Not loading for me, but I assume this is it? https://archive.org/details/diablo_pitch/page/n7/mode/2up
It's the same document, yes
Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]
11–20 of 184 posts
Re: Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]
#12Here’s the one for Planescape: Torment if anyone is interested.
https://rpgwatch.com/files/Files/00-0208/Torment_Vision_Stat...
Re: Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]
#13What always bemuses me is how, if I were evaluating this pitch in 1994 and had absolutely zero future knowledge, I could very easily have brushed this aside with a "meh." And Diablo is one of my favorite franchises ever.
It really could have flopped or just barely breezed by as a passing game. You'd never really know for sure. Leap of faith.
Re: Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]
#14How things have deviated since Diablo 2, I’m so saddened by the lack of creativity in D4 compared to path of exile
Couldn't disagree more. Played all of them, and the story in D4 is fantastic, not to mention the amazing cinematics. Well worth the asking price.
Re: Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]
#15It was a different time:
“Condor plans to spend one year in the development of Diablo. Personnel will consist of: one designer, one chief programmer, 2 junior programmer, 2 art director/artists, 1 illustrator/sculptor, 3 pixel artists, and 1 sound FX person”
So, 11 people for a year for Diablo. Meanwhile Diablo 4 took 300+ people 6+ years. So over 150x the cost, not accounting for the fact that game developers are paid much more now as well. People pretend it’s the same industry but it’s evolved dramatically.
Re: Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]
#16As a software engineer, I wonder how accurate they stuck to their said schedule at the last page.
Well, it's a 12-month development schedule. This pitch was dated 1994. Diablo was released in 1997... doesn't seem too bad.
I wrote the isometric engine for this game in about 1996:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abomination:_The_Nemesis_Proje...
It was planned to be a totally 2D game in the vein of Diablo, but as this brief lays out, the amount of 2D assets required for all the rotations of the characters gets out of hand extremely quickly. After we started development we figured this out and decided to switch the characters to 3D and keep the backgrounds 2D. So I had to write a whole 3D engine and toolchain from scratch in two weeks. Those were the days.
Still, took three years to get that pig out of the door.
Re: Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]
#17As a software engineer, I wonder how accurate they stuck to their said schedule at the last page.
The schedule looks very waterfall to me. I wonder if games are developed more iteratively/agile these days.
Re: Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]
#18An underrated choice of the original diablo is that it would only show you a subset of story quests and boss monsters in a single play-through. A few (like the butcher) would always show up, but for most others there'd be multiple options for which story quest would be in the game. A lot of games since include every quest in every playthrough (or change it based on what choices you make), and games like the Witcher 3…
There's a fascinating trade-off there.
Diablo (and much more so its sequels) was focused pretty hard on replayability. After beating the game once, the player is encouraged to play the again with the same character, continuing to level it up. Keeping some content back for those later playthroughs is a way to make the second or third trip through more interesting. The very nature of the randomly generated levels is a big part of this.
Games like Witcher 3 or Skyrim, on the other hand, are focused on one single, giant play session, chock full of content. You should be able to do nearly everything (except perhaps choosing a build) the first time. The exceptions are choices in particular quests, which need to have different results so that the players have a feeling of agency.
Re: Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]
#19How things have deviated since Diablo 2, I’m so saddened by the lack of creativity in D4 compared to path of exile
Couldn't disagree more. Played all of them, and the story in D4 is fantastic, not to mention the amazing cinematics. Well worth the asking price.
This is interesting to me, because I always figured the Diablo series was prized for its moment-to-moment gameplay, rather than for its story or cinematics.
Re: Diablo Pitch Document (1994) [pdf]
#20> to spend one year in the development
> one chief programmer and two junior programmer
Way too modest by today standards. Also, I would say chief programmer will spend most of the time teaching juniors, unless then "junior" was what we call senior today.