'Diablo': A Classic Game Postmortem

This story and many others are captured really well in the Game Developer Conference (GDC) post-mortem talks, heartily recommended if you want to know about the human aspect behind game dev!! ▶ this video

To find out what happened next, check out Diablo developer David Brevik’s postmortem presentation at GDC 2016: ▶ this video

My favourite story of Diablo's development (as relayed by David Brevik in the Diablo Postmortem - see below) is the part where Diablo was made real-time. He passionately championed that it should be more like Rogue or Moria purely turn-based and permadeath. That was until he implemented real-time movement in an afternoon and attacked a skeleton. This was a directive from Blizzard, and it effectively created the ARPG genre. ▶ this video and for those adverse to Google: link

That's an interesting thought, but I'd assume 20 year old 3D models wouldn't be much use today, would they? I know they were thinking about making D2 a 3D game at first, like Runescape, but then went with 2D, because 3D technology wasn't at a point that allowed them to carry over the gritty and dark theme they wanted for Diablo. And then went on to make D3 look as cartoony as it does... They used photos of clay figurines for Diablo 1, would be fun if they remade that with 3D scanning techniques. Do check out David Brevik's post mortem on D1 from GDC by the way, it's fantastic: ▶ this video

Diablo was far from the first ARPG, but given how influential it has been for the genre, I was floored to learn that it was actually designed and implemented as a turn-based game, and only turned into an Action RPG by request of folks at the main Blizzard office. The founder of Blizzard North (David Brevik) thought it was a dumb idea, and only agreed to do it because it seemed like a large enough work item to justify requesting an additional budget milestone from Blizzard, which his office was hurting for sorely. Brevik then got it working over the course of roughly an afternoon, by just running the turn system automatically and responding to clicks a little differently. It was only after seeing the action-oriented click-walk-attack-click flow actually work for the first time that he realized: they'd struck gold. He told this story (and lots of others!) in a pretty excellent post mortem at GDC[1] a few years ago. 1 - ▶ this video

You picked the wrong time to use that example, considering that Nintendo will soon release Super Mario Maker 2, a new game which includes a mode with virtually unchanged mechanics from Super Mario Bros 3. link Regarding Roguelikes, the biggest change was Diablo in 1996. Diablo was arguably a Roguelike with fancy graphics and a real-time mode hacked onto a turn-based core. ▶ this video

there's a bit of discussion about isometric tile rendering nonsense, although not specific to vsync, in David Brevik's diablo postmortem ▶ this video along with a whole lot of other fascinating stuff

For anyone interested in the history of Diablo, the GDC post mortem is well worth a watch: ▶ this video Quite a bit of detail regarding the origin of the game, going turn-based to real-time, the studio becoming Blizzard North, etc. Also here's the original design doc: link

I was never a huge Diablo fan, but I could always appreciate the things people liked about it. I gained new respect for it from watching Brevik's GDC postmortem [0] from a couple of years ago. I love the idea that it was originally a dungeon crawl inspired by X-COM and would love to play one of the early builds before they changed to real-time combat. [0]: ▶ this video

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.' ▶ this video If you're in this part of this comment thread, you'll probably enjoy the whole video.

David Brevik released that just after the Diablo postmortem from GDC a couple years ago: ▶ this video 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.

Brevik was one of the founders Condor (Brevik was the president while the Schaefer brothers were vice-presidents) which later became Blizzard North when Blizzard bought them. The work on Diablo started before Blizzard bought them. He really was one of the "creators". IIRC they made the first Diablo game with a team of 15-20 people. In a team that small pretty much everyone is a "game designer" as in everyone wears many hats (especially the president of the company) If you are interested you really should check the postmortem from the GDC a few years back ▶ this video

In this case he really did invent the "Realtime-RPG" that made Diablo what it is. In his own words: ▶ this video

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