What did the developers find in the original Diablo 2 archives?
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Source files, models, old concept scraps, re-used artwork from Diablo 1... basically a treasure trove of stuff. Read on!
Lord of Destruction title screen background image - from the archive.
Blizzard wrote:
There's a lot of the love and care going on in this - we're very passionate about Diablo 2. I can even give you a little anecdote - when I started on the team, naturally as a designer I want to know as much as possible about this game in order to make good decisions on a remaster.
I asked around - what kind of files and leftover archives do we have from before - from Blizzard North. I was given some and told 'that's it' - which I quickly disbelieved. I like to do just do my own little digging around to find out things.
Andre Abrahamian - Lead Designer 36:19 19th Feb 2021
Monochrome basic render of the environment for D2's Burial Grounds (by the look of it).
Blizzard wrote:
So I dug around a lot in archives and in different teams, because naturally for a game from 20 years people have moved on to different teams data has moved around across our other games - across Blizzard.
Andre Abrahamian - Lead Designer 37:03 19th Feb 2021
Diablo in animator's T-pose (left) and Tal Rasha's chamber rendered (right).
Blizzard wrote:
It was within 'folders within folders' I like to say, that I found a lot of old source files from Diablo 2; stuff we should archive. There was a lot of stuff indeed - we're talking model source files, old tools that Blizzard North used to create the sprites and things like that.
All these things I spent months and months organising and communicated that out to the teams. I got the Blizzard library team to help out to, to help share as much info as possible.
All of this helps a lot with when we're adapting these old models and making new art out of it. A lot of those pixels aren't good enough and we have some kind of source model we can make closer decisions.
Andre Abrahamian - Lead Designer 37:18 19th Feb 2021
Tyrael annotated concepts from the original game. The model's wings were used 1:1 for Resurrected.
Blizzard wrote:
On that day when we found it [the archives] I think that really helped me greatly - we sent all that imagery - even the models, we sent over to the outsource teams and different art teams, which they used as a stepping stone.
The only piece of art we re-used 1:1 were Tyrael's wings. We actually took the wings from the old MAX file and then just repurposed that for ours. We did very little work - very little modernisation of that - we just made it work.
We did follow a lot of the rules that the old game used for example - the Succubus and Witch - I think with an old Blizzard North model - they've re-used the Assassin mesh for the body and we do the same thing. We used our Assassin mesh for the Succubus.
Same model used for the Assassin and Succubus - same in Resurrected :)
Blizzard wrote:
Another example too is - because we found a lot of stuff - there's a lot of old texture files for some environments on the game, so for example the walls you see in the Act 2 tombs? With those kind of paintings on them? - They're the same textures we're using as we found the source files for those.
Andre Abrahamian - Lead Designer 39:00 19th Feb 2021
Some of D2s original textures have been mirrored over to Resurrected exactly.
Bloodhawk original concept art, used for the Resurrected rendition of it.
Blizzard wrote:
There was even concepts we repurposed - we found a couple of concepts that were amazing, from 20 years ago.. the Bloodhawk and the Bloodhawk Nest, and we used that completely to rebuild our new asset.
Andre Abrahamian - Lead Designer 39:56 19th Feb 2021
Diablo 1 Chaos Knights were re-used for Diablo 2 environment sprites in Act IV!
Blizzard wrote:
We look at D1 as well because naturally this being a sequel to Diablo 1, especially within the timespan (Diablo 1 - 1996, Diablo 2 2000) - a lot of things carried over from development. So going back to see D1 and what its like also helped us make decisions.
Even some of the art too - we discovered certain things that we didn't even realise before until later down the line. For example - in the Chaos Sanctuary you see a lot of statues with these black knights - those are actually the same Chaos Knight you see in Diablo 1.
Sometimes some of the things I find - even source files from D1 - were useful for us for reference, so we could make the new statues and stuff like that.
Andre Abrahamian - Lead Designer 41:42 19th Feb 2021
D1 Sorceror model was re-used for original D2's Act III mercenaries.
Blizzard wrote:
Even the Sorceror from D1 and the Act 3 hireling share very similar models - it was just additional helmet, or a bit of detail on the chest, but that was it.
Source files, models, old concept scraps, re-used artwork from Diablo 1... basically a treasure trove of stuff. Read on!
Lord of Destruction title screen background image - from the archive.
Blizzard wrote:
There's a lot of the love and care going on in this - we're very passionate about Diablo 2. I can even give you a little anecdote - when I started on the team, naturally as a designer I want to know as much as possible about this game in order to make good decisions on a remaster.
I asked around - what kind of files and leftover archives do we have from before - from Blizzard North. I was given some and told 'that's it' - which I quickly disbelieved. I like to do just do my own little digging around to find out things.
Andre Abrahamian - Lead Designer 36:19 19th Feb 2021
Monochrome basic render of the environment for D2's Burial Grounds (by the look of it).
Blizzard wrote:
So I dug around a lot in archives and in different teams, because naturally for a game from 20 years people have moved on to different teams data has moved around across our other games - across Blizzard.
Andre Abrahamian - Lead Designer 37:03 19th Feb 2021
Diablo in animator's T-pose (left) and Tal Rasha's chamber rendered (right).
Blizzard wrote:
It was within 'folders within folders' I like to say, that I found a lot of old source files from Diablo 2; stuff we should archive. There was a lot of stuff indeed - we're talking model source files, old tools that Blizzard North used to create the sprites and things like that.
All these things I spent months and months organising and communicated that out to the teams. I got the Blizzard library team to help out to, to help share as much info as possible.
All of this helps a lot with when we're adapting these old models and making new art out of it. A lot of those pixels aren't good enough and we have some kind of source model we can make closer decisions.
Andre Abrahamian - Lead Designer 37:18 19th Feb 2021
Tyrael annotated concepts from the original game. The model's wings were used 1:1 for Resurrected.
Blizzard wrote:
On that day when we found it [the archives] I think that really helped me greatly - we sent all that imagery - even the models, we sent over to the outsource teams and different art teams, which they used as a stepping stone.
The only piece of art we re-used 1:1 were Tyrael's wings. We actually took the wings from the old MAX file and then just repurposed that for ours. We did very little work - very little modernisation of that - we just made it work.
We did follow a lot of the rules that the old game used for example - the Succubus and Witch - I think with an old Blizzard North model - they've re-used the Assassin mesh for the body and we do the same thing. We used our Assassin mesh for the Succubus.
Same model used for the Assassin and Succubus - same in Resurrected :)
Blizzard wrote:
Another example too is - because we found a lot of stuff - there's a lot of old texture files for some environments on the game, so for example the walls you see in the Act 2 tombs? With those kind of paintings on them? - They're the same textures we're using as we found the source files for those.
Andre Abrahamian - Lead Designer 39:00 19th Feb 2021
Some of D2s original textures have been mirrored over to Resurrected exactly.
Bloodhawk original concept art, used for the Resurrected rendition of it.
Blizzard wrote:
There was even concepts we repurposed - we found a couple of concepts that were amazing, from 20 years ago.. the Bloodhawk and the Bloodhawk Nest, and we used that completely to rebuild our new asset.
Andre Abrahamian - Lead Designer 39:56 19th Feb 2021
Diablo 1 Chaos Knights were re-used for Diablo 2 environment sprites in Act IV!
Blizzard wrote:
We look at D1 as well because naturally this being a sequel to Diablo 1, especially within the timespan (Diablo 1 - 1996, Diablo 2 2000) - a lot of things carried over from development. So going back to see D1 and what its like also helped us make decisions.
Even some of the art too - we discovered certain things that we didn't even realise before until later down the line. For example - in the Chaos Sanctuary you see a lot of statues with these black knights - those are actually the same Chaos Knight you see in Diablo 1.
Sometimes some of the things I find - even source files from D1 - were useful for us for reference, so we could make the new statues and stuff like that.
Andre Abrahamian - Lead Designer 41:42 19th Feb 2021
D1 Sorceror model was re-used for original D2's Act III mercenaries.
Blizzard wrote:
Even the Sorceror from D1 and the Act 3 hireling share very similar models - it was just additional helmet, or a bit of detail on the chest, but that was it.
BillyMaysed wrote: 3 years ago
is it for search engines or something? just curious.
Yeah pretty much - Googlebot didn't like the mini-site for some reason, and all the info is out of date, so I wanted to make sure it was fully discoverable and accurate on release.
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What did the developers find in the original Diablo 2 archives?
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