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Diablo: Original Game Development

jon d · talk · Watch on YouTube

Game designGame history & retro gamingIndie game development

What it is

David Brevik's GDC 2016 post-mortem of the original Diablo, covering how it evolved from a turn-based claymation DOS game into the genre-defining action RPG. It includes development anecdotes and lessons learned.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN considers it one of the best GDC post-mortems, with funny anecdotes (such as turning down Hotmail equity) and multiplayer insights.

  • 3 people recommended it
  • 3 different months
  • 0 strong recommendations
  • first 2021, last 2023

What HN commenters said

  1. “GDC post mortems are amazing, especially the ones on Diablo[0] and Fallout[1].”

    GDC Diablo post-mortem among the amazing GDC post-mortems.

    somedude895, 2022-03 · Recommendation · in “Wolfenstein 3D secrets revealed by John Romero in lengthy post-mortem chat”

  2. “An even more interesting and funny perspective is from another programmer beforehand”

    Funny story of turning down Hotmail equity during Diablo development.

    namelosw, 2022-09 · Recommendation · in “Ask HN: Which startups have the most interesting pivot stories?”

  3. “both talks are fascinating and surely worth a watch”

    Diablo multiplayer talk, a fascinating complement to the article.

    martinohansen, 2023-10 · Recommendation · in “MMO Architecture: clients, sockets, threads and connection-oriented servers”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: diablo, gdc, blizzard, postmortem, game design

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