Freeablo is that Diablo engine remake we've been wishing for, is currenly looking for contributors (and general ravings about Diablo. In fact, mostly that)

Freeablo engine in its early stages

Who doesn't love the original Diablo? When it was first released in 1996, this game set a notable landmark for making the RPG genre more accessible to a broader audience, while still keeping many gameplay aspects of classic Rogue-derived RPGs, that kept the game fresh and unique even after being completed several times. This bridge between classic and modern aspects combined with an incredible attention to detail, a uniquely crafted atmosphere that still gives me the creeps, and a gameplay pacing and length that is just the right balance between level progression and grinding, has helped making Diablo one of my all time favourite games. Well, that and Battlenet, of course, we can never forget how Diablo was one of the first to make it so easy to just go dungeon crawling with a couple of friends online.

There is, however, one thing that I don't like about Diablo. One thing that annoyed me all over these years of repeated runs and occasional multiplayer meetups. And that is how Blizzard itself decided to neglect its maintenance and compatibility completely and practically drop all active support for it, despite keeping the Battlenet servers online. Yes, you will have a tough time trying to buy a fresh copy of this game nowadays, because Blizzard cares so much about their legacy games they don't even sell 'em anymore in their official store. But even if there still are plenty of used copies available online for cheap, running the game on modern systems can be a whole a new quest, given that the last patch is dated from 2000, which means no performance maintenance, no improved graphics compatibility, in fact, not even additional screen resolutions, and certainly no stability updates whatsoever. 

The first Cathedral levels loaded and randomly generated in Freeablo

As a matter of fact, Blizzard has a whole tradition of being disrespectful to legacy fans. They refuse to let resellers touch their games (physical Diablo II and Starcraft copies still go by $25 nowadays, with no Steam or GOG versions in sight), they frequently discourage and hamper any type of mod support or mod attempts, other than whatever's produced under their little walled garden editor-type programs and, obviously, they never ever released the source code of any of their games, just to make sure us, the plebeian fans, would never touch their precious abandoned heritage with our filthy paws.

Luckily, this might just be about to change, with the coming of a bold, new engine remake project most aptly named Freeablo. This project aims to rebuild and expand upon the original Diablo engine, keeping it fully portable and compatible with modern systems, as well as making it adaptable and moddable for anyone willing to modify the game. All of this while still paying due respect to Blizzard and requiring the original game files in order to run the game. Now isn't this nice? 

As of the current 0.1 release, there is still much to be done, which is why the project is open to contributors of all sorts. Hopefully, with enough time and effort, we can all free Diablo one day from the clutches of proprietary software and greedy corporate execs who are still stuck in a 90s mentality on how to commercialize and support video games.

Code License: GPLv3
Assets License: Relies on original proprietary data files

Official Website
Source Code (Github)

2013 Global Game Industry Survey is now online

I have posted the 2013 Global Game Industry Survey online at Purple Pawn.

Comments welcome.

Yehuda

Competitive Whining, Family Style

I slept at my mom's last night. Here are the very first words spoken this morning (no exaggeration):

Mom: I couldn't get to sleep at all last night.
Me: I have these small pains on the outsides of both ears, here and here.
Mom: Part of my tooth fell off while I was eating matzoh this morning.
Me: ... My right arm just fell off of my body.
Mom: I bet the dentist is closed today because it's Passover, too.

Mini Vacation with Tal and Saarya

Tal and Saarya and I have returned from our annual Pre-Passover mini-vacation.

We go before Passover because a) it's still "off-season", so it's cheap, b) it avoids the Passover crowds, c) it's the perfect time of year for hiking in Israel, and d) it forces us to have our apt ready for Passover early, but allows us to go into Passover feeling refreshed rather than post-cleaning frazzled (at least in theory). The problems are a) it forces us to have our apt ready for Passover early, b) we sometimes hit the holiday of some other religion (such as Druze), and c) not everything is open before Passover (e.g. certain swimming pools and attractions).

Each year we stay somewhere different. This year we stayed at Rothschild Guest Hospitality (a strange name), which is a simple place to sleep on Kibbutz Hagoshrim on the Dan river. The owner is nice, the place is clean, comfortable, simple, and really inexpensive, though it comes with no breakfast. It's situated in the beauty of nature, surrounded by fruit trees and flowers.

Kibbutz Hagoshrim has a popular rafting business that was one of the highlights of our trip. Really lovely and ideal, though we couldn't get the raft to stay straight; it kept spinning around. The kibbutz is within hiking or driving distance of several entrances to the Dan, Snir, or other tributaries, but it contains within it the most beautiful short walk I've ever done in Israel, right below the hotel (the most beautiful long walk is the Tel Dan Nature Reserve). It descends into this fairy forest tunnel of bamboo, pine, and wood-slatted bridges criss-crossing over a stream. The earthy feel and smell reminded me of hiking in Scotland. The kibbutz has other amenities, such as a pool, a bar, a restaurant, paintball, some kind of flying activity, a gallery, min-zoo, etc, etc.

There is a hotel on the kibbutz in which you can eat your meals, but we self-catered from Supersol and a prepared food place in Kiryat Shmoneh called Tadmit (good food, although heavy). Unfortunately, we didn't take pictures: couldn't bring a camera with us on the raft, and then it was shabbat.

Vote for the LGA: May 2014 (OS game engine remakes)

And Holarse.de even did a small trailer:


P.S.: Sorry for the lack of updates lately. If you are interested helping out with the blog give us a notice here.