21 ms·

The original pitch for Diablo (1994) [pdf]

241 points by dsl 9y ago

JD557 9y ago
The title should be "The original pitch for Diablo (1994)", the 4 is in the wrong place. It would be pretty weird to have a pitch for Diablo 4 in the 90s, before Diablo 3 was released. :)
- floatingatoll 9y ago
  I emailed hn@ycombinator.com about this.
- thriftwy 9y ago
  It will not be unheard of. Bits of story of Might & Magic 8 were thought out when the original Might & Magic 1 was created, along with most of e.g. magic system.
- dsl 9y ago
  It looks like it is corrected now. I didn't include the year in the original submission, so it must have gotten typo'ed by a mod.
thriftwy 9y ago
Original Diablo pitch is basically Angband. I'm glad that they made it RT :) I'm also glad they had the guts to add permadeath mode into Diablo II.
shawabawa3 9y ago
Interestingly ahead of its time in that they had the idea of "DLC"'s already, in the form of small interchangeable expansion packs. Apparently that never worked out, maybe because without the ease of downloading it wouldn't have sold enough against a single big expansion
- pferde 9y ago
  I think this idea, at least in the exact form as described in the PDF, was scrapped later due to addition to randomly generated items. Having expansion packs which add more items does not make a lot of sense in that context.
  - stevenwoo 9y ago
    Here are some ways it could make sense (but would have to be careful to not upset game balance): a.) more unique items (D1 has a small set of unique items) b.) new suffix/prefix to add to item modifier lists c.) in addition/response to the new suffix/prefix could add new resistance/attack types only available with expansion pack d.) could make multiplay require same expansion packs on each system to encourage upgrading
  - freeflight 9y ago
    They can and did still add new weapon types to randomize (+more attributes for that) and add more unique weapons/item types in general with the Hellfire expansion.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Not really surprising. Expansion packs have existed in one form or another for ages, these days they are just that much easier to distribute via Steam and similar services.
badgers 9y ago
The turn based gameplay, square tile floor design, randomized levels and loot, fantasy medieval world of sword and sorcery remind me of an earlier 1990s game called Castle of the Winds - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_of_the_Winds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_of_the_Winds
- callinyouin 9y ago
  Thanks for mentioning this! I used to play the shareware version that I got from one of those "1001 Games" type discs back in the day. I see the creator released it into public domain so it looks like I'll be wasting a few hours with this later this week.
  - jstarfish 9y ago
    Ha! I got my copy the same way. I ended up giving up on it quickly when I got to the first dungeon/castle and couldn't figure out how to move through the diagonal passages. In later years I unlocked the secrets of the numpad.
- firethief 9y ago
  Or NetHack ('80s) with the Falcon's Eye graphics patchset ('90s). Still the best game ever made if you like a wide-open sandbox with an unforgiving demand for resourcefulness and creative problem solving.
- Fnoord 9y ago
  Oh my goodness I've been looking for the name of that game for ages. I loved it (including the hardcore element of it). Though IIRC I too had merely the shareware version. For people who like CCG and roguelike, I can highly recommend Slay The Spire [1] as it combines the two in an easy to learn, difficult to master game. Its been developed and tested by Android: Netrunner players (CCG-wise I only ever played the orig. Netrunner and MtG in the 90s, orig. SWCCG, and recently Hearthstone). The game is what I wish Hearthstone would've been, and I haven't had so much fun for 16 EUR (compare to Hearthstone...). Its available early access on Steam. Third character isn't yet available. [1] http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Slay_the_spire_Wiki http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Slay_the_spire_Wiki
AdmiralAsshat 9y ago
Worth noting to those who haven't read the pitch: the original design for Diablo was turn-based. The hexagonal movement system was causing a huge headache for the programmers, however, and eventually they decided to make it real-time. The now-defunct Gametrailers did an amazing retrospective on the Diablo series at some point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83bFa9qL8XQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83bFa9qL8XQ EDIT: I also thought some of the side illustrations looked familiar. They are taken from some illustrations for the Dictionnaire Infernal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionnaire_Infernal#/media/File:Bael.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionnaire_Infernal#/media/F... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionnaire_Infernal#/media/File:Astaroth.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionnaire_Infernal#/media/F...
- digi_owl 9y ago
  I swear i have seen some video from a conference or similar where Brevik talks about being staunchly in the turn-based camp, until he sat down and implemented real-time (the game already ran on a system of ticks so he basically allowed the ticks to run even without any input from the player) over a weekend and had his proverbial mind blown by the experience.
  - AndrewOMartin 9y ago
    Haha, I was typing my post before I saw yours, else I would have made it a reply! For "over a weekend" read "in a few hours" :)
- AndrewOMartin 9y ago
  Allow me to quote Diablo developer David Brevik describing when he finally yielded to demands and hacked together a "real time" version of his turn-based Diablo, by making turns elapse the rate of 20 turns a second. 'I remember taking the mouse, and I clicked on the mouse, and the warrior walked over and and smacked the skeleton down, and I was like "Oh my god! That was awesome!".' 'And the sun shone through the window, and God passed by, and the angels sung, and sure enough that was when the ARPG was kind of born at that moment, and I was lucky enough to be there.' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VscdPA6sUkc?t=27m https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VscdPA6sUkc?t=27m If you're in this part of this comment thread, you'll probably enjoy the whole video.
Humdeee 9y ago
Fond memories of this as a kid. I remember after playing it for a while with friends and coming across BoBaFett's trainer and DooM-Gaze's (sic?) trainer enabling god-mode, fast spellcast, maxed stats, Godly Plate of the Whale armor, King's Sword of Haste, dropping elixirs all over town around Deckard Cain, etc. I was legitimately scared at my age to step into the cracks of hell to go after Diablo when they opened behind Pepin's hut. And the Butcher... kept all the lights on for that quest... As a 10 year old, it was the first "adult" game I played (alongside Leisure Suit Larry). Dropping the turn based style and keeping classes more simplistic was an excellent decision. It's what introduced me to the online world via battle.net and PKing (player killing) was a joy in itself. Clans, online friends, and memories all shortly followed. Loved reading this. Diablo 1: still better than the 3rd. Source: overbearing nostalgia
- sametmax 9y ago
  Moo. I said moo.
  - sebtoast 9y ago
    "Look I'm just a cow OK?" I believe that was from Hellfire, right? Was it the character that you could give a moose suit to?
    - sametmax 9y ago
      yep :)
      - sebtoast 9y ago
        Well, I know what I'm doing once I get home tonight. I actually found my CDs for both D1 and Hellfire last weekend.
- callinyouin 9y ago
  I had pretty much the exact same experience and it seems we're about the same age. It was my first exposure to online gaming and I remember being so amazed that you could play a game like that over the internet with total strangers! Cheating was a big downside to playing on battle.net though, in my experience. It got so bad that you would enter a game and another player would either crash the game (by dropping a modified ear IIRC) or everyone would be playing with god-mode on. And creating an open, "legit" game only enticed cheaters to join in order to kill everyone. Oh well. My friends and I had plenty of fun playing over IPX and later LAN, or having password protected games on battle.net with people I met in the chat rooms. I was surprised to find that only a handful of years ago people were still playing on battle.net. Not a lot, but enough to join a couple games and have some fun. Didn't see any cheating, either.
nilkn 9y ago
I'd really enjoy seeing a modern ARPG that is legitimately unsettling and dark in the way that Diablo was (and D2, to a slightly lesser extent). We've got D3, which has really fun gameplay but feels commercialized and looks like WoW, and we've got PoE, which has a lot of really brilliant ideas and has a darker theme but at no point is ever actually unsettling.
- valbaca 9y ago
  I'd really recommend "Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice". Headphones REQUIRED :D
  - bovermyer 9y ago
    My fiancee showed me a gameplay trailer for that. "Unsettling" is definitely a word I'd use to describe it.
  - indigochill 9y ago
    As a fan of horror, my observation is that the best horror (that is, the kind that sticks with you long after you've finished the story) doesn't come from spooky monsters (as much as I love imaginative monsters) or grisly gore, but the nightmares woven into real life. And that's Hellblade in a nutshell. "Unsettling" is a good word for it.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  I can't help worry that Path of Exile has become a victim of its own success. Lately the updates seems heavily tilted towards trying to "catch" hardcore (one character death and it is out of the league) characters, leading to a "death spiral" of sorts between the top players (more often than not streamers that dedicate their days to playing the game live) and Grinding Gear Games.
- rntksi 9y ago
  You might want to try Grim Dawn. If Turn-based works too then Darkest Dungeon.
  - 9y ago
Reedx 9y ago
David Brevik released that just after the Diablo postmortem from GDC a couple years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VscdPA6sUkc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VscdPA6sUkc Worth watching for any fans of the original and if you want more context around that pitch. Lots of interesting tidbits about the origins of Diablo and Blizzard North. And an amusing moment during the Q&A: Someone in the audience went up and gave David some money to make up for pirating the game when he was a kid.
- Tokiin 9y ago
  Related vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D_bVgplit0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D_bVgplit0 IGN Unfiltered episode with David about his origins and the creation of Diablo/Blizzard North.
  - corysama 9y ago
    FYI: We collect material like this over in https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMakingOfGames/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMakingOfGames/
munificent 9y ago
It's crazy how close the original pitch was to classic Roguelikes — turn-based, random dungeon, single town at the top, and a stack of dungeon levels descending below. It's basically Rogue/Moria/Angband + graphics. Of course, going real-time fundamentally changed the feel of the game, but the initial pitch was much more "bring Moria to the masses".
zf00002 9y ago
Thought I'd toss this out there for anyone interested that doesn't know. David Brevik and his wife stream regularly on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/thejunglequeen https://www.twitch.tv/thejunglequeen. It's mostly his wife playing various games while David is next to her playing/working on something. He will often talk about various experiences making games. He's been working on a new game, "It Lurks Below", you can find it on Steam (not released yet). The game is in closed beta though. He's mentioned that one of his daughters did some of the artwork and has actually released at least one game of her own on Steam as well.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Yeah i'm tracking his upcoming game already. It is basically Terraria with classes (meaning that you pick some kind of special ability at the start of the game), survival elements (need to eat, sleep, etc), and Diablo style randomized loot (all weapons are gun shaped wands with wildly varying stats and firing patterns). From what i have caught of others playing it, there are even an NPC in town later on (you plop down preconfigured buildings for them) that can reroll old dungeons. Meaning that you can technically play the same world over and over, rather than keep rolling new ones as seems to be the pattern with Terraria.
c0l0 9y ago
Good to see plenty of people in the comments experiencing nostalgia due to fond memories of playing this great, great game :) You may be unaware that there is "Belzebub", a "HD mod" for the original Diablo, available today, that taches the original engine a few tricks (besides the obvious 1080p resolution), and also re-introduces a lot of the game's planned content that had to be cut from the final release shortly before the gold master was spun. And IT IS AWESOME! Even if you never tried the original classic, you should probably give this a go if ARPGs in a dark fantasy setting are something you might like. To whet your appetite, check the trailer (https://youtu.be/m4PfLbMJCoA https://youtu.be/m4PfLbMJCoA) on the (afaik, unfortunately discontinued) mod's website: https://mod.diablo.noktis.pl/features https://mod.diablo.noktis.pl/features The 1.045 release you may still download there (you need to provide a copy of the game's assets in the form of the main CDs ".mpq" data file yourself) is essentially a polished and extended re-make of the original Diablo 1. I played for hours each day for a few days straight after I discovered the project in 2015. Hope someone else in here enjoys it as much as I did! :)
- lobotryas 9y ago
  Do you know if the mod includes features/content from the D1 expansion? It's hard to track down and I never played it (despite wanting to).
  - c0l0 9y ago
    If by "expansion" you mean Sierra's "Hellfire", then no - there's no content overlap between it and Belzebub that I'd know of (that's not already included in the original Diablo, of course).
tschellenbach 9y ago
Anyone know how much time it took them compared to the original estimate? So cool how small teams were building games back in the days.
- stevenwoo 9y ago
  The original estimate is for the proposal, and it ended up taking about twice as long. It was small, but not that small, IIRC Blizzard South did the multiplayer and the cinematics among other things (after buying Condor ) so it's not possible to evaluate the time estimate/team size estimate on its own merits.
72mena 9y ago
If someone has experience with Game Development I'd like to know your comments on the timeline from the last page. The pitch mentions 1 developer and 2 junior-devs, and the timeline shows 11 months of work (4 of those are for testing). How does that timeline compare to current processes? Any other insights that can be shared from it? Thanks.
- stevenwoo 9y ago
  I did not work on this but you'll need to take in mind that this was a fixed resolution game with 2D sprites. There is no 3D art in the final product. Finally this was just the proposal, Blizzard bought Condor and published Diablo (1) and if you check the mobygames entry (which is usually a pretty accurate copy of the in game credits), it has a much more extensive list of software developers in the credits (three! people on the installer, though to be fair, I'm pretty sure all the guys were down at Blizzard South providing a lot of the low level libraries). IIRC the networking was also outside the scope of Blizzard North's expertise at the time and most of that part was done by Blizzard South via Battle.net. http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/diablo/credits http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/diablo/credits edit: it also took them about twice as long including pre development time.
jsgo 9y ago
I miss this game moreso than probably any others in the series, maybe any game at all outside of perhaps Chrono Trigger. There were trainers and what not, but I remember after playing through it trying to create a "godmode" character proper (no trainer) by specifically hunting for tomes to increase spells. That was probably the thing that bummed me most about D2 and subsequently D3 in that leveling spells after you'd "maxed out" was still something you could grind in D1. Vaguely related but mildly funny anecdote, I got into this game really late (basically, when it was cheap). I remember buying it from Wal-Mart and also buying one of the bigger bags of crispy M&Ms (Wikipedia says those came out in 1999 so I must have been even later than I remember). The game was incredibly good, but the first couple times playing it, I'm going through said bag of M&Ms because the game felt like a pretty intense movie at the time. Ever since that point, anytime I played that game, I'd crave crispy M&Ms, which went away after a while (though have since come back apparently).
- wil421 9y ago
  I just noticed Chrono Trigger is available for iOS. Haven’t bought it yet but I hope the port is a good one. I also enjoyed FF7 on my iPhone. Glad to see Square is rereleasing titles for mobile. I would kill for Nintendo to release a few old titles on iOS.
  - thebooktocome 9y ago
    Warning: the iOS port (and also the PC version on Steam) of Chrono Trigger is widely regarded as terrible. Same with FFVI and FFV. Luckily the old 3DS port of Chrono Trigger is good. The only way I know to play FFVI now is with an SNES Classic: an overpriced raspberry pi.
    - jsgo 9y ago
      yeah, if you have a DS, go with the Chrono Trigger port. I can't speak to iOS, but I tried some Final Fantasy port and gave up because I hated the controls. The PC version, I have a 3440x1440 screen, it renders as a regular 1440p screen in full screen and the tiles are nauseating. The only resolution that looks okay is 800x600.
thisismyusernam 9y ago
Nostalgia overload... How would I play the full, original Diablo now on my MacBook, if I wanted a trip down memory lane? I wouldn't even know where to begin.
idank 9y ago
Oh Diablo. I will never forget how you broke my heart when my hardcore character died because my mom picked up the phone when I was busy slaying demons.
zupa-hu 9y ago
For anyone curious, as per the pdf they planned the development to take 12 months. According to wikipedia, they pitched Blizzard in January 1995, released the game on 31st December 1996. So that is ~24 months if they started working immediately. They probably didn't. Plus the pdf doesn't mention sales and marketing (Edit: in the schedule). Seems quite an amazing execution. Please correct any mistakes I made.
- ecesena 9y ago
  I was about to ask, thank you for adding the data from wikipedia. It’s absolutely remarkable.
markfer 9y ago
Thanks for posting this. Anyone know if you can play a modern update to this on Mac?
ananab 9y ago
Diablo and Diablo 2 were the best games ever released. Period.
brandmeyer 9y ago
The initial pitch barely mentions the part of the game that makes it so ~~much fun~~addicting: You get to beat on pinatas until some loot pops out. Then collect the loot and/or convert it into in-game currency. Diablo was one of the earliest games to start exercising those little dopamine hits of microjoy when the monsters go pop, hoping for just one more bit of treasure/xp/whatever.
- FrozenVoid 9y ago
  Actually people quickly got bored with item collection with wide availability of duped items and gold(with exception of some variant gameplay groups which played legit), the game actual attraction was its randomness(dungeon layout/content) and challenge to complete levels at higher difficulties. Items and gold were central to Diablo2, which is exactly the "pinata simulator" you describe. In general, Diablo could be completed with trash items or(with sorcerer, even nothing worn).
gumballhead 9y ago
My first experience with programming was making a "dump file" editor for my Diablo character in 8th grade with Visual Basic. Someone had built a utility to dump the memory for your character to a file, where if you knew or could figure out the addresses, you could edit it and load it back into the game. I spent a lot of time changing a value in game, dumping the memory, and running a little diff tool I built to figure out where everything was. Then I built a little editor that could edit your character and item stats with a ui that looked like the game. Such huge nostalgia for that game. StarCraft Remastered really brought back memories too. Blizzard is so, so good at game design.
pmarreck 9y ago
This is written by "Condor." When did Blizzard acquire this?
- kanzungjak 9y ago
  "Condor" was the name of the now defunct "Blizzard North" subsidiary.

241 points by dsl 9y ago

The title should be "The original pitch for Diablo (1994)", the 4 is in the wrong place. It would be pretty weird to have a pitch for Diablo 4 in the 90s, before Diablo 3 was released. :)

floatingatoll 9y ago
I emailed hn@ycombinator.com about this.
thriftwy 9y ago
It will not be unheard of. Bits of story of Might & Magic 8 were thought out when the original Might & Magic 1 was created, along with most of e.g. magic system.
dsl 9y ago
It looks like it is corrected now. I didn't include the year in the original submission, so it must have gotten typo'ed by a mod.

thriftwy 9y ago

Original Diablo pitch is basically Angband. I'm glad that they made it RT :) I'm also glad they had the guts to add permadeath mode into Diablo II.

shawabawa3 9y ago

Interestingly ahead of its time in that they had the idea of "DLC"'s already, in the form of small interchangeable expansion packs. Apparently that never worked out, maybe because without the ease of downloading it wouldn't have sold enough against a single big expansion

pferde 9y ago
I think this idea, at least in the exact form as described in the PDF, was scrapped later due to addition to randomly generated items. Having expansion packs which add more items does not make a lot of sense in that context.
- stevenwoo 9y ago
  Here are some ways it could make sense (but would have to be careful to not upset game balance): a.) more unique items (D1 has a small set of unique items) b.) new suffix/prefix to add to item modifier lists c.) in addition/response to the new suffix/prefix could add new resistance/attack types only available with expansion pack d.) could make multiplay require same expansion packs on each system to encourage upgrading
- freeflight 9y ago
  They can and did still add new weapon types to randomize (+more attributes for that) and add more unique weapons/item types in general with the Hellfire expansion.
digi_owl 9y ago
Not really surprising. Expansion packs have existed in one form or another for ages, these days they are just that much easier to distribute via Steam and similar services.

badgers 9y ago

The turn based gameplay, square tile floor design, randomized levels and loot, fantasy medieval world of sword and sorcery remind me of an earlier 1990s game called Castle of the Winds - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_of_the_Winds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_of_the_Winds

callinyouin 9y ago
Thanks for mentioning this! I used to play the shareware version that I got from one of those "1001 Games" type discs back in the day. I see the creator released it into public domain so it looks like I'll be wasting a few hours with this later this week.
- jstarfish 9y ago
  Ha! I got my copy the same way. I ended up giving up on it quickly when I got to the first dungeon/castle and couldn't figure out how to move through the diagonal passages. In later years I unlocked the secrets of the numpad.
firethief 9y ago
Or NetHack ('80s) with the Falcon's Eye graphics patchset ('90s). Still the best game ever made if you like a wide-open sandbox with an unforgiving demand for resourcefulness and creative problem solving.
Fnoord 9y ago
Oh my goodness I've been looking for the name of that game for ages. I loved it (including the hardcore element of it). Though IIRC I too had merely the shareware version. For people who like CCG and roguelike, I can highly recommend Slay The Spire [1] as it combines the two in an easy to learn, difficult to master game. Its been developed and tested by Android: Netrunner players (CCG-wise I only ever played the orig. Netrunner and MtG in the 90s, orig. SWCCG, and recently Hearthstone). The game is what I wish Hearthstone would've been, and I haven't had so much fun for 16 EUR (compare to Hearthstone...). Its available early access on Steam. Third character isn't yet available. [1] http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Slay_the_spire_Wiki http://slay-the-spire.wikia.com/wiki/Slay_the_spire_Wiki

AdmiralAsshat 9y ago

Worth noting to those who haven't read the pitch: the original design for Diablo was turn-based. The hexagonal movement system was causing a huge headache for the programmers, however, and eventually they decided to make it real-time. The now-defunct Gametrailers did an amazing retrospective on the Diablo series at some point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83bFa9qL8XQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83bFa9qL8XQ EDIT: I also thought some of the side illustrations looked familiar. They are taken from some illustrations for the Dictionnaire Infernal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionnaire_Infernal#/media/File:Bael.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionnaire_Infernal#/media/F... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionnaire_Infernal#/media/File:Astaroth.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionnaire_Infernal#/media/F...

digi_owl 9y ago
I swear i have seen some video from a conference or similar where Brevik talks about being staunchly in the turn-based camp, until he sat down and implemented real-time (the game already ran on a system of ticks so he basically allowed the ticks to run even without any input from the player) over a weekend and had his proverbial mind blown by the experience.
- AndrewOMartin 9y ago
  Haha, I was typing my post before I saw yours, else I would have made it a reply! For "over a weekend" read "in a few hours" :)
AndrewOMartin 9y ago
Allow me to quote Diablo developer David Brevik describing when he finally yielded to demands and hacked together a "real time" version of his turn-based Diablo, by making turns elapse the rate of 20 turns a second. 'I remember taking the mouse, and I clicked on the mouse, and the warrior walked over and and smacked the skeleton down, and I was like "Oh my god! That was awesome!".' 'And the sun shone through the window, and God passed by, and the angels sung, and sure enough that was when the ARPG was kind of born at that moment, and I was lucky enough to be there.' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VscdPA6sUkc?t=27m https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VscdPA6sUkc?t=27m If you're in this part of this comment thread, you'll probably enjoy the whole video.

Humdeee 9y ago

Fond memories of this as a kid. I remember after playing it for a while with friends and coming across BoBaFett's trainer and DooM-Gaze's (sic?) trainer enabling god-mode, fast spellcast, maxed stats, Godly Plate of the Whale armor, King's Sword of Haste, dropping elixirs all over town around Deckard Cain, etc. I was legitimately scared at my age to step into the cracks of hell to go after Diablo when they opened behind Pepin's hut. And the Butcher... kept all the lights on for that quest... As a 10 year old, it was the first "adult" game I played (alongside Leisure Suit Larry). Dropping the turn based style and keeping classes more simplistic was an excellent decision. It's what introduced me to the online world via battle.net and PKing (player killing) was a joy in itself. Clans, online friends, and memories all shortly followed. Loved reading this. Diablo 1: still better than the 3rd. Source: overbearing nostalgia

sametmax 9y ago
Moo. I said moo.
- sebtoast 9y ago
  "Look I'm just a cow OK?" I believe that was from Hellfire, right? Was it the character that you could give a moose suit to?
  - sametmax 9y ago
    yep :)
    - sebtoast 9y ago
      Well, I know what I'm doing once I get home tonight. I actually found my CDs for both D1 and Hellfire last weekend.
callinyouin 9y ago
I had pretty much the exact same experience and it seems we're about the same age. It was my first exposure to online gaming and I remember being so amazed that you could play a game like that over the internet with total strangers! Cheating was a big downside to playing on battle.net though, in my experience. It got so bad that you would enter a game and another player would either crash the game (by dropping a modified ear IIRC) or everyone would be playing with god-mode on. And creating an open, "legit" game only enticed cheaters to join in order to kill everyone. Oh well. My friends and I had plenty of fun playing over IPX and later LAN, or having password protected games on battle.net with people I met in the chat rooms. I was surprised to find that only a handful of years ago people were still playing on battle.net. Not a lot, but enough to join a couple games and have some fun. Didn't see any cheating, either.

nilkn 9y ago

I'd really enjoy seeing a modern ARPG that is legitimately unsettling and dark in the way that Diablo was (and D2, to a slightly lesser extent). We've got D3, which has really fun gameplay but feels commercialized and looks like WoW, and we've got PoE, which has a lot of really brilliant ideas and has a darker theme but at no point is ever actually unsettling.

valbaca 9y ago
I'd really recommend "Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice". Headphones REQUIRED :D
- bovermyer 9y ago
  My fiancee showed me a gameplay trailer for that. "Unsettling" is definitely a word I'd use to describe it.
- indigochill 9y ago
  As a fan of horror, my observation is that the best horror (that is, the kind that sticks with you long after you've finished the story) doesn't come from spooky monsters (as much as I love imaginative monsters) or grisly gore, but the nightmares woven into real life. And that's Hellblade in a nutshell. "Unsettling" is a good word for it.
digi_owl 9y ago
I can't help worry that Path of Exile has become a victim of its own success. Lately the updates seems heavily tilted towards trying to "catch" hardcore (one character death and it is out of the league) characters, leading to a "death spiral" of sorts between the top players (more often than not streamers that dedicate their days to playing the game live) and Grinding Gear Games.
rntksi 9y ago
You might want to try Grim Dawn. If Turn-based works too then Darkest Dungeon.
- 9y ago

Reedx 9y ago

David Brevik released that just after the Diablo postmortem from GDC a couple years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VscdPA6sUkc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VscdPA6sUkc Worth watching for any fans of the original and if you want more context around that pitch. Lots of interesting tidbits about the origins of Diablo and Blizzard North. And an amusing moment during the Q&A: Someone in the audience went up and gave David some money to make up for pirating the game when he was a kid.

Tokiin 9y ago
Related vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D_bVgplit0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D_bVgplit0 IGN Unfiltered episode with David about his origins and the creation of Diablo/Blizzard North.
- corysama 9y ago
  FYI: We collect material like this over in https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMakingOfGames/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMakingOfGames/

munificent 9y ago

It's crazy how close the original pitch was to classic Roguelikes — turn-based, random dungeon, single town at the top, and a stack of dungeon levels descending below. It's basically Rogue/Moria/Angband + graphics. Of course, going real-time fundamentally changed the feel of the game, but the initial pitch was much more "bring Moria to the masses".

zf00002 9y ago

Thought I'd toss this out there for anyone interested that doesn't know. David Brevik and his wife stream regularly on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/thejunglequeen https://www.twitch.tv/thejunglequeen. It's mostly his wife playing various games while David is next to her playing/working on something. He will often talk about various experiences making games. He's been working on a new game, "It Lurks Below", you can find it on Steam (not released yet). The game is in closed beta though. He's mentioned that one of his daughters did some of the artwork and has actually released at least one game of her own on Steam as well.

digi_owl 9y ago
Yeah i'm tracking his upcoming game already. It is basically Terraria with classes (meaning that you pick some kind of special ability at the start of the game), survival elements (need to eat, sleep, etc), and Diablo style randomized loot (all weapons are gun shaped wands with wildly varying stats and firing patterns). From what i have caught of others playing it, there are even an NPC in town later on (you plop down preconfigured buildings for them) that can reroll old dungeons. Meaning that you can technically play the same world over and over, rather than keep rolling new ones as seems to be the pattern with Terraria.

c0l0 9y ago

Good to see plenty of people in the comments experiencing nostalgia due to fond memories of playing this great, great game :) You may be unaware that there is "Belzebub", a "HD mod" for the original Diablo, available today, that taches the original engine a few tricks (besides the obvious 1080p resolution), and also re-introduces a lot of the game's planned content that had to be cut from the final release shortly before the gold master was spun. And IT IS AWESOME! Even if you never tried the original classic, you should probably give this a go if ARPGs in a dark fantasy setting are something you might like. To whet your appetite, check the trailer (https://youtu.be/m4PfLbMJCoA https://youtu.be/m4PfLbMJCoA) on the (afaik, unfortunately discontinued) mod's website: https://mod.diablo.noktis.pl/features https://mod.diablo.noktis.pl/features The 1.045 release you may still download there (you need to provide a copy of the game's assets in the form of the main CDs ".mpq" data file yourself) is essentially a polished and extended re-make of the original Diablo 1. I played for hours each day for a few days straight after I discovered the project in 2015. Hope someone else in here enjoys it as much as I did! :)

lobotryas 9y ago
Do you know if the mod includes features/content from the D1 expansion? It's hard to track down and I never played it (despite wanting to).
- c0l0 9y ago
  If by "expansion" you mean Sierra's "Hellfire", then no - there's no content overlap between it and Belzebub that I'd know of (that's not already included in the original Diablo, of course).

tschellenbach 9y ago

Anyone know how much time it took them compared to the original estimate? So cool how small teams were building games back in the days.

stevenwoo 9y ago
The original estimate is for the proposal, and it ended up taking about twice as long. It was small, but not that small, IIRC Blizzard South did the multiplayer and the cinematics among other things (after buying Condor ) so it's not possible to evaluate the time estimate/team size estimate on its own merits.

72mena 9y ago

If someone has experience with Game Development I'd like to know your comments on the timeline from the last page. The pitch mentions 1 developer and 2 junior-devs, and the timeline shows 11 months of work (4 of those are for testing). How does that timeline compare to current processes? Any other insights that can be shared from it? Thanks.

stevenwoo 9y ago
I did not work on this but you'll need to take in mind that this was a fixed resolution game with 2D sprites. There is no 3D art in the final product. Finally this was just the proposal, Blizzard bought Condor and published Diablo (1) and if you check the mobygames entry (which is usually a pretty accurate copy of the in game credits), it has a much more extensive list of software developers in the credits (three! people on the installer, though to be fair, I'm pretty sure all the guys were down at Blizzard South providing a lot of the low level libraries). IIRC the networking was also outside the scope of Blizzard North's expertise at the time and most of that part was done by Blizzard South via Battle.net. http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/diablo/credits http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/diablo/credits edit: it also took them about twice as long including pre development time.

jsgo 9y ago

I miss this game moreso than probably any others in the series, maybe any game at all outside of perhaps Chrono Trigger. There were trainers and what not, but I remember after playing through it trying to create a "godmode" character proper (no trainer) by specifically hunting for tomes to increase spells. That was probably the thing that bummed me most about D2 and subsequently D3 in that leveling spells after you'd "maxed out" was still something you could grind in D1. Vaguely related but mildly funny anecdote, I got into this game really late (basically, when it was cheap). I remember buying it from Wal-Mart and also buying one of the bigger bags of crispy M&Ms (Wikipedia says those came out in 1999 so I must have been even later than I remember). The game was incredibly good, but the first couple times playing it, I'm going through said bag of M&Ms because the game felt like a pretty intense movie at the time. Ever since that point, anytime I played that game, I'd crave crispy M&Ms, which went away after a while (though have since come back apparently).

wil421 9y ago
I just noticed Chrono Trigger is available for iOS. Haven’t bought it yet but I hope the port is a good one. I also enjoyed FF7 on my iPhone. Glad to see Square is rereleasing titles for mobile. I would kill for Nintendo to release a few old titles on iOS.
- thebooktocome 9y ago
  Warning: the iOS port (and also the PC version on Steam) of Chrono Trigger is widely regarded as terrible. Same with FFVI and FFV. Luckily the old 3DS port of Chrono Trigger is good. The only way I know to play FFVI now is with an SNES Classic: an overpriced raspberry pi.
  - jsgo 9y ago
    yeah, if you have a DS, go with the Chrono Trigger port. I can't speak to iOS, but I tried some Final Fantasy port and gave up because I hated the controls. The PC version, I have a 3440x1440 screen, it renders as a regular 1440p screen in full screen and the tiles are nauseating. The only resolution that looks okay is 800x600.

thisismyusernam 9y ago

Nostalgia overload... How would I play the full, original Diablo now on my MacBook, if I wanted a trip down memory lane? I wouldn't even know where to begin.

idank 9y ago

Oh Diablo. I will never forget how you broke my heart when my hardcore character died because my mom picked up the phone when I was busy slaying demons.

zupa-hu 9y ago

For anyone curious, as per the pdf they planned the development to take 12 months. According to wikipedia, they pitched Blizzard in January 1995, released the game on 31st December 1996. So that is ~24 months if they started working immediately. They probably didn't. Plus the pdf doesn't mention sales and marketing (Edit: in the schedule). Seems quite an amazing execution. Please correct any mistakes I made.

ecesena 9y ago
I was about to ask, thank you for adding the data from wikipedia. It’s absolutely remarkable.

markfer 9y ago

Thanks for posting this. Anyone know if you can play a modern update to this on Mac?

ananab 9y ago

Diablo and Diablo 2 were the best games ever released. Period.

brandmeyer 9y ago

The initial pitch barely mentions the part of the game that makes it so ~~much fun~~addicting: You get to beat on pinatas until some loot pops out. Then collect the loot and/or convert it into in-game currency. Diablo was one of the earliest games to start exercising those little dopamine hits of microjoy when the monsters go pop, hoping for just one more bit of treasure/xp/whatever.

FrozenVoid 9y ago
Actually people quickly got bored with item collection with wide availability of duped items and gold(with exception of some variant gameplay groups which played legit), the game actual attraction was its randomness(dungeon layout/content) and challenge to complete levels at higher difficulties. Items and gold were central to Diablo2, which is exactly the "pinata simulator" you describe. In general, Diablo could be completed with trash items or(with sorcerer, even nothing worn).

gumballhead 9y ago

My first experience with programming was making a "dump file" editor for my Diablo character in 8th grade with Visual Basic. Someone had built a utility to dump the memory for your character to a file, where if you knew or could figure out the addresses, you could edit it and load it back into the game. I spent a lot of time changing a value in game, dumping the memory, and running a little diff tool I built to figure out where everything was. Then I built a little editor that could edit your character and item stats with a ui that looked like the game. Such huge nostalgia for that game. StarCraft Remastered really brought back memories too. Blizzard is so, so good at game design.

pmarreck 9y ago

This is written by "Condor." When did Blizzard acquire this?

kanzungjak 9y ago
"Condor" was the name of the now defunct "Blizzard North" subsidiary.