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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

#131

Post by EpicEng »

klibertp wrote: post #112
EpicEng wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

...what, exactly, do you see in PoE that resembles Diablo 1? I can't think of much beyond the camera view angle.

Primarily tone, aesthetic, and depth. Of course they didn't copy the systems 1:1, but it _feels_ more like diablo than diablo 3 ever did. I realize that I'm using vague terminology, but you'd be hard pressed to find fans that don't agree.

We're talking about a "spiritual successor" here, not "add up how many aspects of PoE are identical to D2." I know you said D1, but few people make or care about that comparison. D2 is the most popular and the latest entry in the series that people who were turned off by D3 care about.

Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game

#132

Post by cthuluforprez »

ryanmcbride wrote: post #94
cthuluforprez wrote: post #34

Having never played Diablo, is there any way I can still play it on a modern computer?

Yes! I actually played it through last year. https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/wiki/index#wiki_diablo_i_gam... I've also used this HD mod that adds some characters from Diablo II, better multiplayer, and increases the difficulty: https://mod.diablo.noktis.pl/download

Thanks! I'll try it out. Did you liked the game?

Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game

#133

Post by [deleted] »

sumeno wrote: post #51
EpicEng wrote: 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

[deleted]

Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game

#134

Post by vkou »

EpicEng wrote: post #47
robohamburger wrote: post #41

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…

To be fair, the only commonality between Diablo and Diablo 2 was in:

1. The Atmosphere. (Except for most of Act 1, and Acts 2 and 5.)

2. The Name.

Diablo was a slow, tile-based click-and-slash dungeon crawler. Diablo 2 was... Something else entirely. Blast/teleport[1] through everything at top speed to farm bosses. Non-linear power curves. Incredibly high emphasis on gear[2]. Far less tactical, and far more forgiving to mistakes.

In that sense, the gap between Diablo and Diablo 2 was probably bigger then the gap between Diablo 2 and Diablo 3. The core gameplay loop of Diablo 3 is the same as Diablo 2 - it's just that getting your first set of end-game gear is a bit faster, and there's less emphasis on farming bosses. And the ham-fisted story is in your face.

[1][2] Enigma... And the rest of the ladder-only rune-words are a game-breaking abomination. They were supposed to be balanced by the rarity of high-end runes, but in practice, those runes are plentiful, because of duping and botting.

Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game

#135

Post by robodale »

raesene9 wrote: post #58
Exuma wrote: 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 Bard's Tale. A demo of Skara brae and a couple of levels of the first dungeon was put on a magazine cover in the UK months before the game came out. I played that demo to oblivion, I can still pretty much remember all the street layouts

The Bard's Tale - I had that for my Commodore 64 back in the day. Absolutely loved that game. I'm pretty sure I would mourn the loss when members of my party died.

Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game

#136

Post by Maro »

have_faith wrote: post #4
aw3c2 wrote: post #3

There is a slowly but steadily progressing engine being developed at https://freeablo.org/

It's such a shame there's no modern spiritual successor to Diablo / Diablo 2. The aesthetic and gameplay was great.

I played and loved both Diablo 1, 2 and 3, SP only. At 37, I still play D3 sometimes (SP).

Can somebody explain why D3 is not the "spiritual successor"?

Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game

#137

Post by Reedx »

gameswithgo wrote: post #61
stormbrew wrote: post #30

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…

Oh yeah, I remember being really impressed by the Guild Wars/ArenaNet tech at launch. It felt like a game changer.

Heck, they did a better job than most games do to this day. Often when a game has the ability to start before completing the download, it just means you get to look at the main menu.

Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game

#138

Post by thoughtpalette »

jakebasile wrote: post #19
have_faith wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's such a shame there's no modern spiritual successor to Diablo / Diablo 2. The aesthetic and gameplay was great.

Isometric ARPGs are niche now, but there's still games being made. Off the top of my head: - Titan Quest (just got an update and a new expansion!) - Grim Dawn - The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing - Victor Vran - Path of Exile - Warhammer 40000 Inquisitor - Martyr - Torchlight 1 & 2 (I wish Runic games hadn't imploded...) It is unfortunate that most of these don't have the same level of randomness than Diablo ha…

Victor Vran was great, def worth picking up. Works well with a controller too.

Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game

#139

Post by oraknabo »

jgrowl wrote: post #18
have_faith wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's such a shame there's no modern spiritual successor to Diablo / Diablo 2. The aesthetic and gameplay was great.

David Brevik, the creator of diablo is currently working on an indy game pretty much by himself called It Lurks Below. It's kind of like if terraria merged with diablo. You have to survive by growing crops and you get items by venturing lower and lower into the world using your pickaxe. It's still in pre-release on steam, but even at this stage I played it for quite a number of hours and found that it had a surprisin…

I was never a huge Diablo fan, but I could always appreciate the things people liked about it. I gained new respect for it from watching Brevik's GDC postmortem [0] from a couple of years ago.

I love the idea that it was originally a dungeon crawl inspired by X-COM and would love to play one of the early builds before they changed to real-time combat.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VscdPA6sUkc

Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game

#140

Post by Reedx »

For anyone interested in the history of Diablo, the GDC post mortem is well worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VscdPA6sUkc

Quite a bit of detail regarding the origin of the game, going turn-based to real-time, the studio becoming Blizzard North, etc.

Also here's the original design doc: https://www.graybeardgames.com/download/diablo_pitch.pdf

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