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Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game

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Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game

#71
post #9

I remember going on vacation with my parents and all I had was the Diablo game manual, because I got the game 1 hour before we left. I read the manual about 100 times in the car... good memories

For me it was the Starcraft game manual. I took that thing everywhere!

Same. I took the manual to school for weeks so my friends and I could look at all the crazy Metzen illustrations.

Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a very real possibility it wasn't your connection that was the problem. Since Diablo 1 was a peer to peer game it was super easy to just flood another player to lag them out and steal their crap. The game's public multiplayer was notoriously full of griefing like that. There were also ways to get firewalls to go on the spawn point and pvp was easy to force. It was a mess. Going into a public game was basicall…

What is fascinating is the guy who coded and designed the multiplayer is actually a genius, he was just inexperienced at the time. His next big project was a huge, complicated, MMO that you could start playing before it finished downloading, and everything worked from day 1, which is rather unique among MMOs!] edit, sorry: Pat Wyatt of Guild Wars good interview with him talking about screwing up Diablo and doing a go…

What mmo? Or what was his name?

Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game

#73
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

edit : Didn't read the the "spiritual" part of the "spiritual successor". Though you could argue diablo 3 is, I would not be so bold. You should still try diablo 3 if you haven't. Diablo 3 is actually pretty good now if you want a successor. If you just want something similar to diablo 2 I suggest torchlight or titan quest. Diablo 1 is tricky because it was so much closer to rogue likes (probably because originally i…

>Diablo 3 is actually pretty good now if you want a successor. Diablo 3 is in no way a spiritual successor to D1 and 2. Yes, it's much better than it was at release, but it is still very much a streamlined, mass market friendly ARPG. Modern Diablo gameplay consists of leveling (1-2 hours), finishing your season journey (another 2-3 hours, maybe), getting your free super-powerful six piece handed to you, and then grin…

I guess I didn't read spiritual in the successor part though I am not sure what that means. I can see how they games are different enough that saying diablo 3 is a spirital successor is probably not useful. I don't think arguing about what it means would be fruitful, so I concede the point.

> Yes, it's much better than it was at release, but it is still very much a streamlined, mass market friendly ARPG.

How is this bad? It seems like you are implying it is. Also how is diablo 3 mass-market and diablo 2 not?

> Modern Diablo gameplay consists of leveling (1-2 hours), finishing your season journey (another 2-3 hours, maybe), getting your free super-powerful six piece handed to you, and then grinding paragon levels and filling in a couple of gear spots here and there.

Agree, that is how I play it. This is slightly hyperbolic but not that far off. It took me about 2 days of playing to get to T13 (the hardest difficulty). This could be made more interesting but I kind of enjoy tweaking my build and min-maxing :)

> It in no significant way resembles the Diablo of old. If you want a true sequel try PoE or Grim Dawn.

Which diablo? Diablo 3 is a true sequel, you just don't like it, which is fine.

Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game

#74
post #9

I remember going on vacation with my parents and all I had was the Diablo game manual, because I got the game 1 hour before we left. I read the manual about 100 times in the car... good memories

Reading the game manual was one of my favorite rituals when I couldn't actually get to play the game for a while, amazing memories.

Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game

#75
post #62
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems legally questionable given that all of the source files have a copyright notice from Blizzard indicating distribution without written permission is prohibited.

No one is distributing them. If you have the content files, you can point the open source engine to read them.

The guy on Github is distributing the source files which have a Blizzard copyright notice on them saying not to distribute them.

Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game

#76

I'm old enough to remember that when Diablo came out, it seemed to be running too fast. This was before 3D video cards were mainstream (which happened with the Voodoo and Quake in 1997 maybe?). I was working a lot with blitters at that point and running into speed issues on the Mac because Apple liked to release machines with half-width busses, which cut memory throughput by almost half. I'd be lucky to get 60 fps on…

I remember trying very hard to play Descent on a 33 MHz 486 DX. It did not go well for me!

I was so upset when I found out I had. 486SX and not a DX. The math co-processor was required! I had to upgrade my CPU with one of those “evergreens”.

Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game

#77
post #62
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems legally questionable given that all of the source files have a copyright notice from Blizzard indicating distribution without written permission is prohibited.

No one is distributing them. If you have the content files, you can point the open source engine to read them.

What do you mean?

https://github.com/galaxyhaxz/devilution/blob/master/Source/...

This seems like distribution to me.

Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game

#78
post #51
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"This work is being released to the Public Domain. No assets of Diablo are being provided. You must own a copy of Diablo and have access to the assets beforehand in order to use this software."

Just because someone says what they are doing is legal doesn't mean it is. IANAL so I don't know but the source files have Blizzard's copyright warning in them

And now that MS owns github there's reason to believe they're going to be more active/compliant about bullshit DMCA take down requests.

Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a very real possibility it wasn't your connection that was the problem. Since Diablo 1 was a peer to peer game it was super easy to just flood another player to lag them out and steal their crap. The game's public multiplayer was notoriously full of griefing like that. There were also ways to get firewalls to go on the spawn point and pvp was easy to force. It was a mess. Going into a public game was basicall…

What is fascinating is the guy who coded and designed the multiplayer is actually a genius, he was just inexperienced at the time. His next big project was a huge, complicated, MMO that you could start playing before it finished downloading, and everything worked from day 1, which is rather unique among MMOs!] edit, sorry: Pat Wyatt of Guild Wars good interview with him talking about screwing up Diablo and doing a go…

Who was it?

Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game

#80
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This game is incredibly good. It's everything Diablo 3 should have been.

Inability to zoom out more kills it for me. Feels too much like diablo 2 at 800x600

One of biggest downside of that game for me.

Fortunatelly at least few years ago there was publicly available zoom hack that obviously will get your account banned, but it's not something I would care about in F2P game like ever.

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