[HN Gopher] Diablo 1 for Web Browsers
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Diablo 1 for Web Browsers
Author : nsoonhui
Score : 400 points
Date : 2022-08-20 02:27 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| tecksurf wrote:
| This is cool
| drooopy wrote:
| It's kinda hard to believe that Diablo was a cRPG at some point.
| smcl wrote:
| Wait is it now known as something other than an RPG?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| The latest one is a micropayment gamble game on phones.
| barrysteve wrote:
| D4 looks like it might be okay
| smcl wrote:
| Ohhhhh yeah sorry I forgot about that one. Something like
| pay-to-win, and costs $100k to 100% the game?
| NaughtyShiba wrote:
| More like 600k (from currently known max upgrades). And
| good luck doing anything if you don't have team of 8
| whales which you need for raids. So more like 4.8 million
| for proper maxing...
| iakov wrote:
| Yes. Although the main story line can be done without
| paying a single cent, the endgame nudges you towards real
| money shop all the time. After some point credit card
| becomes the main progression path.
|
| I personally enjoyed playing through story on iPad, but
| was unimpressed with the endgame. It is very shallow,
| limited to the same generated locations or dungeons you
| have already seen. There is virtually no build diversity
| either. Not sure why someone would pay money for the
| experience.
| drooopy wrote:
| I can't see it as anything other than a top-down, epilepsy-
| inducing brawler with some pseudo-rpg elements.
| sally_glance wrote:
| ARPG or more specifically the subgenre Hack and Slash I
| suppose?
|
| Both are RPG subgenres though I'd say.
|
| Edit: This was for D1-3, sibling makes a good point that the
| current incarnation might be classified as a gacha or
| something :-D
| smcl wrote:
| Yeah I was only thinking of the original trilogy too.
| easeout wrote:
| I've always regarded it as a real-time roguelike. In fact it's
| probably the first game I played and thought, "this is like
| Rogue."
| johnny_canuck wrote:
| Wow, I grew up during the mid-90s when the internet was just
| starting to consume the world. Diablo (Battle.net) and QuakeWorld
| were my jams at the time. After that came the MMORPGs of the late
| 90s, Ultima Online and Asheron's Call. Good times.
|
| I was recently reading Masters of Doom and this fits right in
| with the vibes of that book. Incredible seeing the lasting impact
| of the games of that time.
| djitz wrote:
| I revisit Masters of Doom every year or two. I adore that book.
| The audiobook is fantastic, as well.
| Soulsbane wrote:
| Asheron's Call was my first MMO. Played it for like 6 years
| before moving to WoW where all my friend's were. One thing I
| loved about AC is you could run from one side of the world to
| another without zoning(for the most part). This was pretty
| unique back then. Another was the skill based system. No
| classes. It still holds a special place in my heart.
|
| Still need to get around to trying the server emulator but I'm
| on Linux.
| phaedrus wrote:
| I've been teaching myself POV-ray with an eye towards using it to
| render 2D sprites for indie games. Thinking about how 3D rendered
| scenes could be tile-ized lead me to an epiphany last night about
| a difference between Diablo 1 and later Diablo's that I could
| never put my finger on before what I was seeing.
|
| When a game uses the same bitmaps for terrain tiles at the edges
| of the screen as at the center, it necessarily emulates an
| orthographic camera. Put another way, if you render a scene with
| the default non-orthographic 3D camera, terrain elements at
| different positions on screen will be seen at slightly different
| angles. The effect is minimized if you use a far-off camera with
| a narrow field of view, but it never goes away completely.
|
| (The same effect applies to sprites, but it would be less
| noticeable than with architectural elements.)
|
| Diablo 1 used true 2D graphics whose tile bitmaps don't change no
| matter where they fall in the field of view - therefore,
| orthographic. Diablo 2 was a 2D/3D hybrid that painted the
| visible landscape onto a single giant triangle mesh (used in a
| non-standard way). And Diablo 3 and later of course were simply
| 3D graphics.
|
| I always felt there were things about the mood and atmosphere of
| Diablo 1 that were lost when another team made Diablo 2, and then
| further left behind with Diablo 3. I now realize it's also
| analogous to the difference between the 2D Zeldas and the 3D
| Zeldas in an almost literal way.
|
| (The use of 3D tech in the original Diablo 2 engine was weird. I
| don't know if it's because the programmers misunderstood how 3D
| meshes are "supposed to" be used, or if it was an optimal way to
| do it given the hardware and APIs of the time. Most 3D engines
| would use a dedicated, usually unchanging, mesh object for each
| chunk of terrain and load/unload these chunks as needed thus
| loading/unloading meshes. The developers of Diablo 2 seemed to
| consider generation of their terrain mesh expensive (it shouldn't
| be) and changing their terrain mesh less expensive (not true for
| VBOs). What the did was generate only one mesh, one time for the
| entire visible playfield, and just vary the vertex height and UV
| map of the entire thing as you walk around the level. The
| algorithm is rather like draping a sheet over the ground and
| dragging the sheet over rocks and bumps as you walk around.
|
| This had the side-effect that the graphics would go crazy in
| Diablo 2 if you used a mod to set the screen resolution higher
| than ~ 1440x900. The problem was that they used 16-bit indices
| for the triangle list, and using one giant mesh of tiny triangles
| overflows the available number of unique indices representable
| with a 16-bit int. (Investigating this problem is what led me to
| figure out everything in the previous paragraph. I worked all of
| it out from first-principles once I realized the cause of the
| screen resolution problem.)
| Arrath wrote:
| Huh. That is a very interesting tidbit, thanks for sharing!
|
| So in essence the character just stood in the middle of a
| singular big mesh and the world was rendered to that viewport
| as you moved it around?
| beprogrammed wrote:
| Omg It's incredible
| unixhero wrote:
| What happened to the source code ? Or was it Diablo 3? I can't
| remember. I remember they released the symbol files by mistake or
| something. I was under the Impression that we would be playing
| Diablo on every toaster in town by now.
| trissylegs wrote:
| It links to https://github.com/diasurgical/devilution. WHich
| explains it: Climax Studios was contracted to make a
| Playstation port. And it ended up being shipped with the debug
| symbols still in the game executable. The pc version also has a
| lot of debug information still in the game files. So reversing
| engineering the source was made a lot easier.
| irusensei wrote:
| It speaks volumes that a shareware copy of a multi decade old
| game running on a browser entertained me more than all the crap
| games optimized for engagement that are installed on my ipad.
|
| Now I got the quest for the water supply poisoning but I cant
| find the entrance. Is that area even available on shareware
| version?
| barrysteve wrote:
| Maybe games are generational like some long running film
| franchises.
| [deleted]
| ralfd wrote:
| > The tainted water source is located in a sublevel which
| originates from the second floor of the dungeon. The entrance
| appears as an opening in the wall, and there are several
| candles nearby. Inside, there is more of the yellow-colored
| water. Once all enemies within the sublevel are defeated, the
| water changes back to normal, indicating the completion of this
| quest.
| damethos wrote:
| Oh man, this definitely took me down memory lane! Awesome work!
| So many good games back then
| slfnflctd wrote:
| Still some of the best (pseudo-) random dungeon generation I've
| ever played. That functionality alone probably accounts for over
| 90% of the time I spent replaying it.
|
| It's strange to me that so few games in the genre seem to do this
| as well, over 25 years later. Hades is supposed to be good, but
| for some reason it doesn't look like something I'd enjoy. Maybe
| I'll pick it up on sale at some point and find out.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| Hades is excellent but the procedural generation is not one of
| its main selling points, IMO. For me it's the story (elevated
| mainly by incredible characters) and the combat. The procedural
| generation is simply a means to funnel you to combat scenarios
| in randomized orders, but it's less like diablo where entire
| levels are created but just a series of interconnected
| handcrafted rooms that are randomly connected. There is no real
| exploration, each room basically funnels you to the next by
| giving you a choice of upgrade and a different door for each.
| The main gameplay loop is basically - enter room, kill
| everything, get upgrade, go to next room, restart when you die.
| So if you're looking for a diablo-clone, hades is not it - I
| would recommend Grim Dawn (but this doesn't have procedural
| generation lol). Hades is still excellent but it's Roguelite
| through and through, and one of the best ones at that.
| solardev wrote:
| Have you tried Diablo 3 yet? After the real money auction house
| fiasco, Blizzard did a 360 and completely turned the game
| around and continued to grow it over the years. It is an
| _excellent_ game now.
|
| Path of Exile is another really good one, more like D2, whereas
| D3 was more streamlined (plays very well, but less
| customization).
|
| Both do random dungeon generation.
|
| In a different genre, but Deep Rock Galactic has super cool
| underground cave systems procedurally generated... it's just an
| excellent game throughout:
| https://www.ghostship.dk/blog/procedural-level-generation
| diogenescynic wrote:
| Diablo II is still more fun to play than Diablo III (in my
| opinion). The community behind Diablo II is just 100x more
| passionate and loyal. The rune word system in Diablo II is
| still being expanded which makes the game re-playable every
| season.
| metadat wrote:
| Agreed, D2 is/was the pinnacle of and set the benchmark for
| two-dimension dungeon-crawler RPGs. It's still an enjoyable
| game even 20+ years later. It's probably a good thing
| there's no Web/Android/iOS version because I'd be hooked,
| and don't have time for that anymore!
|
| I grew up playing an inordinate amount of Warcraft I, II,
| III, and StarCraft in the 90s with my siblings. The quirky
| character voices and scripts were downright amazing and
| AFAIK remain unparalleled to this day.
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=scweL0LVrcM
| solardev wrote:
| Check out this song... https://youtu.be/nqdWDpyPt8I
| Schinken_ wrote:
| Pointing out the obvious that doing a 360 would change
| absolutely nothing since you'd end up facing the same
| direction you started with.
|
| Did you mean: 180?
| omginternets wrote:
| ...turn 360 degrees and walk away.
| TuringTest wrote:
| Wrong. You would get all the dizziness that wouldn't be
| there otherwise.
| atoav wrote:
| What made me dislike Diablo 3, is that for me it fails to
| deliver the atmosphere that really made Diablo 1 and 2 a game
| worth experiencing.
|
| Diablo 3 is too colorful and looks like it has been heavily
| influenced by games like World of Warcraft (in a bad way).
| TheCraiggers wrote:
| Part of that missing atmosphere was that in D1 (and to a
| lesser extent D2), you were a weak human and death was
| around every corner. You might walk into a room and near-
| instantly die. You spent a lot of time running for your
| life.
|
| Contrast that to D3, where I literally beat the game the
| first time _without using a single health potion_. You were
| a super-hero who could punch a skeleton and send the pieces
| flying at level 1. And while I can certainly see the allure
| of such experiences (hell, I enjoy them too in other
| games), it was _not_ what I wanted from a Diablo
| experience.
| solardev wrote:
| Definitely. And it's not just the atmosphere, the gameplay
| is borrowed from WoW too (in a good way, IMO, but YMMV).
|
| Path of Exile might be more up your alley. It's more
| D2-like both in atmosphere and depth -- it's more about
| traversing giant skill trees to slowly customize your
| character, than D3's "choose a few unique skills and learn
| to use them together well" model.
|
| Funny, my one main gripe about PoE (and also D2) are the
| superdark graphics. I miss the WoW art style, personally...
| guess it's not for everyone :)
| erinnh wrote:
| I dont know. Neither Diablo 3 nor PoE are really good
| comparisons for me to Diablo 2 as it stands today.
|
| At least in the most important aspect for me.
| Itemization.
|
| Diablo 3 is a game that I play every few seasons for a
| week after ladder reset and then stop because I have a
| BiS item set (if you ignore Ancient/Primal Items, which
| just arent fun for me, as its just "same item, just
| minimally better").
|
| PoE on the other hand just goes into the completely
| opposite direction and you need to basically be a full-
| time twitch streamer to do everything in game (or be one
| of the 0.01% of the playerbase that has the game fully
| figured out including crafting/trading)
|
| Not to mention that in PoE I can never actually relax
| when I play endgame. I love Diablo 2 for being able to
| farm some items after work and not have to on edge
| everywhere.
|
| I tried playing PoE on my Steam Deck last league and I
| just stopped after a while because I would die all the
| time because I didnt see some random mob that would one-
| shot me on the small screen.
| ghastmaster wrote:
| The dungeon and item generation randomization is great. The
| real time isometric view, gameplay, and atmosphere, while
| groundbreaking, would not have been enough to get me to replay
| more than a handful of times. Without the randomization, the
| game would have had to have many more expansions.
|
| I have played Diablo for far too many hours to count. On the
| other hand, Baldur's Gate is a game I replay about once every 5
| years due to the atmosphere being so good.
|
| One thing I loved about this game was the vast amount of fan
| pages dedicated to it in the early years when I was learning
| how to play. I have spent some time compiling links to those
| sites, that are still hosted or archived, at my website
| https://mgpat-gm.github.io/links.html. If you want a trip down
| memory lane, click away.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Here's an old fan site for other games of the era, though in
| Spanish: http://islanegra.clandlan.net/ (The look is what's
| fun)
|
| I loved growing up with the internet where sites like that
| were dime a dozen.
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| Hope you came across Dead Cells.
|
| Incredible game with an amazing value for almost infinite-
| replayability
| peanut_worm wrote:
| Controls surprisingly well on a phone
| nsoonhui wrote:
| You can play the free game here:
| https://playclassic.games/games/role-playing-windows-games-o...
| lawgimenez wrote:
| Diablo 1 and 2 is me and my brother's favorite past time when we
| were kids.
| whartung wrote:
| My singular memory of D1 was that you had to
| clickclickclickclickclick.
|
| It got to the point that I hurt my hand, it never really
| recovered from it.
|
| I never got very far in D1, but played a lot of D2 and boatloads
| of D3.
|
| I go back to D3 once or twice a year when a new season hits.
| badpun wrote:
| Damn, those load times.
| hoten wrote:
| I think it's mostly just download time. Didn't take long for
| me.
|
| Oh, do you mean between game areas? I didn't actually play it
| yet!
| badpun wrote:
| Yes, the load times between levels are super fast. I remember
| waiting for perhaps 30 seconds when playing the game on my PC
| in 1997.
|
| Also, I would've sworn that the shareware version included
| the Butcher on level 2. It doesn't...
| vanderZwan wrote:
| I had a shareware version that did, and I know this for a
| fact because I never played the full version and still
| remember facing him.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| The Butcher isn't a guaranteed quest on every playthrough,
| maybe that's also true of the Shareware version?
| tjpnz wrote:
| I have such fond memories of Blizzard from back then. Such a
| shame at what they've become.
| m12k wrote:
| Does it ever happen that a company manages to grow that big and
| not become something like that?
| ralusek wrote:
| I think that the only way for large companies to stay cool is
| to remain private.
| vintermann wrote:
| In the games business, Valve is surprisingly OK. Also
| they're private and not interested in becoming part of a
| roll-up. I don't think those things are unrelated.
| Thaxll wrote:
| Valve dooes not make games anymore though. One game ( VR
| ) in the last 10 years?
| vintermann wrote:
| They're still very much in the games business, though.
| And it's better to have published few games than to milk
| their "franchises" dry in the usual way.
| Thaxll wrote:
| "better"? The only reason they don't make game anymore is
| because Steam is a printing money machine.
| gabereiser wrote:
| They also got that steam train they've been riding which
| makes it pretty easy to say they're not interested in
| being part of a roll-up.
| sdwr wrote:
| Good point, uh, GabeR
| [deleted]
| lcw wrote:
| What have they become? I think most of the issues that have
| haunted them lately were related to people that worked on the
| games early on in their history and the culture that carried. I
| assume bad people can't hide there anymore with as much
| scrutiny that company has received. Or maybe your talking about
| the quality of games? I don't think Diablo Immortal is any
| indication of Diablo IV seeing as Diablo III is still releasing
| content without crazy monetization.
|
| I look forward to Diablo IV personally. However I do feel that
| sense of nostalgia for the early Blizzard games. It's fun to
| see a post like this. Not sure the company is done with good
| content though. I still play their games a lot... I'm biased.
| atoav wrote:
| IMO the sense of wonder and the defined dark aesthetics of
| both the worlds created for Diablo 1 and 2 are something
| Blizzard will have to proove it can still pull off.
| philistine wrote:
| Diablo 1 and 2 were made by Blizzard North, a different
| group of developers than Blizzard. There's a reason Diablo
| 3 feels so different.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| There is that... and then there is explicitly mocking the
| fans who wanted the dark/gritty asthethic.
| Fnoord wrote:
| Do you have a smartphone though?
| Fnoord wrote:
| D3 was initially also developed by Blizzard North. But
| then it got overhauled, multiple time. I'd say Diablo 3
| became a good game... but it started out terrible. The
| RMAH has taught me a great thing though (something I
| should've learned by playing MtG back in the days).
| philistine wrote:
| I mentionned that Diablo 3 _feels_ different. Its art
| style and gameplay loop are both going in a different
| direction. It 's quality has nothing to do with it.
| Timshel wrote:
| Monetization details for D4 were released it's not pay to win
| but it's cranked to the max : game purchase + dlc + cosmetic
| skin + paid currency + battle pass + paid battle pass upgrade
| ...
|
| I was vaguely interested in it but meh, guess if I need to
| scratch that itch I'll test POE2 or relaunch d2r.
| Thaxll wrote:
| Cranked to max? The only mtx are cosmetics.
| throwaway888abc wrote:
| Legendary
| solardev wrote:
| That's really cool.
| 00s_enthusiast wrote:
| Counterstrike 1.6 in the browser for those who like quick trips
| down memory lane: https://play-cs.com
| BossingAround wrote:
| I am instantly taken back to a time where we literally planned
| to lug big tower computers to my friends house just to be able
| to play CS 1.6 together. Thank you for sharing!
| toxik wrote:
| Ah yes lugging around CRT monitors, what a time that was.
| bombcar wrote:
| Had a Trinitron, that thing really put the lug in lugging.
| kqr wrote:
| You planned to but never did?
| lax0 wrote:
| Planned to until Mom or Dad said what on earth are you
| doing with our computer.
| ant6n wrote:
| That's why u do these things when parents are out for the
| weekend.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I miss LAN parties with my friends so much. It felt like we
| had endless free time.
|
| Thanks for making me remember.
| howon92 wrote:
| It's even playable on mobile.
| htk wrote:
| To well actually. I just wanted try see how it worked and ended
| up spending an hour at it.
| llaolleh wrote:
| Prime example that mechanics, not graphics make the game.
| TuringTest wrote:
| What's wrong with the graphics?
| htk wrote:
| Nothing, looks pretty good, specially the atmosphere.
| kurupt213 wrote:
| This is awesome but needs the expansion
| metadat wrote:
| Anyone have the MPQ handy?
|
| Or DII, I'm craving it.
| grimgrin wrote:
| Are you asking for the Shareware version? Otherwise prob the
| wrong place to ask ;)
|
| I'll say this: archive.org is quite the trove for things of
| this nature
| metadat wrote:
| I know I have it backed up somewhere but don't have the easy-
| search filesystem setup yet for tens of PB. No worries.
| grimgrin wrote:
| (It's on archive.org, they're really good at not caring.
| Except that isn't working out very well for them maybe)
| avyeed_desa wrote:
| https://www.gog.com/game/diablo
| truemotive wrote:
| it's out there :)
| siva7 wrote:
| It takes you literally a single google search after the
| filename.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| If they would add multiplayer support I'd be super happy.
| misterflibble wrote:
| I would love that! Then I'd Bookmark it for instant dungeon
| crawls during lunch breaks!
| [deleted]
| kubatyszko wrote:
| It's so good, even the old trick for copying items works !
| jambalaya wrote:
| Yep, this was the first thing I checked! Brings backs memories!
| Pennycade wrote:
| What's the trick?
| VPenkov wrote:
| Put an item (e.g. a potion) on your belt. Then drop another
| item (e.g. a stack of coins) on the ground, then walk away
| a bit. Click on the coins on the ground, then the instant
| before it gets picked up, click on the potion. If you do it
| correctly, dropping the potion on the ground will drop a
| duplicate stack of coins instead.
|
| Tip: an easier way to know if you've duplicated the coins
| is that when you pick up the potion, the bottom of your
| screen should say you've picked up coins.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32529645
|
| I posted this if anyone is interested. It's Ultima Online in a
| browser, allows you to connect to official server or private.
|
| All written in C#.
|
| These different games in browsers are incredible. Always blown
| away at the cool stuff people do.
| npigrounet wrote:
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(page generated 2022-08-20 23:02 UTC)