep pit you don't have to restart the level manually.

Trivia

 * "Tarn" means a lake, particularly a mountain lake created by glacier action.
 * Although most supplies are scarce (or at least well-hidden), the only rare item (apart from one-off items such as keys) is electric bolts; probably because they're next to useless, so as soon as you have yourself a merry little assault rifle, you will be using that instead.

Non-functioning demo included

 * As can be seen above, the registered-version WAD file (STRIFE1.WAD) includes the demo version, which can be played in ZDoom and compatible ports by using the command line zdoom -iwad strife1.wad -warp 33 (and any others you want to use); but this version of the demo plays wrongly (some of Blackbird's messages are wrong, and there are a few things with unrecognised thing types, shown in ZDoom by floating ! graphics in squares), meaning that you are unlikely to complete it unless you follow a walkthrough or you have already completed the demo and remember what to do. If played using the original strife1.exe, it only gets as far as Harris' second dialog screen before crashing, so this "demo" can't even be properly started. Interestingly, Blackbird's "Drop the Chalice!" message is somewhat calmer in this version.

Poisoning becomes permanent
This is probably something which is supposed to happen, rather than a bug in the technical sense, but:

If (whilst playing Strife using the original EXE) you are in God Mode, and go through a toxic / radioactive area for too long without wearing an Environmental Suit, at some point (presumably, when you would have died were it not for God Mode), the poisoning becomes permanent and the inventory left/right keys become disabled.

Playing using ZDoom fixes this questionable behaviour.

Sound bugs
These are both bugs observed whilst playing Strife using ZDoom. It is not known whether the original EXE, or other Strife-compatible source ports, also exhibit these bugs.


 * If you turn while somebody is talking to you, the stereo position of the sound changes accordingly, which in most cases should happen; but this happens even with the messages Blackbird sends you over the com unit, which is wrong (she's supposed to be speaking to you through an earpiece or the like, so the position relative to you never changes).
 * Similarly, if you walk away from a character you just talked to while Blackbird is speaking, her voice fades as if it were coming from the character instead of your earpiece.