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The Making of Warcraft 1: Origin of the series & creation of multi-unit select

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Re: The Making of Warcraft 1: Origin of the series & creation of multi-unit select

#41

Post by justin »

twelvechairs wrote: post #17

> It’s surprising now to think what might have happened had Blizzard not controlled the intellectual property rights for the Warcraft universe — it’s highly unlikely Blizzard would be such a dominant player in the game industry today. This seems a very important observation. Its interesting how most of the major pre-computer fantasy universes with big fan-bases (Battletech, Dungeons and Dragons, Warhammer, Star Wars…

> Its interesting how most of the major pre-computer fantasy universes with big fan-bases (Battletech, Dungeons and Dragons, Warhammer, Star Wars etc.) never managed to really transition seriously into computer games (a few hits but lots of misses and certainly no dominant series like warcraft and starcraft).

Don't think that is entirely accurate. Star Wars: The Old Republic is the fastest growing MMO ever, achieving 1 million users in 3 days. It might never be WOW but it is definitely a major game.

Re: The Making of Warcraft 1: Origin of the series & creation of multi-unit select

#42

Post by awy »

MikeCapone wrote: post #35

I can't wait for part 2. I wish there was a book written about the early days of Blizzard or Westwood Studios and those kind of great companies, kind of like the book Masters of Doom about id Software, or Revolution in the Valley about Apple.

There is a video series on YouTube covering the early days of Blizzard (and back when they were S&S), Westwood and id.

Search YouTube for "All Your History Are Belong To Us".

Re: The Making of Warcraft 1: Origin of the series & creation of multi-unit select

#43

Post by mikeklaas »

twelvechairs wrote: post #17

> It’s surprising now to think what might have happened had Blizzard not controlled the intellectual property rights for the Warcraft universe — it’s highly unlikely Blizzard would be such a dominant player in the game industry today. This seems a very important observation. Its interesting how most of the major pre-computer fantasy universes with big fan-bases (Battletech, Dungeons and Dragons, Warhammer, Star Wars…

What? DnD was the dominant force in 90's computer rpgs (BG/BG2/IWD/IWD2/Planescape Torment), and continued into the aughts with NWN/KOTOR/KOTOR2. There are several candidates for greatest rpg of all time on that list.

Star Wars has had its share of filler games, but also produced many truly great games. X-Wing/Tie Fighter were huge, and Dark Forces/Jedi Knight were pretty important in the early fps days. I've already mentioned KOTOR.

Re: The Making of Warcraft 1: Origin of the series & creation of multi-unit select

#44

Post by netcoyote »

MBCook wrote: post #15

> While Warcraft was a DOS “Protected Mode” game, the modem driver could be called from both Protected Mode and Real Mode due to quirks in the DOS operating system and the 80386 chip-architecture it ran on [...] Could someone provide more information on this? I'm guessing it had to do with the fact the serial interrupt could occur while some DOS system call was executing 16 bit code (or perhaps BIOS code)?

Yes, you've got it exactly.

When running in real mode, if an interrupt arrived the processor would switch to protected mode, handle the interrupt, and return to real mode.

This real->protected->real switching process was so slow on the computers of the day that it was possible to lose data, so it was necessary to write both real and protected mode interrupt handlers to grab data off the serial port.

You can imagine how much fun this type of code would be to write without any debugging tools or an Internet filled with code-samples.

Re: The Making of Warcraft 1: Origin of the series & creation of multi-unit select

#45

Post by Schwolop »

PuercoPop wrote: post #16

What about Dune II? It was way ahead of its time. If I remember correctly it had unlimited unit select. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_II

No, it didn't. Eventually it was rewritten (by fans I think) as Dune2000, and this version did have unlimited unit select.

Re: The Making of Warcraft 1: Origin of the series & creation of multi-unit select

#46

Post by fsckin »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #39
MikeCapone wrote: post #34

This makes me wonder; would it be possible to get software patents on various game mechanics? What if the first RTS producer had patented a lot of it? Is that so different from smartphone interface patents?

Yes, there are some that have already been granted. The most famous one I'm aware of is the patent on having mini-games in loading screens: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2008/03/patents-on-video-game-...

Kinda like this?

http://kotaku.com/5595453/youtube-easter-egg-lets-you-play-s...

Re: The Making of Warcraft 1: Origin of the series & creation of multi-unit select

#47

Post by Of_Prometheus »

esrauch wrote: post #37
phaus wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, while the heroes may have inspired WoW, they also ruined the series. With the 3rd installment, Warcraft ceased to be a real-time strategy game and became an action-rpg. The heroes were so overpowered that you could win by focusing entirely on power-leveling your hero instead of building a city and managing units.

Do you mean the single player? While Warcraft 3 is much more micro-focused than earlier games, in even mildly competitive online play 1 grunt early on or mildly incorrect base layout is often the difference between winning and losing. You couldn't possibly win with only heroes.

I played mostly LAN matches in the first few years of the game's release, and recall being consistently done in by my friend's horde of those dastardly (Undead) spiders. The heroes were useful and could turn the tide of a game, but I can't forget how much strategy, more so than tactics, was involved in our battles. They were always epic, hard-fought, and intense until the last peon's unfortunate death; though over-powered, the heroes were just another unit in our war, and pinned against an opposing hero, no more useful than a grunt attacking another grunt.

Re: The Making of Warcraft 1: Origin of the series & creation of multi-unit select

#48

Post by Argorak »

Schwolop wrote: post #45
PuercoPop wrote: post #16

What about Dune II? It was way ahead of its time. If I remember correctly it had unlimited unit select. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_II

No, it didn't. Eventually it was rewritten (by fans I think) as Dune2000, and this version did have unlimited unit select.

Dune2000 is an official successor by Westwood Studios. It is based on the C&C-Engine and basically plays and behaves like Red Alert 2, right down to the awful C-Movie cutscenes.

Re: The Making of Warcraft 1: Origin of the series & creation of multi-unit select

#49

Post by Argorak »

ninjin wrote: post #25
PuercoPop wrote: post #16

What about Dune II? It was way ahead of its time. If I remember correctly it had unlimited unit select. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_II

> Unlike Dune 2, which only allowed the user to select a single unit at a time, and which necessitated frenzied mouse-clicking to initiate joint-unit tactical combat, it was obvious that enabling players to select more than one unit would speed task-force deployment and dramatically improve game combat. Dune II is the grandfather of all of modern RTS (for good and for bad, the genre hasn't changed that much). But the…

Starting and canceling an attack was actually quite easy: Turn game speed all the way down to a crawl, click all the stuff you have to click, turn speed up again :).

Re: The Making of Warcraft 1: Origin of the series & creation of multi-unit select

#50

Post by derpmeister »

mburns wrote: post #7
everlost wrote: post #3

> Stu is quite memorable as a voice actor in the role of Human Peon, where his rendition of a downtrodden brute-laborer was comedic genius. Nice to finally know the person behind the still-funny-in-my-head warcraft phrases - "Yes me lord", "Who me", "Uhuhuh"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoMhMZZjbGg

I'm not listening.
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