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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

#151

Post by T-hawk »

im3w1l wrote: post #107
spapas82 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember trying to play Diablo multiplayer through a 55.6 kbps modem. It was nice for like 5 minutes but then the connection lagged and I couldn't control my character. When the connection quality improved, I saw my character dead with all his (high level and very diffucult to find) gear stolen by other players. I was so frustrated I removed the cdrom from the drive and threw it on the wall; the cd broke and that w…

I played Diablo II on a 55.6 kbps modem. Worked fine.

Diablo II specifically includes design elements to be playable via 56k dialup.

1) Latency hiding. The results of actions are determined ahead of time. The hit chance and damage value for melee swings and missile shots (arrows, spell effects) are calculated when you start a weapon swing or bow fire or spellcasting action. The duration of the action hides the network lag; by the time your sword finishes swinging, the packet describing the results has arrived.

2) Low bandwidth. The client does a lot of autonomous prediction and extrapolation. The server typically sends updates of monster positions at intervals of several seconds, rather than every frame. This can create situations where your attacks seem to automatically miss because the monster you think you're attacking isn't where your client thinks it is. But better to have that "lag haze" than to not be playable at all for lack of bandwidth.

This was all implemented for Diablo II after learning from the first Diablo.

Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game

#152

Post by pm90 »

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…

That sounds really cool! Terraria is an excellent game and I kind of liked that its monsters were in the same vein (i.e. scary, evil. Especially liked when I dug through the ground to find the underworld... ha). The loot system is insane.

Its a little hard to replicate the gore and fear of the original game though; and the fighting does seem a lot more involved in D2 than in Terraria.

Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game

#153

Post by softawre »

Exuma wrote: post #105
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…

Obligatory genius video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1faaOrtHJ-A

Great talk!

Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game

#155

Post by abiox »

reiichiroh wrote: post #64

It's amazing that Chris Metzen's terrible kiddy drawings from the Diablo and Starcraft manuals got him promoted eventually to creative lead.

metzen created the diablo universe (with roper) and the starcraft universe (with phinney). he had a bit more involvement than some drawings in manuals.

Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game

#156

Post by jczhang »

digi_owl wrote: post #146
jczhang wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first Diablo manual had great background stories and mythology. When I watched Constantine for the first time, I realize it had the same setting as Diablo!

They reuse some religious themes etc, but other than that they are not related what so ever...

I mean the whole idea of heaven and hell fighting for power and that they are not supposed to have any physical influence, but the demons of hell sneak in anyways, not just by mental influence but physically as well. That's how the Diablo 1 story begins, with the corruption of the Archbishop (I remember way too much lol).

Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game

#157

Post by 15charlimit »

enraged_camel wrote: post #43
gabes wrote: 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

If you adjust the aspect radio by playing in windowed mode and keeping it full-width while lowering the height, you gain significantly more visibility. I imagine playing on an ultrawide display would have a similar effect.

Granted, it wasn't built to support a zoomed out camera so some controls behave poorly at the outer edges of visibility.

Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game

#158

Post by spapas82 »

quadcore wrote: post #31
spapas82 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember trying to play Diablo multiplayer through a 55.6 kbps modem. It was nice for like 5 minutes but then the connection lagged and I couldn't control my character. When the connection quality improved, I saw my character dead with all his (high level and very diffucult to find) gear stolen by other players. I was so frustrated I removed the cdrom from the drive and threw it on the wall; the cd broke and that w…

Sometimes, you can still use a broken cd.

The cd was completely broken in 4-5 pieces. Actally I was impressed of how badly it was damaged because I had thrown other CDs down and they didn't even get a scratch (they were mainly cd-r though)!

Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game

#159

Post by ChuckMcM »

gwicks56 wrote: post #89
zackmorris wrote: post #56

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 had totally forgotten about Descent, thank you for the reminder. That game seriously scared me as a 13 yo boy at the time. I loved it.

Ah wingnut, I miss those times of plunging through the caves with you :-)

Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game

#160

Post by jakebasile »

xahrepap wrote: post #33
jakebasile wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> - Torchlight 1 & 2 (I wish Runic games hadn't imploded...) Runic is dead now? Oh sad. I loved the Torchlight series :( Torchlight 2 is the Diablo 3 the world wanted.

Yeah, they sold to Perfect World Entertainment which then closed the studio so they could focus on thrice-damned "games-as-a-service" (http://archive.is/yIC0z).
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