Diablo: The Cornerstone
Things might have been different with this game in many a way. Mods prove it
Reversed pentagrams, 'O' letter in the form of Celtic crosses, bow-wielding skeletons hopping out of the caskets and barrels, incredible variability of daemons of all forms and sizes, grim, hushed down palettes, randomly generated dungeons and unforgettable neofolk music full of perpetual autumnal sadness...
Diablo is surely one of the cornerstones of PC gaming; things might have been totally different without it.
And indeed they might have. The game we know is drastically different from the original concept, besides publishers pitched with it responded with religious mantra 'RPG is dead'.
It was then-new company Blizzard, somewhat fresh from its tremendous success with a similarly high fantasy-themed games - Warcraft I & II, that who decided that the project worth time and effort. It is Blizzard that requested that the game was real-time, and not turn-based as the original developer David Brevik planned initially, and that it had multiplayer, which wasn't planned at all. Pressing these changes proved the right thing. For Brevik, it took one weekend extra time to develop the real-time basics, although he and his colleagues at Condor Games (later Blizzard North) expected this would take much more.
Lots of the other things could have been different as well: developers planned to go for Claymation, but switched to isometric 3D - the game uses sprites derived from 3D models: if one zooms in, the vestigial blueish pixels remaining from the rendering background become clearly visible.
The game was out in the final days of December 1996, and mostly became available early in 1997, hence the disputed release date.
The universal acclaim followed, which ensured there would be a sequel. The sequel that had a much greater scope, diversity of the locations and environments - mostly outdoor unlike the first Diablo, etc. And just like Warcraft II, the second installment of Diablo has become Blizzard's dear, while all support for the original game ceased in 2001.
Nevertheless, some particularly memorable vestiges from Diablo popped up there and there in Blizzard's later games. Like, 'Ah, fresh meat' line - coming from behind the door you really shouldn't open unless you're level 5 or greater - reemerged in Warcraft III; World of Warcraft and Heroes of the Storm as thick with references to Diablo and Diablo II (and Diablo III too).
However, whereas Diablo II had been available at Blizzard's Battle.net service perhaps ever since its release, Diablo I was not.
Somewhere around 2014 or 2015 I tried to fire up Diablo on my laptop (that carried either Windows 8 or Windows 10, accordingly). The game failed to work, no matter what I tried to do, and what kind of compatibility settings were set.
Which left me cursing in annoyance.
Only in 2019 Blizzard greenlit the re-release of the game at GOG.com, in the original form and with some minor enhancements; this time it worked alright on the modern platforms.
This must have been possible with the game's source code manipulations. I heard rumours - only rumours - that Blizzard had hard time recovering the original code, but I have found no confirmation so far. They did recover Diablo II sources when trying to remaster it, but had to redo all the art; the lost StarCraft source code had been recovere thanks to a fan who bought 'some random Blizzard stuff' on Ebay and discovered a golden CD, but I've found no public references on any such 'ordeals' in regard to the first Diablo.
Thing is, by 2019 there've been some outstanding projects aimed at 'renovating' Diablo already.
And valiant those endeavours are, giving some unexpected results.
First is the Polish Diablo 1 HD Mod aka Belzebub.
Belzebub, it is a small (32 Mbytes), stable software that enables HD resolutions and zooming, support for panoramic screens, and, of course, smooth performance on the modern systems.
But there is much more that this software brings along.
At the final stages of development Diablo was rushed to meet deadlines. And a lot - a lot - of content had been axed: probably everything considered underdeveloped or not robust enough.
The mod brings them back, as well as, apparently adds a lot more: quests, spells, skills, crafting, new special an randomly generated bosses, even new locations - and new character classes, namely Necromancer, Barbarian and Assassin. If these classes were envisioned by Blizzard, but cut out early, I'm not sure. Thing is, if the default classes have their unique portraits, the added one use stylized pictures of Hollywood actors.
And Necromancer, for instance, is merely a variation of Wizard with some additions like the ability to raise skeletons and zombies in the increasing number to do fighting for you.
Furthermore, there is at least one surface quest with a boss that only appeared officially in Diablo II; characters in Tristram move around, seemingly talking to each other; there are a couple of unfamiliar ones (I wasn't able to find any associated content with that Tremain the Priest, though).
And overall the game has become far more challenging to play. However experienced player you are, don't expect a joy-ride. For example, Arkane's Valor armour isn't going to be just lying on the ground, and before you meet Diablo himself, his four close friends and their massive entourage are going to test your mettle, resolve - and level.
It's gonna be a thrashing of your life.
The mod, however, requires the original game's resources to run. So make sure you have it installed, anyway.
What Belzebub is missing completely is multiplayer, though. Now the mod's developer Noktis is focused on Tchernobog project, which is a multiplayer-oriented variant. Last updated in January 2024, it still has version index v0.2.2c, which corresponds to an early beta at best.
But it's definitely playable.
Both Tchernobog and Belzebub require the official Diablo CD or installed GOG version.
The second project that's totally necessary to mention is Devilution.
It is a full reconstruction of the original source code of the original Diablo.
Diablo's development team moved on to Diablo II while passing the source code down to Synergistic Software for Hellfire. Less known however is that it was also given to Climax Studios to create a PlayStation port. Now Sony has long been known for letting things slide; especially in Japan. Anything from leaking prototypes to entire game source codes and Diablo was no exception. Symbolic information was accidentally left on the Japanese port. Normally used for debugging, a symbol file contains a map of everything generated during compile time. This includes file names, functions, structures, variables, and more! To top it all off a special build is hidden on the PC release in
DIABDAT.MPQ -> D1221A.MPQ -> DIABLO.EXE
! This build contains debug tools and assert strings further giving away code information.After months of piecing these mistakes together, Devilution was born.
— From GitHub description
Undertaken initially by the autodidact developer Andi 'GalaxyHaxz' Seilee, now a DevOps enginer at Apprenti, it is being maintained now by other people and have dozens contributors. It is also divided in two distinct versions - Devilution and DevilutionX. The first one retains everything in the original form. The second aims at modernizing the game for the current platforms.
For years mod-makers had to rely on tedious code editing and memory injection. A few even went even further and reversed a good chunk of the game. The problem is that they never released their sources. Usually being a one-man job, they move on with their lives inevitably due to the amount of time/work required or lack of interest. This leaves people with a half-finished mod; one which had countless hours put into it, but left full of bugs and unfinished potential. So we're back to square one. Devilution aims to fix this, by making the source code of Diablo freely available to all.
— Andi Seilee wrote.
I'm yet to see any Devilution/DevilutionX-based games going beyond the ports of the original game (there are quite a few so far, including this one for Android devices). But anyway, it's a totally valiant endeavour.
To play on PC you’ll need a legal copy of Diablo.
Finally, there is The Hell 2 mod, a long-running project conceived back in 2006 and finalized - sort of - two years ago. Sort of, because the modders promised to move on The Hell 3.
The mod is based on Hellfire expansion, and it doesn't end with slaying Diablo on level 16. There are 4 basic dungeon levels and 21 new quest levels in singleplayer mode.
The supported resolution is up to 4K with widescreen; bug fixes. Furthermore, 'A lot of new content and modernized gameplay features: items (base, class-specific, rare, enchanted, socketed, unique and sets), monsters (base, champions, special, unique, quest-specific), spells, shrines, colors for monsters and levels, expanded monster AI', etc.
Some other cut quest content has been restored as well.
So, as one can see, as much as the old game remains infinitely replayable, it's got even more under the hood, so thank you, modders and coders, for excavating those treasures!
A bit of a gallery from HD Mod below: