Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah wingnut, I miss those times of plunging through the caves with you :-)
Played lots of Descent over kali, fun times.
I haven't thought/ heard the name Kali for decades... Did anyone ever actually purchase kali?
Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game
211–220 of 288 posts
Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sometimes, you can still use a broken cd.
I wouldn't risk it anymore. One time I received an ever so slightly cracked DVD from Netflix. Desperate to watch the show without waiting for a better copy to be mailed, I stuck it in the computer anyways. Ended up shattering and taking my DVD drive with it!
I don't know about OG diablo but you might be able to register your cd key on Blizzard's site and play the game through their on-line launcher.
I know this works (or worked) with Warcraft 3.
Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Even Duke Nukem 3D ran full speed on a 100 MHz 486dx4. That could not have all simply been due to a lack of optimization on the Mac side. Curious. I remember playing Marathon 2 on a 75MHz 603e and it seemed fine. What counts as “full speed”? I think Marathon was frame limited to 30 fps or close to that, from experimenting with semi-transparency based on fast-moving platforms…
Doom II on a 386 at 40 MHz was running fine.
Doom 2 only ran fine on a 386 if you made the window the size of a postage stamp!
Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Play balzebub it’s awesome. I grew up on D1 and it’s my favorite
Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
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)!
I used up all the spins on a Lord of Destruction CD years ago too. Had a hard time convincing my computer retailer that the cause of death was natural causes. I still have the largest shard tucked away somewhere - the rest was dust.
Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game
#216Haven’t played Diablo 1, I grew up with Diablo 2 (I’m a bit younger lol), but for me D2 represents the most memorable athmosphere in gaming. Man...that music in Act 1... Years later I bought 2 copies of D2 to replay it. Needed 2 because no shared stash to transfer items between characters.
I played stupid amounts of both. In early highschool I was sick for a few weeks, and spent all of it playing D1. One afternoon I decided I needed a drink, so I got up and as I turned around I saw a Hidden melting away into the aether. I decided I should probably break for half an hour or so.
In late highschool I remember walking home from school and seeing a newspaper on our front lawn, and in my head I tried to press the 'tab' key to activate the popup telling me what it was.
As far as the music goes, I honestly can't recall any D2 music nearly as easily as the D1 music comes to mind. The town music is obviously the most iconic, but the caves and hell soundtracks give me goosebumps every time. Combined with the sounds of magma demons, and vipers, and balrogs, and mages. Oh man, those were the days.
Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game
#217QA tester on Diablo 2 Expansion here.
There was sort of an infamous bug I found on the old D2 Expansion discs that let you bypass securom as well as play as expansion characters in non-expansion games using non-expansion discs. In fact, once you put in the D2 Expansion disc, all the configs got copied and if you switched to the regular non-expansion disc you were able to retain all the expansion features for as long as you had your PC on ;)
Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game
#218I 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
I miss the days of actual boxed games, with real manuals in them. So much nostalgia for going to the mall and finding a rare treasure that would run on my decrepit 586 in the back of EB Games, then reading the manual cover to cover a couple times waiting for my mom to finish up shopping and drive home.
I hope I still have my Warcraft, Lords of the Realm 2, Close Combat 2 and Civilization 2 manuals somewhere.
Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game
#219I'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…
Did you ever play that pre-alpha source port of Quake on Mac that was just roughly compiled from the DOS source? Got like 12 fps at best on 320x200 on a PowerPC 603e 120mhz... When you fired a rocket the framerate would slow down by like 50% :'D
As a followup for whoever is interested, this unofficial port was usually called "HackQuake" and was compiled from source code that was apparently stolen from the web server of the developer "Crack dot Com". Unsurprisingly, it was not very well-optimized at all. It was leaked online far far before MacSoft's official Quake port was released (I want to say approaching a year?), so it was the only version of Quake that Mac gamers had for quite some time. I don't know much more than that about its history, though!
BTW, the solution to the rocket/grenade lag was to replace your rocket or grenade .mdl file with one that had no particles (it was particle rendering in particular that caused major slowdown).
Some obscure 90's Mac gaming history for you! ;)
Re: Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game
#220Earlier 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…
Blade : Edge of Darknes (aka Severance: Blade of Darkness ), could count as some kind successor on 3d and the grand father of Dark Souls.
That game had _the best_ weapon play ever. I truly feel it never got the recognition it deserved. Unfortunately it came out in close proximity to Rune, which had a much more arcadey feel, and, I think, may have stolen much of the audience.