'Diablo': A Classic Game Postmortem
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- Опубликовано: 2 окт 2024
- Diablo developer David Brevik returns to the GDC stage to give a classic post-mortem on Blizzard's action RPG hit Diablo in this 2016 talk. Brevik shares key takeaways from the experience and sheds light on how the game went from a single-player, turn-based claymation DOS game to the genre-defining classic it became.
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Blizzard died to me when they dropped Blizzard North. You and your team were the heart of that company and your absence shows today.
The North Remembers.
The north remembers
Most definitely
@Terminal Heights haha
@Terminal Heights Hi, Activision :)
"We'd sell expansion packs like Magic the Gathering with 50 items on a disk."
That came full circle didn't it?
Actually no, it just shows that this kind of mentality and will to do it already existed in the 90s but as he said, logistically it was just not possible. It wasn't until the internet became widespread enough and easily accessible for everyone and fast enough that it actually became possible to do.
Laughs in The Sims
mtx in 96.
@@Murzac Yeah, thanks to the internet, the world are now gamers! Back then, geeks were the gamers.
"but we quickly realized that'd be an issue" i wish publishers nowadays would realize the same...
It’s funny how he mentioned Primal Rage during the Claymation story, because one of the two T-rex characters is called Diablo, and the ape is called Blizzard...
Best comment thx
I always played as a Diablo, great game
Interesting. Diablo looked like Diablo too, in dino form, haha.
Wait, what the hell is this coincidence???
Wtf
My guy knew he was gonna do a talk on Diablo and he didn't know so many people were going to be interested in it XD Over 1M views on RUclips and I'm here 7 years later still interested
Lol'd so hard when he goes " We weren't even paying our taxes, we found out that was a bad idea.."
'-Do you want it?
-I... I have one. Thank you.'
Wait... WHAAAAAAAAAT?!
This is one of if not the best GDC talk I've ever seen. Absolutely love hearing his enthusiasm for his craft and to hear the insight from an industry veteran. When Blizzard employed mostly people like David, it's no wonder that they set the golden standard for video game quality in their prime.
Telling a story: "uh, um, so we, uh. Uh. uh."
Talking about complex programming: flawless
hahahahaah
note how the sound is like talking inside a well. some sound guy fucked up or someone sabotaged him. hearing yourself like that would make any speaker nervous
@@supplebiscuit then we should blame the architect / venue manager? No, seriously, proper sound guys should be able to handle that.
@@supplebiscuit and that, ladies and gents, is a failure of imagination (and know-how).
There's things called:
- filters
- threshold
- soundproofing
- a proper lavelier mic that doesn't pick up the echo
There's a ton of stuff you can do...
@@supplebiscuit threshold is a thing, if we're talking in general terms, but gates is what I meant (I'm no expert). And you can soundproof with painted egg boxes for all I care (no need for expensive stuff), it'll attenuate the sound reasonably well in combination with the lavelier. And no, that's not the only thing I said that made sense. I didn't mean to antagonize you, apologies. However, you just admitted there's no need for breaking the laws of physics, basically making our whole discussion moot. And yes, it is about imagination as well as acoustics (I do know enough physics and equipment to know about acoustics which enables me to *imagine* how one could improve the sound in that venue, which was my original intent, to help promote better sound by critiquing). Hyperbole and frustrations on both our parts? /hug
This piece is awesome, thank you David Brevik for all the hard work and passion and commitment and the fantastic games and legacy, awesome panel!
10% for an office, David? :) - Im gonna invent telephone calls on internet (Skype)
but I already have a phone
The mandolin from Diablo 1 might be the best gaming soundtrack I've ever heard.
I wrote Blizzard back in 90-something, and asked if they had a soundtrack available. I have to paraphrase the response here, because it's been a minute.... The music dep't answered (see what I mean about it being a long time ago?): "we don't, sorry, but thanks so much for asking - it's quite the compliment."
@@nickwallette6201 Aww, back when Blizzard was ran by actual human beings, and not soulless corporate NPCs
Why do they unlisted this video?
I know right! I was freaking out thinking they took it down.
3 years later, the original Diablo is re-released on GOG. I am a happy man.
i just played it through. still kicks ass!
Thank you, Diablo was my introduction to gaming, and now it's time to start my daughter on computers and games
@@Mradevans I skipped a heartbeat from excitement. Oh how I love the game's ability to convey atmosphere.
@Interpersonal Communicator Hey man, some things in life are worth paying for. Namely, Classic Diablo.
@Interpersonal Communicator don't be a cheap bastard. If you want something, pay for it or make it yourself.
my mom saw the pentagrams in diablo and made me throw it away. so when i got it again i was careful never to start the game or pause the game in her presence.
Matt McLuhan 😂😂😂😂😂
Matt McLuhan I too had this problem as I was raised in a very strict fundamentalist Christian household but I found that if you used the pause/break key instead of esapce to pause, it would just tint the screen red and said paused in the middle.
Funny how different people regard religion. A church we were helping fix up a long time ago had a pastor who played Diablo in his office.
My mother didnt want me to play age of empire because they had priests.
Same
If David Brevik asks you if you want his copy of Diablo. You say YES!!!
IKR. WTH was wrong with that guy?! Lol
I'd have him sign it, sell it for thousands and use that to afford playing diablo for a couple of months, or developping something
@@SalveMonesvol XD
Personally, I would have given the game to the guy who paid for his original pirated copy.
Get together just after for a photo-op. Sign it. mutual respect.
Make a great story for the game press. "guilt-ridden gamer finally gets chance to pay for pirated Diablo 1, is rewarded signed, sealed copy from creator"
He was shaming the guy, because he was trying to bad mouth his former employer. The guy had the good sense of not embarrassing himself anymore than that.
More developers should do talks like this.
Man, I love these Postmortems, it's so inspiring and fun to see legends retell their zero to hero style stories with so much passion.
Diablo 1 got me an internet bill of 1800 dollars one month, back when there was an hourly fee for some dial up.
Arbor Day you or your parents?
Me.
My local phone company used to have something called LOS which was a 40 mile radius for free long distance after the first $15. When the bill would come in they would still tally the full minutes used then show capped at $15. I remember getting $9000 and $11000 bills as I would sometimes leave the connection on overnight. I remember the first big bill we got and my dad's reaction when he misread it lmao.
Dude wtf...you have a game addiction I mean I got to level 50 on Diablo 2 in 4 days but dude you got issues...thats didn't cost me any money lol
rummy98 WHAT??? 10000??
SO the brain behind one of the most ICONIC games wants to give YOU an unopened copy of the game: 53:07
-Do you want it?.
- i have one, thank you.
WTF?¿?¿?¿?¿???¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿
hahahaha he did not think that through, fuck me I'd frame it and treat it as a treasured piece of art.
@Deventh Apparantly he sold it...
IMO It should have gone to the guy that paid for his pirated copy. I know he might have turned it down, but that to me was the most deserving person there. He would have cherished the fuck out of it.
Though, a little higher up in the comments, a guy is claiming to be the recipient and still having the game. I looked into it a bit, and there's sóme creedence to it.
www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/4b3ian/i_got_an_signed_copy_of_diablo_from_david_brevik/
www.benjaminpirkey.com/ (his twitter name is supersulf)
so, they turned down 3do for blizzard, even losing half the money, and then blizzard fired them after diablo 2, LOD.
Look at what Blizzard has become now. Ruined diablo.
Blizzard North left Blizzard on their own, they were not fired. See Max Schaefer interview for more details.
Diablo would have been ruined even if they stayed. David said in an interview once that if he'd been the lead on D3 then he would have done it like Marvel Heroes, which was not that good of a game. So it really doesn't matter.
I remember upgrading our ram fro 8mb to 16mb and suddenly Diablo was running totally smooth for me.
That moment when you finally popped in a Voodoo (3Dfx) card, and your game jumped from 25fps to 250fps!
Had similar experience in Diablo 2 when I upgraded from 64Mb to 128Mb :) Suddenly all the HDD lag was gone when loading new areas and such.
I bought Diablo and was crushed when I couldn't play it with 4mb memory LOL.
I remember "playing" D2 before we upgraded our pc, right around the time we got cable internet.
Whenever I broke the last seal in Chaos Sanctuary, I had to wait for literally 25 minutes while Diablo spawned. I spent more time waiting than actually playing the game. 😅
Luckily we upgraded just before LoD hit. 👍
@@UltromanTheTacoman Lmao yeah.. voodoo 3dfx.. i was about to say my friend had it in crossfire lol :D sick stuff... UT 99 went from lagging in software graphics i think... to fucking something like a game from the far future... my eyes almost popped out of my socket from amazement...
these young generations will never experience the shit what we did, tech evolved so fucking fast, that every year u were.. "Wow!" :D i think i havent had any wow effects in gaming for a decade+ already... last time something felt next level to me was dota2 closed beta.. and before that like world of warcraft launch lol... ;>
Ur comment suggest u def played unreal tournament loool : ))) i remember also my friend bought entire new pc to play that game where u could slow down time ;D - Max Payne 2: :D damn how shit it looks nowdays haha..
Rumours has it.. max payne 2 drops to 15fps on Xbox... loooooooooooooooooooooooool :D
They need Blizzard North for the next Diablo game. Look what happened without them.
right. What a fucking joke D3 was.
But then again has any video game been that decent recently aside from darksouls? The gaming world is a steaming pile of shit now.
yeah thats what happens when you ignore the hard fan base and concentrate on making it more playable by everyone
40 million or so copies sold of a piece of shit.
diablo 3 and thief being the biggest disappointments
Diablo 3: 30 million (due to Diablo 2 fame).
Reaper of Souls: 3 million (due to Diablo 3 delusion).
Do your maths.
Watching this after the announcement of Diablo: Immortal - Game development was so much cooler back in the day... it was all about passion, not money!
Thank you Daivd for all of your hard work and sacrifices in making such a great game! PLEASE come back and do another one of these for Diablo 2!!
David Brevik: I have a dream to make a PC game.
Blizzard 2018: Don't you guys have phones?
Thank you David and Blizzard North for making D1 and 2. For me Diablo 3 doesn't exist.
That hotmail story is absolutely depressing. 280 million... damn.
@Jonny B except there is interest. And things you can do with 40 million to let it grow properly.
You think that's bad? Back in 1990 Bill Gates offered to sell Windows to IBM for $80,000.
@@joshuanorris5860 yeah, for example their own Diablo expansion, (because of bigger studio and more of workers) Diablo III leaded by him etc.... another hunders of milions of dollars ;p
@Jonny B probably not gonna spend all of 40M though. (unless you're the "lets go nuts" type, and then you'd burn it back to 0 fairly soon anyway)
On the other hand, even if he did just drop it in the bank, 40M is still 40M. You wouldn't refuse that just because it isnt 280M.
@@dunmermage that's crazy. But it's not quite comparable. Maybe it would've crashed and burned under IBM, managing it badly or something.
Pretty big difference from buying a relatively small product and having to develop it into more, compared to getting 40M just for having a dude sit in your empty room.
I will always hate neo-blizzard for calling Mr. Brevik a loser.
RIP Diablo franchise.
What a rude thing to say. When was this?
@@vOddy75 Jay "bitch boy" Wilson. David made a comment saying he didn't think d3 was a good diablo game. Jay responded with "fuck that loser".
@@hellishinc damn! and the loser was right, so joke's on bitch boy
@Terminal Heights Yeah sure, people bought it thinking it would be good because of diablo 2 and pretty much everyone was disappointed. It got high sales but that's it. I played Diablo 2 for many years and still do sometimes. I stopped playing Diablo 3 after less than a year though and didn't bother with the expansion. That's how good D3 is. Regardless of the context of Brevik saying he didn't think D3 was good, he was right.
Diablo 1 will go down in history as the greatest game Beside Doom. Calling this man anything other than Genius is not using his proper title. Peasants always have opinions.
Legendary developer of a legendary game, huge respect to David and the Blizzard North team!
"We got feedback from players, and worked on the changes"
Omg what a genius idea, we should contact Blizzard immediately and tell them about this!
I feel that Blizzard has a lot to thank they have today because of Blizzard North, and how did they repay them? closing them down. ffs.
the end is awesome, when the guy comes in and give the money, that's great !
At 58:41. Ya that was amazing.
Kinda cringy, but awesome at the same time.
I thought it was kind of sweet.
Should've given HIM that copy of the game! People are allowed to make personal backup 'pirates' so long as they have paid for a copy, so it'd be metaphorically, literally and legally wiping the slate clean.
Yeah, that is easily one of the most entertaining things I've seen in these talks. I actually knew a band that would take a tip jar with the sign "Pirate Forgiveness Fund" (or something) on it. They swore they got more money in that jar than they actually got selling merch at some shows. I later heard that once they got a contract that their publisher made them take down the sign...
I remember that DirectX demo CD! I played the heck out of that thing.
EDIT: That Dark Forces overlay was great. I forgot how revolutionary that was.
gods when he fire up that demo with the menu music and the fat THUMP sound effect
that brought up nostalgic memories big time
33:28 wow! A self-respecting group that doesn't bulge when another company wants to buy them for twice as much, because they identify with the company culture. Damn Blizzard, what the hell happened to you lately... ?
People who think publishers are bad now should take note that 1994-95 CRPG's were considered "dead".
Well, now I have to reinstall Diablo.
I have it on an HDD somewhere..dang it... Gotta break out my low-res monitor, too.
@@CaveyMoth Should be no need. I had no trouble playing on my modern computer! Although I prefer playing Diablo HD mod, it includes deleted content and Mechanics from Diablo 2.
d2 lod with median XL...
or u will be severly dissapointed : ))))
how could the first guy asking a question NOT take the unopened diablo :o
I think he was just kind of on the spot and didn't want to seem like he was asking for it. I am sure he regretted it afterward.
He said he already had a copy, The person who asked for it later sold it, which is highly disrespectful as it was given under the idea that he was going to play it.
Mia S I would of thankfully taken it as a collector's piece even if I had a copy. Really kind of sad that it got sold in the end.
If he sold that then he is a scumbag, especially for asking it under pretenses of him needing a copy to play it. Bet he walks around thinking he's a good person too. Dirty liar, if that's true.
Deathbrewer it was you wasn't it?
"battle.net ran on one computer" - dafuuuuuuq!!!!
Some say it still does.
explains why it always crashes
It's the same computer from 1997...
57:15 to relive this hilarious moment
Original battle.net was a basic IRC server nothing more nothing less. There were a lot emulated battle.net servers for pirated games. Now such services are a lot more complicated that even host the games for the anti-cheat protection and so on.
Post mortem my ass, i still play diablo 1, also if anyones looking to get back into the game, look up diablo 1 hd mod, its called belzebub, its a lot more than just a hd upgrade.
19 years, 10 months and 21 days old.
Belzebub is truly Awesome !
Anyone play Diablo 1 with The Hell mod?
you mean Hellfire by Sierra or an actual mod?
Post-mortem is a project management term used for reflection and process improvement. Can be done after any milestone including release
Definitely feeding off of the energy this guy is giving off! He's nervous as hell but you can tell he's so passionate. Awesome presentation.
I'm not a very hardcore gamer and I've never even played Diablo, but this enire thing was very interesting. It's just a joy to listen to friendly people who know what they're talking about.
Peter Timowreef thats why i listen to full, accurately subtitled hitler speeches
And how would you know the subtitles are accurate? Piss off with your hitler jokes.
*****
Did you really think that I thought German was a dead language...? Really..?
Point is that when you don't speak German there's not really a way to know if the subtitles are accurate.
*****
If that were the case the adjective "accurately
subtitled" he used would be redundant.
The fact he used it indicates that apparently he believes there also badly translated subtitles available, which he was able to avoid.
Why are you defending someone who jokes around about a man who said horrible things?
Read this en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law, never take someone serious when they bring up Hitler they're more of a statistic than holding an actual argument, and a troll.
Reminder that good games are made by people, not by a logo. The chumps working at Blizzard now couldn't make a game like D2 if they tried.
That's a bit too general, there are probably a lot of very passionate and hard working working at Blizzard. Not a lot of people making games would ever want to make a sub par gaming experience. Blizzard is made up of thousands of employees, why treat all of them as a single entity.
MrZurata Sure, but they made WoW and Overwatch, what's your point?
over watch and doesn't have the same kind of spark that old war craft and even WOW had. it seems corporate and kind of sterile compared to their older games, because they need to make sure it makes money. yea they want a quality game experience but its less a passion thing and more a business thing.
Most of the guys that developed vanilla WoW and the first few expansions are long gone and Overwatch is complete trash though.
engineering and art at blizzard are always top notch. the design of the games are debatable.
GDC talks can tend to be tedious and hard to watch but this one flew by so fast, 1 hour was not enough, and I am not even a big Diablo fan. Would loveee to see a continuation with a Diablo 2 postmortem, thank you David Brevik for your amazing work!
I was the directing Manufacturing Engineer at Technicolor at the time, producing one Diablo disc every 7 seconds. Aside from Microsoft 95 and 98, Blizzard was our second largest account at that time. Still have a few prototype Diablo and Diablo II discs in various stages of production, with gorgeous silkscreened artwork in 1 to 6 color prints.
pics or it didn't happen
Pics pls or we won't believe you, it's a simple trust matter because anyone in RUclips can comment stuff like this. Some people even fake being creators of something important.
@@damsen978 Yeah I don't think they have a need to prove anything to you or anyone else online lol
@@AnonymoStranger Then what the original comment is clearly fake, you just can't take the word for it, you have to rely on multiple sources to conclude at it, otherwise you all would be misinformed. I can fake being a creator and comment on this section in less than a minute, just as easy.
Still no pics. Guess it's a fake
I've been playing "Diablo 3: Path of Exile", and I'm enjoying it a lot.
path of exhile was def a better "diablo 3" then diablo 3
@@ssosso79 I just started POE with a friend (lvl 35 ranger now). Quite a bit more complex than any diablo game though. Any beginner tips?
Don't be a jack of all trade. PoE has a really flexible amount of skills configuration that let you be a lot of things.I'm playing the sorceress and the Scion character right now and I specialised them both Into something specific that still fits to my taste; One Is a necromancer and the other an archer all the way.There's a lot of room to experiment with builds and have fun If you don't follow any guides but you gotta have a clear vision still of what you want yours to be. So welcome aboard and have a pleasant stay with us In Wraeclast,exile (Y)!
ROFL best comment
I can't live with the leagues "forcing" me to restart the progress every time new league comes out.
Im eating this up Im only at 5 minutes holy shit diablo was the first computer game i played and i think it raised me when my parents wernt around from 7-9 years old
33:28 Yep, 'Blizzard really got us, and got our game' - They turned down a TON of money because of the GAME... The game came first... Where is that in game creation now?
Gamers shit on games and make them fail any time it happens.
And I like that Blizzard smacked them around a little bit to make the game real-time. Game devs need to have their eyes opened sometimes.
You can find all sorts of indie devs making games as passion projects who don't compromise their vision for money, and that's sort of what Blizzard North and Diablo *were.*
Because the real Game is money creation :D
More post mortems need to be like this. self aware humor, tons of information and a very sympathetic speaker who values passion for his work over public speaking skills. Who cares if he umm-uuh's his way through most of it, he has so much passion for what he created with Diablo!
The Diablo series needs a reboot in the spirit of the original game. It needs to be small, spooky, intimate, simplified, and challenging.
His dad still plays Diablo 2 after sixteen years of its release. What a wonderful feeling that must be.
"You don't have to worry about this anymore, the card does all this crap for you, so it's... you know........ Kids today..."
That moment when GDC does better 20th Anniversary for Diablo than Bli$$ard Entertainment.
Blizzard today and Blizzard from the 90s only share the name. After Chris Metzen left, is there even one staff member left who was with the company in the early days?
Yes
Donald Trump's huge dingdong Maybe the janitor? :D
Well, Mike Morhaime, Co-founder of the place is actually still the CEO/president ;)
Lol Dude you replaced the Zs in the company name with Dollarsigns to indicate that they are only interested in the money nowadays! That's genius! I bet you're the first being in world history who thought of that! LOL!
Blizzard needs to put Diablo along with Warcraft 1 & 2 on the store.
no point, copy right expired i believe
You can download the abandonware.
Copyright on corporately owned works doesn't expire until 95 years after publication or 120 years after creation, whichever comes first. Still a long ways to go before even those old games would expire.
it's called walmart
lol to bad Walmart doesn't sell D1 and Warcraft 1 and 2
I really admire his honesty.
Watching these chill ass dudes at gdc makes me hate my job that much more
Man I loved that game. No sequel or game has matched that feeling I get still to this day when I hear the music and see the game.
Amazing talk, thx a lot David Brevik! This game was superb for the time and still is today.
Hm. I started working at Synergistic (The studio that Sierra had do the xpac) right after they finished Hellfire. If it's any consolation, they shut us down within 6 months. Also, I NOW work for Mike O'Brian at ArenaNet, so it fun hearing about his earlier days. I hope Brevik splits that profit he just got with Mike after praising him so much! ;P
One of the things that went very right was the music.
27:44 Probably one of the most beautiful moments in game development history.
Actually it's all history
how could you turn down that copy of D1..
53:07 1:03:27
Games back in the 90s were the best games. They were done with love and passion and that was the driving force. Now it is all about making more money...
Sad state of the gaming industry
That’s why these talks are so valuable. Keeps me going when I feel like giving up on my own projects.
Thanks David, and all the people that worked on Diablo, for this game. It was so awesome, childhood memories. :))
They earn the gamer cred for taking X-Com as inspiration. Never knew that connection between Diablo and X-Com.
Who the hell plays Diablo and thinks "You know what this game really needs? Cooking."
Well, it makes a lot of sense from some Perspectives.
One is the View from a Point of PMarketing/Player Bonding - more Loops to bind Players.
Second is the P&P-View: In a P&P it brings immersion, which makes the "Game better", more enjoyable.
So, it makes sense - just not for Diablo. Totally not for Diablo.
i dunno man, cooking demon steak sounds bad as fuck
Cooking some demon meat near Deckard Cain's campfire for some kind of buff to maybe Magic Find
Who the hell plays a CCG and thinks, you know what this needs? Guilds and crafting.
> Yep, don't be so quick to belittle
great video. its a shame it ended. i would have loved to hear him answer more questions
Just finished Diablo again on Windows 10 x64 Pro. Didn't even need the patch, but with 1.6 it plays a bit better. And seeing good old Tristram in 640*480 stretched up all the way on an UHD screen is quite a sight to behold :)
glad you enjoyed that mobile game :)
Damn, those pixels must've been as big as bricks, man.
@@werdelke HD mod does exist and its good.
@@hrvojesincek3888 Indeed! It is a lot harder though, I got my ass totally wooped first time I played. Just recently managed to kill Mr. D as a normal leveled and equipped warrior :).
I ran out of tissue. Please get the guys back together and complete that D2 expansion before you all retire. You know this is your best and most beloved project. Make it happen.
Wow that was probably the most entertaining postmortem I've seen!
Where's the link to the design document?
+AoiKaze2000 Right here: www.graybeardgames.com/download/diablo_pitch.pdf
I'm so jealous that one dude got David's diablo copy. He should've asked for his autograph though!
I was thinking the same thing. David seems nice enough to do that for him too. Also hey I know you from your first upload, big castlevania fan whatsup
The turnbased engine at first was likely a good choice to have underneath this as it no doubt made the game state more "tidy" when he transitioned it to real time. Seeing how quickly he got it into a realtime state, indicates that the movement/animation of the player and monsters were all smooth for each time transition. A player can almost play Diablo a bit turn based as you can move a tile and trigger motion of a monster that then is in the "aggro range" to deal with them one at a time.
I mean even WoW later had similar things with aggro ranges on mobs, even though both games are in real-time. I wouldn't really equate pulling mobs one at a time to "turn based" though, lol.
I really want to know more about this in regards to Diablo 2. For those that don't know, Diablo 2 runs at 25 frames per second for each animation. Having faster cast rate, move speed, increased attack speed, and so on meant the animation for your character skipped frames in the animation. For example, say it takes your character 10 frames to complete an attack animation, but a monster 25 frames, your character will attack 2.5 times per second while the monster will attack once.
This stuff isn't that important for playing against monsters, but if you're doing any sort of PvP, you had this shit down to a science. One of the highest skills you could master was how to de-synchronize (or "desynch"). This was when you flooded the server with so many inputs that when it went to skip over the animations, it could glitch, lose packets, and your character would appear invisible on your opponent's screen. A good Amazon, for instance, could desynch her run speed so that she's almost permanently invisible, "teleporting" next to her opponent, and firing off a large salvo of javalins right to her opponent's face. Paladins were probably the easiest to desynch with, while one of the hardest goals would be to achieve desynch'd whirlwinds on barbarians and assassins.
The other thing is that duping in Diablo 2 was usually obtained by desynch. You create the conditions that cause the server to lose track of your character (or straight-up crash the server) and try and move items from one place to another (like the stash into the player inventory). The server loses track of your character, thinks an item is being held by another person, then you log back in and the server sees you still have your item, leaving the other person with the dupe(s). There's a lot of methods, but these are the basics behind most of them. However, none of the desynch methods are possible on Classic because players can't get enough cast speed/move speed/etc. to cause a server to crash. As a result, all items on Classic were either duped prior to v1.09 (when Blizzard introduced item numbers) or are legitimate and not dupes.
I'd be really curious to hear Brevik talk about all this.
I loved this game so much. Still do. Everything about it was mind blowing at the time. Great memories.
"I had never done a C program in my life." :)
giving his copy away is truly the highlight of the entire event because that's just too awesome for a dev to give away their unopened copy to a fan
IT was the summer of 2000. Diablo had just released. I remember a bunch of my friends and I wanted to play. one of our friends had the game. at that time all you needed was a serial key. A new feature came out where you didn't need to have the cd in the cd tray to play the game you were playing. when we realized this a bunch of us went to a gaming store a week later and basically copied cd keys out of the store. we weren't thugs or delinquents we were just nerdy high school kids with a dangerous side. long story short we all played the hell out of it all summer and most of the next school year. It's one of my most fav memories. Thank you David Brevik. (side note) I did end up buying multiple copies of multiple diablo games later on
wish i was old enough to play this.
also is that hitler walking out at 54:25 ?
Yep... it is.
They should write some patch/tweak to make it run on Win 10 (GOG style) and re-release it for like 5-10 bucks, it would probably still sell.
They literally partnered with GOG to do that, you can see into the future haha
"do you want it?"
" urr no i got one"
WHAT KIND OF **** ARE YOU?
the Father of diablo himself is giving you a UNOPENED copy of the original diablo!?
I was thinking the exact same thing. I would bumrush the stage and grab it if he said it (even if he was joking)
lol yeah the guy was too humble for the situation
probably caught him off guard. He's already having to stand up in an audience and asking a question.
I though Brevik was a bit awkward about it himself. I can only assume he brought it to give away, but couldn't really decide how to, and just weirdly threw it in. He didn't quite make a big enough deal about. Just like "I found this random game"
All in all, I can see how someone would be offguard enough to default back to just wanting out of the spot light with the least amount of fuss, but he was probably regretting it after it sunk in.
This is one inspiring talk. It's like looking back through a window. You can be there wihtout having been there. Fantastic!
New game's name: Arreat
Objective: Protect Mt. Diablo
The story about a warrior, climbing the mountain struck by the demonic meteor ridden by supersatan
That's so funny when he talks about his mom playing Diablo. My mom and I are big Diablo fans!
the way he did the convertion of turn based to real time is genius really
I was bored to death by the original diablo. I beat it a couple of times because I always wanted to see if I could possibly like it as much as people say they do, but putting all that time into it just made me dislike it even more.
On the other hand, diablo 2 is fucking amazing and I still have fun playing it regularly. Not to mention diablo 2 got one of the best expansion packs ever made.
34yo here, great game, me and my brother got it with our PC upgrade - finally we had a proper sound card! Both of us completely gone, we SLAINED our mouse, because of the upgrade we have been skint, so we actually opened our mouse, and replaced left mouse button with right one - as right one wasn't as important! xD
Still play it from time to time, great game.
This video is simply amazing. Thank you David for all the time, effort and passion you've put in this game with your team.
This is what a post mortem is all about, diagnosing what went right and what went wrong, on a game that will be remembered as ground breaking. I watched Loom post mortem after this, and that was cringe-worthy nostalgia-rant. If it's true no one actually does a real diagnosis, then take the rest down and keep this up.
20:00 "something not seen before at that time"
- Doom [1993] has a roughly similar palette arangement (but with different lenght of hue rows instead of being nibble aligned; and uses a look-up table "COLORMAP" for the actual shadow. i.e.: jumps to whichever is the closest colour in RGB space, instead of moving along "hue" rows).
But yeah, in both games shadows help a lot with the ambience, despite the trick being done slightly differently (nibble math vs look-ups)
- Sierra's SCI1 point'n'click VGA games have been organising sprite palette similarly since King's Quest V [1990] (though it's not much used for shadow effect ; by the time Sierra games started doing shadow more prominently, SCI1.1 games had switched to "private" per-sprite sub-palettes like Lucasfilm's ScummVM VGA games, so shadows were done by directly fading sub-section of the palette, instead of remapping colours)
In general point'n'click tend to emphasis clarity over ambiance, so despite technically being able to do it as soon as they've switched to VGA, these game limit to some light lightening effect (hero gets slightly darker when walking in the shadow)
Waiting for D2 postmortem.
PS. Stop downvoting Sierra employees! :P
This talk is getting me fired up to play Diablo again!
It runs on windows 10! A buddy of mine and I play it all the time.
That PC Gamer CD is what introduced me to Diablo. Was amazing.
I still remember the disapointment with the voice talent changed from the demo to the final product :D
When I killed Diablo. I emailed you and you sent me a very cool Diablo Poster, which I still have today!
I love how the idea of selling packs of 50 items 20 years ago was scrapped for being a 'big issue'. Now you won't find a game that doesn't do something similar. Anyone remember the real money auction house in diablo 3?
not to mention that the inability to monetise a (single-player) game in such a way is deemed a failure now, rip Deus Ex
The 90s were the true golden age and 96-98 were the best years in gaming.
Pick 1997, you have: Diablo, Oddworld, Mario 64, Golden Eye, Fallout, GTA, Dungeon Keeper.
The year before you have games like Final Fantasy 7, Quake, Resident Evil.
The year after it's like Half Life, Grim Fandango, Ocarina of Time, Starcraft.
There are no year after 2000 that can compete with that. Don't even try.
zerg47 damn! that's a lotta good games
Holy shit, 2007 though. Bioshock and TF2 and Halflife 2 and tons of others. Mabye it peaks every 10 years?!?!
C'mon 2017!
Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 came out early 2000
Deus Ex
I simply said that the amount of incredible games for a given year in the 90s cannot be compared to the next decades. It's like years for wine. You have good years, bad years.
1996-98 are just legendary for videogames, just pointing that.
WAIT !!!!! did the guy just say NO to a free unopened copy of Diablo 1 from DAVID !!!???
Oh man I remember Primal Rage! I used to love that game so much, why did I forget it?
that diablo demo is what hooked me. i still remember playing it
Funny that you guys took out he "Expansion Packs" functionality thinking that it was a bad idea... and today we have "micro transactions".
Great, awesome talk. Best postmortem I have watched so far. The question about the possibility to acquire the game legally currently was freaking important.
I bet the guy that got the copy of Diablo from Brevik made the story up, so that he could sell the game on ebay.
David Hunter doesn't matter though. David said he gave it to him for being bold enough to ask
bodoron True
I just want to say thank you man. I never knew who created my favorite 2 games of all time. Diablo I and II :) i spent my childhood in your games and its inspired me as an evil fantasy artist for the rest of my life