We take a look at how the Diablo series has evolved from the roots of a turn based text game into a fully fledged real time action RPG with 3D graphics, physics and music/sounds to match.

Pre Diablo

First lets go back, way back. Some of you may be surprised to know that the roots of the game mechanics that are now borrowed by the popular RPG/dungeon crawler are as ancient as the origins of computer gaming itself.

In the early 80’s anyone cool had access to a Unix system and was playing Rogue. Rogue is generally credited with being the first “graphical” adventure game and there is quite a few commonality’s between it and the Diablo games.

Most notability, Rogues random level generation.

In Rogue, players venture through a series of randomly generated levels in a dungeon, picking up treasure (armor, weapons, spells, gold and potions) and gaining in character levels until they were powerful enough to move on and fight bigger and stronger enemy’s.

Similar to Rogue in the original Diablo the outdoors is limited to a small town where players bought equipment and sold their treasure.

Diablo owes its great replayability to Rogue.

Also it can be assumed that much of the online play we see in Diablo today was inspired by MUD’s (Multi User Dungeon), MUD’s are similar to Rogue in allot of aspects but game play was specifically around teaming up with other characters over the internet for an adventure.

The technology behind Rogue was at the most primitive form, that’s not to say its not a great game. Its as excellent as the Diablo series reincarnation.

Anyone who with a system that could compile C and display ASCII characters on a screen could play Rogue. If you were lucky enough to have a terminal and monitor that supported colours it even had those!

Rogue Unix

Original Diablo

16 something years latter Blizzard practically release their version of Rogue the main differences being far more realistic graphics, there’s now sound effects and the fact the game is in real time, rather than turn-based.

Players were no longer wearing out the h, left; j, down; k, up; and l, right keys on their keyboards and were now instead wearing out their mouse buttons *grins*.

Graphics in Diablo are from an isometric perspective view and although there is only one relatively low resolution of 640×480 the graphics are praised for impressive character and sprite animation, lighting and magic effects.

The sounds and visuals in Diablo gave it a creepy gothic atmosphere, something Rogues technology could never do.

Sound effects were well praised and key to telling the demonic tail along with opening, ending and various boss CGI cinematics.

Technology behind Diablo was relatively simple for the time. It used a 2D isometric tile engine, with simple sprite animations in 256 colours. Probably the most innovative aspect to Diablo is its network play and it was one of the first graphical RPG’s to have internet/network play.

Diablo ran on a pc with Windows 95 or better, 60MHz, 8 MB RAM, SVGA, 2X CD it was also available on Playstation and Mac.

Diablo Boss battle

Diablo inventory

Diablo 2

At the start of the millennium (year 2000) Diablo 2 continues the battle against evil along with what is now the core gameplay aspects including the isometric 2d tiles and random level generation.

Even though Diablo 2 increased the resolution to 800×600 and had a very noticeable graphical improvement over the original, Diablo 2 was still criticised for having dated graphics in a time when allot of RPG’s were going 3D.

Diablo 2 did feature some 3D graphics though, regrettably Diablo 2’s 3D capabilities are limited to a slight increase in spell effects and depth perspective.

However to most players the increase in environment detail and visually pleasing magic effects was enough overlook its short comings.

Apart from the obvious improvements in graphics, cinematics, sound and network play Diablo 2 added a full spooky musical score, running, computer-controlled mercenaries to help the player on quests, and a greater variety of attacks and magic.

Diablo ran on a pc with Windows 95 or better, 233 MHz Pentium or better, 32 MB RAM, 650 MB drive space, 4X CD-ROM drive, DirectX compatible video card

Again Diablo 2 returned to Mac, but never Playstation this time around.

Diablo 2 city gate

Diablo 2 pentagram

Diablo 3

Diablo 3 is powered by a new graphics engine that can display characters and hordes of monsters in lush, fully 3D environments. Powerful special-effects systems and Havok-powered physics allow for realistic object dynamics and cloth simulation, and enable players to lay waste to the minions of the burning hells in spectacular ways.

Due to the capabilities of the new engine Diablo 3 adds destructible environments that can also hurt enemies as well as adding vertical terrain allowing the player to make use of bridges, ladders etc.

Like the Diablo 2 engine Diablo 3 mixes randomized and static maps as well as outdoor and dudgeon environments.

Again Diablo 3 is in a isometric view,  although the 3d engine adds the cool feature of being able to zoom in on your environment as well as allowing you to check out the cool gear on your character.

In Diablo 3 Blizzard challenged themselves to add color to the art style while maintaining the dark, gothic feel of the previous titles.  Along with this as well as the World of Warcraft hotbar style hotbar and user interface some fans have criticized Diablo 3 of being more ‘wow-ish’  rather than having a evil demonic atmosphere.

The capability of having computer controlled mercenaries continues on from Diablo 2.

As a side feature Blizzard is looking at integrating web 2.0 style community features, similar to the WoW Armory website that will allows players to show off their characters outside of the game.

Diablo 3’s story is told through in game speech and Hollywood quality CGI cinematics.

As far as technology goes, Diablo 3 will run on Windows Xp, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Mac OS. Diablo 3 on console has been mentioned as a possibility by developers but I think its unlikely.

Diablo 3 uses Directx 9 (OpenGL for Mac) and Havok physics technologies.

Diablo 3 barbarian attack

Diablo 3 fog effect

High Definition video comparison of the Diablo series.

As you can see in the below video there is quite a significant jump in detail and effects from each edition is the series. predominantly the jump from Diablo 2 to Diablo 3.

I suppose this is to be expected considering its been around a decade since Diablo 2 and 3D graphics and effects have exponentially improved since then.

To say the least, Diablo 3 looks amazing in contrast to where it all began…

slith Diablo-series Diablo-series, Game-engine