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A comment on Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game. Parent comment

Re:Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game by stormbrew on Monday June 18, 2018 @12:35PM (#17339571)
There's a very real possibility it wasn't your connection that was the problem. Since Diablo 1 was a peer to peer game it was super easy to just flood another player to lag them out and steal their crap.

The game's public multiplayer was notoriously full of griefing like that. There were also ways to get firewalls to go on the spawn point and pvp was easy to force.

It was a mess. Going into a public game was basically just asking to get screwed over.

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Re:Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game by gameswithgo on Monday June 18, 2018 @01:17PM (#17339911)
What is fascinating is the guy who coded and designed the multiplayer is actually a genius, he was just inexperienced at the time. His next big project was a huge, complicated, MMO that you could start playing before it finished downloading, and everything worked from day 1, which is rather unique among MMOs!]

edit, sorry: Pat Wyatt of Guild Wars

good interview with him talking about screwing up Diablo and doing a good job on Guild Wars

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1faaOrtHJ-A

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Re:Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game by Reedx on Monday June 18, 2018 @02:39PM (#17340576)
Oh yeah, I remember being really impressed by the Guild Wars/ArenaNet tech at launch. It felt like a game changer.

Heck, they did a better job than most games do to this day. Often when a game has the ability to start before completing the download, it just means you get to look at the main menu.

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Re:Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game by stevenwoo on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @05:43PM (#17350510)
It also really helped a lot of folks in the game development community when Carmack published his thoughts on dealing with latency in QuakeWorld around that time, and the Valve guys working with the Quake3(?) engine published something a bit later that pretty good IIRC.
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Re:Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game by floor_ on Tuesday June 19, 2018 @02:24PM (#17349109)
I love the part where he talks about people thinking the installer was broken or didn't download fully because it was so small. They ended up padding it with some assets to make it feel more authentic.
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Re:Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game by IntelMiner on Monday June 18, 2018 @10:05PM (#17343252)
I emailed him a few times about the reverse-engineering effort for the old Battle.Net games (PVPGN)

He's a really nice, approachable guy as well. He was quite impressed at how well the program worked, even with how old the games were

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Re:Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game by amatecha on Monday June 18, 2018 @01:24PM (#17339966)
Which programmer/game was that? Mike O'Brien on Guild Wars? (Just going through credits on mobygames ;))
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Re:Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game by gameswithgo on Monday June 18, 2018 @01:46PM (#17340144)
Pat Wyatt - Guild Wars
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Re:Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game by amatecha on Monday June 18, 2018 @02:14PM (#17340359)
Ah! OK, I saw his name too and figured that was also potentially the person. Oh, he was a founder of ArenaNet?!! Very cool! I met a lot of their staff last year at PAX. Great group of ppl IMO and those I spoke to were proud to work there. I guess Pat would be one of the founders they spoke of! :)
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Re:Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game by fusiongyro on Monday June 18, 2018 @01:22PM (#17339959)
And who and what is that?
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Re:Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game by gameswithgo on Monday June 18, 2018 @01:46PM (#17340145)
Pat Wyatt - Guild Wars
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Re:Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game by Namrog84 on Monday June 18, 2018 @01:24PM (#17339969)
What mmo? Or what was his name?
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Re:Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game by gameswithgo on Monday June 18, 2018 @01:46PM (#17340148)
Pat Wyatt - Guild Wars
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Re:Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game by digi_owl on Monday June 18, 2018 @02:51PM (#17340682)
Weird, my impression was that the Guild Wars people were ex-Microsoft. Do wonder where i picked that up...
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Re:Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game by Exuma on Monday June 18, 2018 @01:30PM (#17340025)
Who was it?
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Re:Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game by gameswithgo on Monday June 18, 2018 @01:46PM (#17340149)
Pat Wyatt - Guild Wars
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Re:Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game by brobinson on Monday June 18, 2018 @01:58PM (#17340231)
You could make yourself invulnerable in multiplayer games using Great-BoBaFeTT's trainer.

http://www.geocities.ws/free_bobafett/main.htm

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Re:Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game by Exuma on Monday June 18, 2018 @02:01PM (#17340263)
Obligatory genius video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1faaOrtHJ-A
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Re:Diablo devolved – magic behind the 1996 computer game by softawre on Monday June 18, 2018 @03:04PM (#17340802)
Great talk!
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