David Brevik called it... D2 Remastered is NEVER happening

[Beet]

"People who work for Blizzard."

Hey, there's a janitor who worked for Blizzard, I bet he's got a credible opinion!

Wow nice strawman. Good thing we’re not talking about a janitor. We’re talking about the lead designer of the game. And seeing as those blizzard employees all stay in touch, id venture a guess he knows a bit more than you do. But you go head dude and say he’s just wrong despite offering no evidence of the contrary. I look forward to your next strawman argument.

[alturic]

Reverse engineering my dear.

Oh, so Blizzard not only had a change of tune to making classic servers (sorry if you didn't get that, I did mean classic WoW and how it was said they don't even have the code anymore, which was clearly a crock of shit), but also decided to pour tons of time into reverse engineering what exactly? Surely you aren't thinking they are basing these servers of emulators, which *do* come about by reverse engineering the server-client communication.

- - - Updated - - -

It wasn't lost. They auctioned it off.

So, they auctioned it off (however, a Blizzard higher-up, forget who it was said vanilla wasn't possible because they didn't have the source), and then..... bought it back? Yea, no.

[Vakir]

How is the absence of a project one year at one BlizzCon evidence of "never?" Never is a very long time, you realize.

D:I is a travesty but people are getting hysterical on a new level lately. I can't make a claim that this is the case or broad-brush an entire fandom, but Diablo fans certainly FEEL the most obnoxious.

[Nihilist74]

I really don't care if they remastered it. The latest version of it looks and plays fine. The only thing I wish they changed was that the characters look like they have a stick up there but when they are walking around.

[Mojo03]

It'll probably happen after warcraft 3.

It's not really that big/complex of a game. They could re-make it pretty easily if need be.

It's basically just a ton of art assets that would need to be re-done.

[Coldkil]

There are multiple mods to increase the resolution of D2. Every comment talking about it (2/3 of the topic) as an impossible obstacle is fake news

It's not a problem of scaling up resolution - if you play at more than 800x600 you'll see that there are lots of stuff in the bigger area that's present but doesn't react to the player since the actual aggro/AI radius is tailored to that resolution. Basically you're going to see much more than expected.

Isn't exactly the best experience honestly, though it's not something gamebreaking imho.

[Underverse]

That's fine, I'd rather have them make an awesome new game than throw a pittance at their original fanbase.

[Vilendor]

It's not a problem of scaling up resolution - if you play at more than 800x600 you'll see that there are lots of stuff in the bigger area that's present but doesn't react to the player since the actual aggro/AI radius is tailored to that resolution. Basically you're going to see much more than expected.

Isn't exactly the best experience honestly, though it's not something gamebreaking imho.

That was my point. But majority of the topic is about people swearing to god that increasing resolution is absolutely impossible and completely breaks the game...

On the contrary. If it's true that multiple functions of the game are tied to pixels it just makes things easier. Instead of recoding the whole game around floating variants all they have to do is increase the resolution, pick a new pixel and replace the old one in the code lines

[hulkgor]

WC3 was for sure going to happen. The engine is already 3D; all it took was re-mastering the models and animations. Don't need to change physics or anything else.

D2 however:

1. The source code has been lost. Meaning they can never go back to the source and re-update from scratch.
2. David mentioned that the way AI functions depends on pixel and screen size. It might simply not be possible to customize a game with native 800x600 resolution to new 1080p/1440p resolutions. I was hoping to see some programming magic from the devs at Diablo but TBH it might not be technically possible.
3. Would it be profitable? The new generation of kids playing Blizzard games have probably never even played Diablo 2. It's arguably my favorite game ever but I'm old fart approaching 33 years old.

Anyways, I don't think it's happening. Fuck, I'm so sad.

What a load of bullshit. Most of what you said is blatantly wrong.

Oh, why bother.

[lollermittens]

This is a direct quote from today's Kotaku article where the actual devs speak about the difficulty of finding/ re-creating actual WC3 source code. Read it and weep:

“We’ve done some things with Warcraft II and the original StarCraft in the past. There were moments when we couldn’t find the machine [with the information on it]. We’ve modernized now,” Sigaty said, describing the company’s current not-quite-ubiquitous (but getting there) automated system in which source code, builds, and assets are all saved and immediately preserved. “Blizzard is a lot better about this stuff now, but in the early days, nobody imagined we’d be talking about something 20 years later—or in this case, 16 years later.”

Clearly, source code created in the 90s is never kept in a bubble, pristine, to be pulled out of a hat to be reiterated upon whenever needed. Maybe listen to people who know what the fuck they're talking about once in a while, no?

PS - totally waiting for the "whatever, this doesn't mean anything" comments.


----------------------

Adding one more quote because it feels so good to be fucking proven right:

Make no mistake, though: the bulk of Reforged’s DNA is still Warcraft III. Sigaty described the classics team as “lucky” to have access to all of Warcraft III’s original code and assets, as Warcraft III marked the first time that Blizzard really made a concerted effort to preserve a game while creating it. That wasn’t always the case.

[BiggestNoob]

Wow nice strawman. Good thing we’re not talking about a janitor. We’re talking about the lead designer of the game. And seeing as those blizzard employees all stay in touch, id venture a guess he knows a bit more than you do. But you go head dude and say he’s just wrong despite offering no evidence of the contrary. I look forward to your next strawman argument.

You seem to miss the point because you don't know anything about software development or anything about computers in general. Lead designers know about as much about the operations of the infrastructure of a game but especially of where things like CI, staging environments, and storage live as the janitor does.

Whoosh on that one.

You use Windows all the time. You've installed updates probably hundreds of times. Do you know how to manually uninstall an update? Do you know where updates are stored on your computer? Do you know the process by which updates are run? Do you know how updates are structured? Do you know how updates are propagated? If you're in a corporate environment, do you know how to selectively distribute certain updates or prevent updates that cause conflicts with installed software? I mean you use Windows, you have run updates, you've installed programs, hell, you've probably unzipped things before and done things with the filesystem, so surely you *must* know these things. Right?

This is a direct quote from today's Kotaku article where the actual devs speak about the difficulty of finding/ re-creating actual WC3 source code. Read it and weep:



Clearly, source code created in the 90s is never kept in a bubble, pristine, to be pulled out of a hat to be reiterated upon whenever needed. Maybe listen to people who know what the fuck they're talking about once in a while, no?

PS - totally waiting for the "whatever, this doesn't mean anything" comments.


----------------------

Adding one more quote because it feels so good to be fucking proven right:

Chris Sigaty is a tester and producer. He wouldn't know where anything is. His testing machine with content on it would likely have been lost. He's not in IT, he's not in development, he's not an engineer, he's not authoritative at all.

The second quote is stupid because D2 received patches and was made earlier than WC3, and WoW was made AFTER WC3, so people saying "D2 source is lost, WoW classic source is lost" are quite literally going up against actual hard facts here, not the opinions of some low level testers turned producers who know nothing.

That was my point. But majority of the topic is about people swearing to god that increasing resolution is absolutely impossible and completely breaks the game...

On the contrary. If it's true that multiple functions of the game are tied to pixels it just makes things easier. Instead of recoding the whole game around floating variants all they have to do is increase the resolution, pick a new pixel and replace the old one in the code lines

It's not quite that simple. It's not just the number of pixels, it's the aspect ratio. If you need to support a wider screen, you'd see more in your FoV which would break things because you'd see an AI mob just hanging out on the side of the screen not moving towards you because you haven't crossed the trigger threshold. Now it wouldn't be hard to make a change so that it works with different aspect ratios, but it would mean changing the game in terms of what would aggro when, and you'd have an advantage in certain aspect ratios. Alternatively, the game would just have weird artifacts like that.

If they were to remaster the game, I'd rather see a best-effort reproduction of D2 using the D3 tech and with modern voice acting and remastered music/sounds. They're doing something similar with WoW classic (though updated visuals are optional) and I think it's going to be pretty good. D2 is old enough that I don't think Blizzard would serve the franchise well by keeping the graphics, much like WC3's refresh is going to be a visual update (and probably audio update). And if you want the authentic D2 experience, you can still play that game, same with WC3.

[lollermittens]

You seem to miss the point because you don't know anything about software development or anything about computers in general. Lead designers know about as much about the operations of the infrastructure of a game but especially of where things like CI, staging environments, and storage live as the janitor does.

Whoosh on that one.

You use Windows all the time. You've installed updates probably hundreds of times. Do you know how to manually uninstall an update? Do you know where updates are stored on your computer? Do you know the process by which updates are run? Do you know how updates are structured? Do you know how updates are propagated? If you're in a corporate environment, do you know how to selectively distribute certain updates or prevent updates that cause conflicts with installed software? I mean you use Windows, you have run updates, you've installed programs, hell, you've probably unzipped things before and done things with the filesystem, so surely you *must* know these things. Right?



Chris Sigaty is a tester and producer. He wouldn't know where anything is. His testing machine with content on it would likely have been lost. He's not in IT, he's not in development, he's not an engineer, he's not authoritative at all.

The second quote is stupid because D2 received patches and was made earlier than WC3, and WoW was made AFTER WC3, so people saying "D2 source is lost, WoW classic source is lost" are quite literally going up against actual hard facts here, not the opinions of some low level testers turned producers who know nothing.



It's not quite that simple. It's not just the number of pixels, it's the aspect ratio. If you need to support a wider screen, you'd see more in your FoV which would break things because you'd see an AI mob just hanging out on the side of the screen not moving towards you because you haven't crossed the trigger threshold. Now it wouldn't be hard to make a change so that it works with different aspect ratios, but it would mean changing the game in terms of what would aggro when, and you'd have an advantage in certain aspect ratios. Alternatively, the game would just have weird artifacts like that.

If they were to remaster the game, I'd rather see a best-effort reproduction of D2 using the D3 tech and with modern voice acting and remastered music/sounds. They're doing something similar with WoW classic (though updated visuals are optional) and I think it's going to be pretty good. D2 is old enough that I don't think Blizzard would serve the franchise well by keeping the graphics, much like WC3's refresh is going to be a visual update (and probably audio update). And if you want the authentic D2 experience, you can still play that game, same with WC3.

Honestly man, I think you don't understand how code is created, saved, and versioned for you to casually dismiss someone who works at Blizzard and just gave insight that as a company, they have historically struggled to version their games. This has been stated multiple times, both from previous folks who've worked there and people currently working there. It's incredibly arrogant that you keep insisting that source code "cannot be lost" when it's coming out of the lion's mouth that they have indeed lost the original framework utilized to build the game and are currently working on making it better.

From some reason, you seem to be unable to process that recording media like magnetic tape has a limited lifetime, which is a lot shorter than you might think. Hard drives fail. Floppy disks fail. OS standards change, and even if the media is still readable, it might not be compatible with a newer OS. CD-Rs fail.

Beyond that, most likely the old source code got thrown away when the computer that it was on was discarded. Any backup tapes are probably sitting in a closet somewhere, getting moldy and were probably discarded years ago, because nobody knew that there was any value in them.

Often, custom tools can’t be used on a modern OS and they can’t be rebuilt, because their source code was lost too. File formats were probably documented only in the source code, so that any support files are probably unreadable, without a lot of reverse engineering.

Companies move on, and what is “retro” now was just old trash a few years ago, so there was no incentive to save any of it. My experience is that the only software and files that survived from that era were things that a particular individual cared enough for to want to preserve. If that individual died, then the resources died with them. Really, unless someone cared enough to copy everything to new media every few years, it wouldn’t survive.

The one exception is open source software, which got on so many different archive sites, that some preservation was likely. Commercial software, was kept off of the archive sites, so would not be preserved by that route.

[Stricks]

D4 with heavy elements drawn from D2 > D2 remaster > additional D3 content

[Hiromant]

It's allegedly difficult due to things like AI being dependent on resolution. In high-res mods you can see monsters spawning and standing around at the edges of the screen. Also, everything is tiny, a real remaster would simply make everything sharper and not zoom out like it is in Starcraft 1.

Now they have time on their hands though so who knows, they might pull it off.

[BiggestNoob]

Honestly man, I think you don't understand how code is created, saved, and versioned for you to casually dismiss someone who works at Blizzard and just gave insight that as a company, they have historically struggled to version their games.

No, people who would have no idea. They don't touch code, they don't touch the systems where code or data is stored. They literally don't have a fucking clue what they're talking about.

This has been stated multiple times, both from previous folks who've worked there and people currently working there. It's incredibly arrogant that you keep insisting that source code "cannot be lost" when it's coming out of the lion's mouth that they have indeed lost the original framework utilized to build the game and are currently working on making it better.

We've somehow kept all the code from companies built long before anyone who even founded Blizzard even knew what a computer was. Billions of lines of code. Much of it still running to this day. But a company working on software in the 90s and 00s somehow is going to lose code? What the fuck? I have code I wrote 20 years ago on floppy fucking disks. I've worked on corporate systems and startup systems and I can tell you right now, even if a disaster wiped out our HQ, not a single bit of data from core systems would've been lost. Nowhere near Blizzard's scale. To be that incompetent is literally unthinkable.

And no, it's not from "the lion's mouth." It's from the mouths of idiots who have no idea what they're talking about. People started this shit with the WoW classic source. This person insists WC3 is when Blizzard started doing proper version control. WoW came after that. Configuration is code, they have the configuration for Classic, but decided against using the code as-is for the client or server. So all those people were wrong. Diablo 2 had source level patches made, and content created, *after* WC3 was released and *after* WoW was released. This means they have the source code of that. I don't care what someone who isn't actually working with their code or infrastructure has to say, we have literally undeniable proof that they have the source for these games, and people claiming the opposite are completely and totally wrong, factually, and should be ignored..

From some reason, you seem to be unable to process that recording media like magnetic tape has a limited lifetime, which is a lot shorter than you might think. Hard drives fail. Floppy disks fail. OS standards change, and even if the media is still readable, it might not be compatible with a newer OS. CD-Rs fail.

All of this is wrong. You don't understand backups, parities, and redundancy in general. Floppy disks fail, which is why they're temporary storage. They also still work, I have 30 year old floppies that still work. I also have data from old floppies I used backed up on hard disks which was then also backed up in the cloud, just like any sane company would do it, and it costs me about $0.35/month.

The OS nonsense you're talking about is utterly wrong. We have software that will read every filesystem ever widely used. We've had that software literally always. Even when corruption happens in critical areas like control blocks or ATs, you can still recover data without much effort.

That said, there's no evidence that there was any form of data loss or corruption, and a company wasn't storing business critical data on CD-Rs or floppies. They had NASes just like everyone else with redundancy, and likely had tapes or some off-site backup as was very common during their company's founding. Once cloud became common, they just moved everything there like everyone else did. And just because some "employee" of Blizzard has no idea what they're talking about and doesn't know where things are stored doesn't mean nobody does and doesn't mean it's missing. Woah, we just released a rebuild and a major update to this game, no idea where the code is though, we must've just magically created a patch somehow!

Beyond that, most likely the old source code got thrown away when the computer that it was on was discarded. Any backup tapes are probably sitting in a closet somewhere, getting moldy and were probably discarded years ago, because nobody knew that there was any value in them.

No. That's not how building software works. You don't have *a* computer with the code on it and that's how it works. Even when time sharing you had data separate from the machine (and that was way before Blizzard's time). How are you expecting multiple people worked on these projects if you actually believe something like this even makes sense to type?

Often, custom tools can’t be used on a modern OS and they can’t be rebuilt, because their source code was lost too. File formats were probably documented only in the source code, so that any support files are probably unreadable, without a lot of reverse engineering.

None of this is true either. File formats would be documented in multiple locations -- editors and clients. We know they have the source, so they'd have this "documentation" but realistically we're talking about teams of people building this here, not a guy who made this shit, there's a document explaining it and that document also survived. Nothing needs to be reverse engineered. How would you expect them to hold onto binaries but not source? The binaries shipped to people on disks in game packages have all been patched in the last 10 years, all of them, so they have the source to those things. None of what you're saying makes any sense.

Companies move on, and what is “retro” now was just old trash a few years ago, so there was no incentive to save any of it. My experience is that the only software and files that survived from that era were things that a particular individual cared enough for to want to preserve. If that individual died, then the resources died with them. Really, unless someone cared enough to copy everything to new media every few years, it wouldn’t survive.
*
The one exception is open source software, which got on so many different archive sites, that some preservation was likely. Commercial software, was kept off of the archive sites, so would not be preserved by that route.

That's not relevant to Blizzard. The software they had which was quite successful was business critical. They didn't lose any of it or any of the source code. At worst they might've lost some revision history on some of the older code, but that's definitely not true for WC3 or WoW. This meme needs to die, now.

Hell, I still have punch card programs. That's fucking paper. This shit is just silly. It's like nobody here actually understands anything about computers.

[Deleted]

linking kotaku articles as source in 2018...

https://www.pcgamer.com/icewind-dale...-code-is-lost/

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/201...anced-edition/

http://gametyrant.com/news/if-you-ha...se-let-us-know

[Bodonius]

I'm an engineer. A software engineer. A software engineer who has built entire game engines from scratch.

And I'm here to tell you, sir or madame.

It is entirely f'ing feasible that an entire engine source was lost, literally, in a stack of hard drives over a decade ago.

And, yes, I am speaking from experience. Software Engineers were heckin' hopeless before cloud-based versioning became wide spread.

But is it likely, that you have no idea how to make it again? That sounds like there was no planing when making it, we just roll dice and whoops here is a game.

[Tiwack]

Never say never, you'll be acting a fool.

[crusadernero]

All this moaning about games not being remastered.. Should ask for NEW games.

[thesmall001]

But is it likely, that you have no idea how to make it again? That sounds like there was no planing when making it, we just roll dice and whoops here is a game.

Bit of Column A and a bit of Column B. You make one game engine, you can make a whole bunch of game engines, it's actually not that complex to make the framework. But then there's specific choices, like the exact calculations you use to project physics and the ways you choose to parse garbage, which have slight impacts on game-feel and can be hard to capture twice; especially since the tech limitations of the day can often shape decisions you make in the moment that you don't plan for in advance. It's not impossible, it's just hard to get right because you have to manually trial and error till you get it right... and "right" is subjective.

There's a reason Classic WoW is being run on 7.3 instead of emulating like Private Servers have been doing for years. It's actually easier to retrofit and work your way backwards than it is to start fresh and try to catch lightning in a bottle again.

Edit: And you have no idea how accurately "we just roll a dice and whoops here is a game" captures the spirit on the battlefield lol.