Details of the kitchen development Diablo II (from 2000)

Now, before the release of the third part of Diablo, interesting materials began to surface in the network.

One of these materials is the post-mortem Diablo 2 from 2000. Those interested can study it.

Here I want to focus on what seemed interesting to me personally.
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• The game was written in C (and some C ++) using Visual Studio.
• For version control, SourceSafe was used.
• For 3D graphics, 3D Studio was used, and for 2D (interface) - Photoshop.
• The development of Diablo 2 involved 40 people and it took 3 years.
• D2 did not have a specific design document. Almost everything was thought out on the go.
• They tried to make the game as simple as possible - so that even mom could figure it out (yes, in the distant 2000s the developers didn’t even dream about how much simpler the games would be in 10 years and that in order to make the game really simple, in 12 years they would have to refuse, for example, from the manual pumping system).
• All team members could speak on any occasion and discuss the game. For example, the idea of ​​socket objects was proposed by a programmer. And the musician made the team remake the animation of the jabedemon.
• According to the authors, it is Diablo 2 - the first RPG game in which the skill tree was used (before this, a similar approach could be found only in strategies).
• Not all the subtleties of gamebalance could be reduced to paper. So sometimes you had to play for 30 hours in order to understand which items and abilities would really be in demand. And when the decision was made to change the curve of accumulation of experience or the chances of a drop, everything had to be tested on a new one.
• At the time of the release of Diablo 2, many began to negatively respond to its graphics (as outdated and overly pixelated). It was a surprise for the team, although it’s understandable - after all, they started making art for the game 3 years before the release, and some technological decisions made for the reasons of the speed then spoiled the final picture. The author writes in the article that this is possibly their last 2D game.
• To create the game almost no samopisnyh tools. First, the developers began to write them, but then decided not to waste time on them. Especially when it seemed to them that the game was about to be ready. If they knew at that time that the game was being made for at least another year, they would have made another decision. The lack of tools led to the fact that artists had to go back to the work of six months ago and change animations or draw textures.

In general, everybody really liked working on the second part of the Diablo and everyone was delighted.



Did they know then that even in 12 years people would play their game? ..