Diablo 1

[Arbiter]

What kind of engine was used in Diablo 1 ?

It was an inhouse engine inspired by XCom games. Blizzard has not believed in thirdparty technology from its inception until Hearthstone card game.

Is D2 using a tweaked version, or a completely new engine?

According to wikipedia it uses less than 1% of Diablo 1 code.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

The Digital Antiquarian has written a post on Diablo:

...
Their ulterior motive for being at CES was something else entirely. Brevik had an idea for a computer game called Diablo, which he had been slowly expanding upon ever since he had lived with his family at the foot of the California mountain of that name back in the mid-1980s. Now, he felt its time had come; he desperately wanted to interest a publisher in it. But every executive he talked to at the show starting shaking his head as soon as he saw the first line of the pitch document, stating that it was “a proposal for a role-playing game.” For CRPGs were dead and buried according to the industry’s conventional wisdom, having nothing to offer in an era when multimedia flash and 3D mayhem reigned supreme. They were quaint at best, deadly boring at worst, as their recent sales figures reflected.
...
Diablo‘s most direct influence by far was the roguelike games, which David Brevik had played for hundreds upon hundreds of hours while a student at university. From roguelikes it inherited its minimalist narrative — amounting to little more than “make it to the last level and kill the boss of bosses Diablo” — as well as randomized dungeons that would be new with every playthrough, along with the randomized “good stuff” they contained. Brevik’s favorite roguelike of all was Angband, which distinguished itself from the likes of the original Rogue and its spiritual successor NetHack by having a town to serve as the player’s base of operations for her expeditions into the nearby dungeon, resulting in a slightly more relaxed pacing and introducing an economic element. Diablo was to duplicate this structure exactly: “Forays into the dungeon will be broken up by trips to the town located above. In the town, a general store will provide standard equipment and repairs, and will also purchase extra equipment from the player. A temple will provide healing for injured and sick characters. Training and other facilities may also be available.”

In Brevik’s initial vision, Diablo was even to have roguelike perma-death: if the player’s character was killed, “that character will be erased completely from the hard drive, and the player must start over from scratch.” Combat would be turn-based like in a roguelike, but heavily influenced by the game’s secondary inspiration, Julian Gollop’s 1994 strategy classic X-COM; Diablo would use a similar interface and action-points system. If it strikes you as strange that a game that would later be so commonly dismissed as nothing more than a mindless, frantic click-fest could have two such cerebral inspirations as these… well, such are the paradoxes of game development.
...
Everyone at Condor, including Brevik, was soon marveling that they had ever imagined Diablo being anything other than a real-time game. Millions of players would eventually feel the same way, as the game’s real-time nature became the core of its very identity.
...
Diablo‘s eventual impact on the culture and practices of computer gaming was arguably more pronounced than that of any individual title since DOOM. It introduced phrases like “loot drop” into the gamer lexicon; it was the pioneer of a new era of easy online multiplayer gaming, between friends and strangers alike; it single-handedly dragged the entire genre of the CRPG back into public favor. This long shadow can make it oddly difficult to discuss as just a game. When I went back to play it recently for the first time in a quarter of century — boy, I’m getting old! — I was impressed if not blown away by the experience. And yet, despite my best efforts, I couldn’t quite avoid allowing my opinions to be colored by some of what Diablo has wrought. We’ll get to that in due course. But first, Diablo the game…[1]
...
In lieu of challenge, Diablo thrives on its polished addictiveness. Vanishingly few of its contemporaries can even begin to touch it in terms of intuitive playability. It’s clear that every last detail — every last window, every last hotkey, every last mouse click — was fussed over for hours and hours, until it was just what it ought to be. The auto-map is a thing of wonder that I have to call out for special praise. In CRPGs of the 1990s, such things are usually found in a separate window on the main display that is always too small for comfort and yet takes up too much precious screen real estate — or the auto-map can only be accessed on a separate screen, leaving you constantly flipping back and forth between the two views as you try to get somewhere. Diablo‘s auto-map, on the other hand, appears as a transparent overlay right on top of the usual display, toggled on and off by pressing the TAB key. Like everything else here, it’s elegant and perfect, a brilliant stroke that could only have come about through dedicated, dogged iteration. You have to be in awe of the craftsmanship of this game. It knows precisely what it wants to be, and it achieves its best self in every respect.

This statement applies equally to the game’s aesthetics, which are nothing short of masterful; whatever Diablo lacks in set-piece storytelling, it makes up for in atmosphere. If I had to describe that atmosphere in one word, it would be “Gothic.” Diablo captures the side of the Middle Ages that all of those Tolkienesque CRPGs cheerfully ignore in the midst of all their elves and halflings romping merrily through the forest: the all-encompassing religion of Christianity, the almost tangible reality of another life that awaits after this one, which is as much a source of fear as comfort in the minds of the people. Diablo taps into something deep and almost primal in the human psyche, having more in common with The Exorcist than The Lord of the Rings, more in common with Hieronymus Bosch than Boris Vallejo. The shocking ending, which I won’t spoil here, is likewise more horror than fantasy. Diablo is lucky it wasn’t released during the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, given that it sports much of what all those concerned parents were looking for in Dungeons & Dragons and not quite finding.

Matt Uelmen’s amazingly sophisticated soundtrack, recorded partially on real instruments at a time when many games were still relying entirely on tinny MIDI sound fonts, could easily have played behind a big-budget horror movie. The “Town” theme, featuring the best use of a twelve-string guitar since the heyday of the Byrds, is especially unforgettable; it took me back instantly when I heard it again after 25 years away.
...

 

[Stormcrowfleet]

It's still one of my favourite and most influential personal game. I remember playing this as a young lad when it came out, I was blown away. Also the art in the book (especially the strategy guide that was bigger) were amazing.

 

[Diggfinger]

Is the DevilutionX mainly a QoL mod with better graphics, or does it try to add its own spin on the game?

QoL and probably the best way if you want to experience vanilla with a facelift. No custom content (apart from the restored one), just a lot of bug fixes and improvements.

By restored, you mean the unique items in SP, or does it restore cut quests?

I like belzebub HD mod because it turns diablo into a diablo 2 kind of game, with waypoints, randomized dungeons. And it restore a lot of cut quests that I find more interesting than those from hellfire.

But devilution has the speed setting, that makes the game a little faster in dungeons...

DevilutionX is a vanilla, plain-ass Diablo 1 source port, with open source access to the engine. It works for Hellfire or OG Diablo, does not contain modder-restored content, but has many QoL features and handles modern resolutions and aspect ratios elegantly. To give you an idea of how closely it adheres to Diablo, you can load diablo/hellfire saved games in DevilutionX, and load DevilutionX saved games in Diablo/Hellfire. They reverse engineered the Diablo engine based on some debugging tools that accidentally shipped with an obscure version of the game, and ensure bit-parity in saved game behavior. It also fixes a *lot* of bugs in Diablo 1. I dislike Hellfire, but one of the neat things about DevilutionX is that you can play vanilla Diablo with the barbiarian and bard (if you want). I've enjoyed the open-source nature of this project and have my own source-mod to tweak the mechanics more to my liking.




* Impressive, yet not good. The lighting in particular I find garish, with cast light often being the principal RGB value from whatever the source is. It's technically impressive, but aesthetically garbage.

Life kindda hard right now, need me some Diablo 1 nostalgia.

Fired up Devilution again - love it.

But how do I turn on the QoL features? I checked the GitHub (which apparantly has instructions0, but all I could find was 'add x to the diablo.ini' file (in the Diablo folder) - which did nothing.
I am running the game from the Devilution folder.

Thanks for any feedback!

 

[agris]

Is the DevilutionX mainly a QoL mod with better graphics, or does it try to add its own spin on the game?

QoL and probably the best way if you want to experience vanilla with a facelift. No custom content (apart from the restored one), just a lot of bug fixes and improvements.

By restored, you mean the unique items in SP, or does it restore cut quests?

I like belzebub HD mod because it turns diablo into a diablo 2 kind of game, with waypoints, randomized dungeons. And it restore a lot of cut quests that I find more interesting than those from hellfire.

But devilution has the speed setting, that makes the game a little faster in dungeons...

DevilutionX is a vanilla, plain-ass Diablo 1 source port, with open source access to the engine. It works for Hellfire or OG Diablo, does not contain modder-restored content, but has many QoL features and handles modern resolutions and aspect ratios elegantly. To give you an idea of how closely it adheres to Diablo, you can load diablo/hellfire saved games in DevilutionX, and load DevilutionX saved games in Diablo/Hellfire. They reverse engineered the Diablo engine based on some debugging tools that accidentally shipped with an obscure version of the game, and ensure bit-parity in saved game behavior. It also fixes a *lot* of bugs in Diablo 1. I dislike Hellfire, but one of the neat things about DevilutionX is that you can play vanilla Diablo with the barbiarian and bard (if you want). I've enjoyed the open-source nature of this project and have my own source-mod to tweak the mechanics more to my liking.




* Impressive, yet not good. The lighting in particular I find garish, with cast light often being the principal RGB value from whatever the source is. It's technically impressive, but aesthetically garbage.

Life kindda hard right now, need me some Diablo 1 nostalgia.

Fired about Devilution again - love it.

But how do I turn on the QoL features? I checked the GitHub (which apparantly has instructions0, but all I could find was 'add x to the diablo.ini' file (in the Diablo folder) - which did nothing.
I am running the game from the Devilution folder.

Thanks for any feedback!

I assume you're on windows 10? Delete the diablo.ini that you found.

Make sure you're using the most recent windows x86 release here: https://github.com/diasurgical/devilutionX/releases/tag/1.5.1
Follow the install instructions here: https://github.com/diasurgical/devilutionX/blob/master/docs/installing.md

QoL features can be enabled through-in game settings menu, but the diablo.ini is found in

%appdata%\diasurgical\devilution

If you don't know how to get to that, hit WIN+R, and in the Run box enter "%appdata%\diasurgical\devilution" minus the quotes.

 

[Diggfinger]

Damn - Diablo 1 its just so ... perfect.

It's dark, consistent theme, simple but addictive gameplay.
For me its way better than 2, which didnt nail the atmosphere at all.

Thanks agris , installed the new version and it works perfect!

 

[Ryzer]

Damn - Diablo 1 its just so ... perfect.

It's dark, consistent theme, simple but addictive gameplay.
For me its way better than 2, which didnt nail the atmosphere at all.

Thanks agris , installed the new version and it works perfect!

Play Nox afterward, you won't regret it.

 

[Dadd]

D1 spells aren't as cool as D2's

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

D1 spells aren't as cool as D2's

Archangel's Staff of the Apocalypse goes brrrrrr.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Yes, Diablo 1 is awesome. I often wondered how great would be if someone made a crpg in Diablo 1 world. An open world like Fallout or Arcanum, only in a gothic horror Diablo setting, with dangerous (and scary) countryside where "dark riders" roam and dilapidated villages litter the countryside as only a few survivors cling to hellish egzistence. Of course, improved character system and dialogue. Itemization would be great as it is, only expanded as the game would be expanded and bigger too. And most of all, horror semi realistic experience. Diablo 1 was the first (and only) isometric game I was scared to play as a kid.

A TBC party in the diablo world? Funny the first prototype was being considered to be a TBC single player game. I forget the interview where devs were told to change that.

 

[Arbiter]

A TBC party in the diablo world? Funny the first prototype was being considered to be a TBC single player game. I forget the interview where devs were told to change that.

Blizzard has agreed to publish Condor's game on 2 conditions: conversion from TB combat to real time and introduction of a multiplayer mode.

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

Diablo 1 is cool on the graphics, music, sound, story.. but the gameplay is super shallow compared to proper roguelikes, even to Mistery Dungeon games, i thought Torneko on the SNES have tighter gameplay than Diablo.

A TBC party in the diablo world? Funny the first prototype was being considered to be a TBC single player game. I forget the interview where devs were told to change that.

it could've worked well if they used the turn based from Mistery Dungeon:

it looks real time because it's fast paced but it's actually turn based. But turn based Diablo would not have sold as much since it would not work well with multiplayer, like i said, gameplay wise Diablo series is decline, they're so popular because they're pseudo MMO rpgs.

 

[Just Locus]

Played it about a few years ago, pretty enjoyable outside of the jank that is associated with 90s games, the combat is decent, the sound design is surprisingly crisp for its time, and the progression to levels is gradual but noticeable.
The dungeons are also a glowing positive, they retain the replay value that's inherent in randomly generated dungeons while also maintaining a coherent layout.
It's a good game and a technical marvel for its time too.

 

[Gostak]

I fired up my Belzebub install again after having come across this here:


Saw I had a something (5?) something (9?) level necromancer with some cool loot, that it looks like it is
perma-death(-ish?) without saves other than an auto one to pick the game up from again.
(Think I stopped playing after looking into the possible loot modifiers and how limited that appeared to me.)

Now, figured I need to get into the controls etc. first again, so started another one.

Then figured the skill "spells" of the necro suck compared to sorcerer, started a sorcerer found cool
loot right of the bat to go with such and want to finish the game with him.
Difficulty is on "normal", dunno if I even got to choose that.
Slot machine highs and lows without wasting money like a sucker.

wtf D2 not on the usual stores and everything afterwards looks shit lol.
Yup, what the guy says, Blizzard has lost it.

EDIT:
Seems, a few do not like the mod?

Seems with sorcerer I took the right choice:

and I had a say in difficulty but because it might be ironman and I never finished Diablo 1 before I went with normal.

Have had the game since like near the time it came out, though ... >_<
Perused the booklet during break today a bit. :D

 

[The Jester]

I once again want to address the fact that the Belzebub mod is an incredible experience, and should be played by everyone who loves the Diablo series.

Belzebub turn Diablo into a grindfest when it supposed to be a game with tight pacing, it literally destroys the supreme atmosphere of the game by turning it into Diablo 2.
On a perfect timeline we would have Belzebub restored content + devilutionX.

 

[Gregz]

Is the DevilutionX mainly a QoL mod with better graphics, or does it try to add its own spin on the game?

QoL and probably the best way if you want to experience vanilla with a facelift. No custom content (apart from the restored one), just a lot of bug fixes and improvements.

By restored, you mean the unique items in SP, or does it restore cut quests?

I like belzebub HD mod because it turns diablo into a diablo 2 kind of game, with waypoints, randomized dungeons. And it restore a lot of cut quests that I find more interesting than those from hellfire.

But devilution has the speed setting, that makes the game a little faster in dungeons...

DevilutionX is a vanilla, plain-ass Diablo 1 source port, with open source access to the engine. It works for Hellfire or OG Diablo, does not contain modder-restored content, but has many QoL features and handles modern resolutions and aspect ratios elegantly. To give you an idea of how closely it adheres to Diablo, you can load diablo/hellfire saved games in DevilutionX, and load DevilutionX saved games in Diablo/Hellfire. They reverse engineered the Diablo engine based on some debugging tools that accidentally shipped with an obscure version of the game, and ensure bit-parity in saved game behavior. It also fixes a *lot* of bugs in Diablo 1. I dislike Hellfire, but one of the neat things about DevilutionX is that you can play vanilla Diablo with the barbiarian and bard (if you want). I've enjoyed the open-source nature of this project and have my own source-mod to tweak the mechanics more to my liking.




* Impressive, yet not good. The lighting in particular I find garish, with cast light often being the principal RGB value from whatever the source is. It's technically impressive, but aesthetically garbage.

Life kindda hard right now, need me some Diablo 1 nostalgia.

Fired about Devilution again - love it.

But how do I turn on the QoL features? I checked the GitHub (which apparantly has instructions0, but all I could find was 'add x to the diablo.ini' file (in the Diablo folder) - which did nothing.
I am running the game from the Devilution folder.

Thanks for any feedback!

I assume you're on windows 10? Delete the diablo.ini that you found.

Make sure you're using the most recent windows x86 release here: https://github.com/diasurgical/devilutionX/releases/tag/1.5.1
Follow the install instructions here: https://github.com/diasurgical/devilutionX/blob/master/docs/installing.md

QoL features can be enabled through-in game settings menu, but the diablo.ini is found in

%appdata%\diasurgical\devilution

If you don't know how to get to that, hit WIN+R, and in the Run box enter "%appdata%\diasurgical\devilution" minus the quotes.

Do any of the new QoL features include controller support?

 

[Gostak]

Heh, I transferred stuff from my lvl9 necro to my sorcerer, leveled him and his spells up some more and
still got my sorry ass handed to me by the butcher.
Seems - at least normal(?) - has an option to restart you in town without losing any XP or gold!?!
Also, after I transferred stuff to my sorcerer, the level of the butcher and the one above were regenerated and not cleared out any longer?!?
Maybe I see where that grindfest remark comes from.
Felt good till I did all this shit, though.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Belzebub Is practically like playing a D1 like you’d play D2. Maps reset after you restart I believe. It has been a while. I haven’t went back to TheHell nor started TheHell2 (which might have finally stopped being patched…. Maybe they’re doing a new project?).

 

[Dadd]

The Hell 3 is available for download

 

[Gostak]

Okay maybe those guys have not taken into account monster resistances and means to deal with such or, more likely, the grind for balance in Belzebub is too real.
"Those" being the fellows sharing their suffering on another forum here: https://www.neo-geo.com/forums/index.php?threads/need-diablo-1-grinding-tip.255883/

So, I also installed devilutionX 1.5.1
I saw that Infernity would be for me, but alas it does not run on my install (maybe no fitting 1.09 dunno).
Sad, would have liked items with prefix, suffix and another *fix.

Certainly feels different a lot, I did not remember well how vanilla D1 was it seems.

 

[Baron Dupek]

The Hell 3 is available for download

still in pre-alpha - not even beta to bother
I'll wait for a full release

https://www.neo-geo.com/forums/index.php?threads/need-diablo-1-grinding-tip.255883/

september 2017 - they mention Belzebub which is still not finished
is it really hard to stick to one project and deliver fully functional mod?

 

[MasterofThunder]

DevilutionX has issues with scaling at higher resolutions. Despite there being multiple options to scale the image, none of them do anything and attempting to play Diablo at 4K predictably turns the game into a tiny stamp on your computer. So 800p it is!.

To this day I wonder what a direct sequel to the first game would look like, a "Diablo 1.5" if you will. I personally think it should take place in a large castle, with an overworld outside. Perhaps a forest and cave area nearby, but not much beyond that. It should still feel isolated and foreboding.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

D1 spells aren't as cool as D2's

I don't know about that. Not all in one package at least. D1 sorcerer beats any given D2 caster. D2 spells are flashier, but as far as overall caster potency and flexibility, D1 sorcerer is best.

 

[Damned Registrations]

D1 spells aren't as cool as D2's

I don't know about that. Not all in one package at least. D1 sorcerer beats any given D2 caster. D2 spells are flashier, but as far as overall caster potency and flexibility, D1 sorcerer is best.

Yeah, golem, manashield, teleport, stone curse, holy bolt, chain lightning were all incredibly useful spells with neat quirks. Well, manashield was brokenly OP partly due to a bug...

The real thing that made D1 spells so much more satisfying though was having to find them. That moment when you found a new spell and read it's description was always so damned satisfying. I really miss that, wish it had become a genre staple instead of skilltrees.

 

[duke nukem]

I still think this is the best diablo to date. Also i think itemisation is the best in all of the d-games. I always constantly find new better loot from regular monsters, and it has decent amount of different attributes on items. I hate in D2, when there is always something wrong in the item so you have to throw it away...wrong attributes...wrong amount of sockets...etc. Also if you wanted to get good loot, you had to grind Baal, over and over again(or cow world)..and it is so stupid. I like how in D1 you dont get any drops from Diablo. Thats how it should be...final boss should be final boss...not some glorified pinata.

Hmm...is the Playstation version of the diablo 1 more difficulty compared to pc? Because i remember how in the second area those monsters that throw some sort of acid at quite fast rate and could easily stunlock you and in the cavern or third area, those lizards just spammed the lightning spell so you basically could not do anything, but when i have played 2 times from start to finish in pc, i dont see any enemy spamming any of their abilities same way.

Hmm.perhaps i should find a european psx version of the game to test it, but even that might not reveal it, if its based on framerate issues of the game on psx and emulator will run it perfectly...