一篇暗黑遊戲製作者－Mike Huang寫的文章 - 暗黑

一篇來自暗黑製作工程師之一，Mike Huang的文章。

內容論述了DiabloII製作過程和一些心情寫照，其中
不時流露出一些對於暗黑這套遊戲的感情，對於身為
暗黑愛好者，並對遊戲製作有十萬分興趣的在下來說
感到十分感動，也是種強大激勵！

為了能跟大家分享，茲將此轉載到這裡供大家分享，
並整理來自對岸同胞的翻譯，翻譯些許詞彙。希冀與
大家同分享。


原文出處：
http://www.diabloii.net/columnists/a-memories-blizzard.shtml

In August of 1997, I was a kid fresh out of the university heading off to
what was then a dream job -- working for Blizzard

North, the development team behind Blizzard's smash hit Diablo. I always knew
I was going to work in games, but I thought

that I would be working on console games rather than PC games.

PC games in those days were so rife with problems before Diablo released --
you had to make boot disks, load the right memory

manager, make sure the graphic card had a VESA compliant chipset, else you
were hosed. Then along came DirectX, and most of

that went away. Diablo was one of the first games to utilize DirectX, and
what a difference it made. To this day I'm

convinced that Diablo wouldn't have sold as well as it did had Blizzard not
been forward thinking enough to realize the

usefulness of DirectX.

When I arrived at Blizzard North, development of Diablo II had just begun.
The character classes and a rough list of their

abilities had been drafted out, as had the basic story structure. The
programmers had been prototyping a voxel-based engine

prior to my arrival, which was thrown out in favor of the more traditional
sprite based system. Art was converted over and

production on Diablo II truly began.

When I started, I was given 3 T-shirts and a couple of copies of Diablo. For
those curious, the three t-shirts were the

standard black t-shirt with blizzard logo on the front and back, and 2
Blizzard North exclusive shirts -- one in black with

the Winged Demon on the back, and one in white with the black knight on the
back. It wouldn't be long before these Blizzard

T-shirts became a sort of uniform for me, and by the time I left Blizzard 6
years later, I had enough T-shirts to go into to

work for a month and never wear the same T-shirt twice.

Blizzard North's office building was situated next to a boat marina. There
was a cafe downstairs and several smaller

companies scattered throughout the office park. Rumor had it that Hotmail
(who happened to be above our office before they

got bought by Microsoft) had wanted to sublease some of Blizzard North's
office space, and Blizzard North had refused on

account of us losing our ping pong and foosball room.

Being in the Marina had it's share of good and bad -- walking under the
freeway (where the homeless would sometime sleep) was

a fast way to get to Toys R'Us and the fast food restaurants on that side of
the freeway, but it also meant that every so

often, for no apparent reason than being where we were, we'd have a blackout.
It was always on the office building side of

the freeway -- our suspicion was that a tall truck coming down the two-lane
road that led to our little office hit a

electrical pole or snagged the cable, leaving us in darkness. Depending on
the time of the outage, this either meant an early

lunch, some time at the mini-golf arcade down the street, or an early
dismissal. Or people would break out the playing cards

and the MTG decks.

The Diablo II team grew quickly after my arrival. I had expected to be the
new employee for a while, but artist Phil Shenk

would start just a week or two after me. Almost 18 months later, what had
been a mostly empty office space with plenty of

room to expand would be filled to the point where supply closets were being
converted into offices. It was late '98 when it

was decided that Blizzard North was going to make a Diablo II expansion pack
concurrently with the game and we were going to

split into two separate development groups within the same office, and in
January of '99, the search began for a new larger

office space which could house both the Diablo II and Diablo II Expansion
teams. By the middle of March, we had moved into a

new office in San Mateo. A large creative space, it would not be long before
solutions for walking the long corridors between

offices would be found. The Razor scooters became the new method of
transportation for the lazy -- crashes at a blind turn

near the kitchen were relatively common.

Making the rounds in news this week are the pictures of Google's snack room.
[Editor's note: for example.] I tell you this --

they don't compare to Blizzard North's 2 kitchens which were kept as
wonderfully stocked as a convenience store. [Editor's

Note: See some kitchen photos from our Blizzard North visit in 1999.] Soda?
Check. Beef Jerky? Check. Instant Ramen? Check.

Oatmeal and Granola Bars? check. Fresh Fruits? Check. Chocolate, Candy,
Snacks and Chips in no less than 20 different

varieties? Check. If that wasn't enough, appearances of waiters on wheels and
pizza for dinner became commonplace as well.

Were it not for the Blizzard North offices not having a shower, I imagine
that some employees might have never gone home.

I need to point out at this time that 1999 and 2000 were the Years of Hell,
so while we were enjoying our new office space as

well as our fabulously stocked kitchens, we had also entered into "Crunchtime
Hell". With a hopeful internal release date set

at December of 1999, and a hopeful beta date set for November of 1999, most
of the Blizzard North Diablo II team was pulling

double-time, working weekends and occasionally sleeping under their desks in
order to finish the game in time. Sleeping bags

were issued to members of the Night Crew. Sometime during this year of
crunch, we hired Peter Hu, a fan with plenty of ideas

and suggestions about Diablo II and improving it, and he developed several
things to keep the player interested in the long-

term, including most of the patches (up until he left to work for Flagship in
Fall of 2003). Synergy? Peter. Runewords?

Peter. Perfect Gem Activation? Peter. Ethereals? Peter. Patch 1.10? All Peter.

But I get ahead of myself. That last struggle of a push ended with the first
master candidates for Diablo II being made at

the end of April, to be sent to Dublin to be localized (translated in other
languages and fixed for country specific

graphics) in time for an almost worldwide simultaneous release (there were
some languages that took more time).

During the Development process of Diablo II, however, there were fans helping
us build and refine the game -- many of the new

developers on Diablo II were fans of the first game (including myself) so we
knew what we wanted to see in the game. We

listened to the fans on the forums and from e-mails sent in (in the early
days of the Diablo II website, I answered all of

them personally). We listened and answered fansites' questions during the
regularly held fansite chats. Our goal was not to

make a game that sold 5 million copies, but to create a game that was better
than Diablo I, and all the imitations that would

come between Diablo I and Diablo II. We wanted to make a game that could
satisfy the casual gamer, and one that could satisfy

the most hardcore gamer. We made that game. The proof is in the fact that
Diablo II is still played on battle.net, almost 6

years after its release. The proof is in the fact that Diabloii.net still
exists -- 8 years after its launch.

Some of you feel that Blizzard has given up on the Diablo franchise. Some of
you think there's a Diablo III in the works. I

don't know. I don't work for Blizzard anymore, and I haven't been there for
years. I do notice that they continue to patch

Diablo II with new features and items, so the Diablo universe just doesn't
seem very dead to me at all. There's a very small

amount of people at Blizzard now who actually worked on Diablo I or Diablo II
or D2X. From D1 and D2, I count less than a

half dozen.

A significant number of those developers responsible for Diablo and Diablo II
have moved on to other places and other things.

While it saddens me to know that Blizzard North is closed and gone forever, I
take heart in knowing that the knowledge of how

to make really great games at Blizzard is spreading to other game companies.
Gamers of the future should have an even larger

selection of high quality titles to choose from.

Some of you may want to know where some of these Diablo developers have gone
so that you can know what products to support

and watch out for if you're giving up on the Diablo franchise.

I once asked former Blizzard North President David Brevik why it wasn't
"David Brevik's Diablo II" when so many other

developers at the time were prefixing game titles with their names. He told
me: "The game is not just me. It's the whole

team. That's why the Blizzard North logo is there". Even so, David Brevik is
the person I associate as being the heart and

soul of Diablo, which is why I'm happy that he's there at Flagship Studios
with Bill Roper and lots of other Blizzard North

alumni building Hellgate:London. If I started naming all of the employees and
all their contributions to Diablo and Diablo

II, this article would easily double in length. Let it suffice to say that
you know these people, and they're doing great

work. I looked at Hellgate: London just a few months ago, there's a lot there
that the Diablo player will enjoy, and I'm

really looking forward to playing it.

Michio Okamura, Eric Sexton and Steven Woo very recently started a game
company called Hyboreal Games. Michio and Eric are

Diablo 1 veterans, and Steven Woo is a programmer extraordinaire. They're
currently working with Jon Morin and FlipSideGames

in developing a project. They haven't released very much information yet, but
I have great confidence in their abilities to

make a really fun game.

At Castaway Entertainment, brothers Michael & Stefan Scandizzo, along with
Rick Seis and the rest of his crew are also

working on something that's unannounced.

Battle.net was made for the fans of Blizzard -- a free service to help
connect with other game players. This was during a

time when other companies were charging for multiplayer over the internet.
This past December was battle.net's 9th birthday,

and there are still players playing Diablo 1 on it. I think that's pretty
cool. Two of Blizzard HQ's programmers who worked

on battle.net started a company a few years ago called Arena.net. They are
the ones behind NCSoft's Guild Wars (which you can

play now, which also has good appeal to Diablo players).

Lastly, there's also a number of people from Blizzard North who migrated down
to Irvine and whose contributions will be found

in World of Warcraft and future Blizzard products.

Whether Blizzard chooses to continue the Diablo franchise or not, Blizzard
owns that property. They can do whatever they wish

to it. The gamer has many choices out there -- and thanks to the developers
of Diablo and Diablo II, there will be a lot more

games out there with a little bit of Diablo in them.



譯文原始出處：
戰網中國：　http://bbs.battlecn.net
原文：　http://bbs.battlecn.net/read.php?tid=790906&fpage=1
－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－－

1997年8月，我剛剛邁出大學之門，我得到了夢想中的工作--為
北方暴風雪工作，那個製作diablo的工作組，我一直覺得我會做
遊戲，但是曾以為是TV Game，想不到是PC Game。

在Diablo發售前 pc遊戲玩起來有很多麻煩-- 你不得不製作啟動
磁碟，導入正確的記憶體管理器，確保顯示卡有vesa相容，否則
你玩不了. 然後 DirectX 出現了，那些問題都不見了。 Diablo
是第一批使用 DirectX 的遊戲。到今日，我確信因為 blz 認識
到了 Directx的作用才讓 Diablo賣的那麼好


當我來到北方暴風雪的時候，d2的開發才剛剛開始。角色和基本
的故事架構被勾勒了出來以及職業和一個粗略的能力列表。程式
師們在我到之前做了個基於 voxel的引擎，那個由於需要更傳統
的系統被丟棄的引擎..美術轉換開始－d2專案正式啟動。


我開始的時候我被給了三件Ｔ恤和一堆diablo的光碟。對於那些
好奇的人，我告訴你們：那三件Ｔ恤是標準的Ｔ恤，前後有暴雪
的logo，以及兩件北方暴雪專用Ｔ恤～一件黑的，上面有個翼之
惡魔，另一個白的，有個黑色騎士在背面。不久，這些Ｔ恤就成
了我的制服，在我六年後離開 blz的時候，我有足夠的Ｔ恤來穿
一個月而不重複


北方暴雪的辦公大樓在一個小遊艇船塢的旁邊。樓下有個咖啡館
以及一些小公司。傳說 hotmail（在被微軟收購前它們在我們樓
上）曾經想要一些北方暴風雪的辦公空間，但是我們謝絕了它們
，因為那減少了我們打乒乓和足球的空間


在MARINA旁邊有好處也有壞處－在高速公路下面走（有些無家可
歸的人可能在那睡覺），是個便捷的方式到TOYS R'US 和公路旁
的速食店。但是這也意味著，通常來說，由於不是很明顯的原因
，我們會停電... 基本上在公路旁的辦公樓，我們會懷疑一輛很
高的卡車開到通往我們小小的辦公室的兩個行道中，撞到一個電
線杆，或者拉到了一個變壓器，讓我們眼前一片漆黑... 在這段
發生的時間..可能意味著一頓早到的午餐，或者在街頭玩一盤小
型高爾夫街機，或者早下班。有時大家打打牌或者玩玩MTG牌。


D2的工作組在我到之後迅速發展。我以為我能當個新雇員，想不
到美術師phil shenk 在1,2個禮拜之後來了。18個月之後，原本
空蕩的辦公室被各種資源所占滿。98年底，決定做d2資料片的時
候，我們分成了兩個獨立的開發小隊，99年 1月，我們開始找個
更大辦公室以能夠同時容納D2和 d2exp的開發小隊。三月中旬，
我們搬到了一個新的在 SAN METEO的辦公室。一個更大的創造的
空間，為了要走過辦公室間的長廊，不久就讓人想到了解決辦法
－滑板車，他成為了懶人新的交通工具－在一個廚房旁邊的死角
翻車成了很平常的事情。


這個禮拜的新聞是google的速食房，但是我告訴你這些－他們沒
辦法和北方暴風雪的兩個廚房比較。那裏簡直是個便利商店，蘇
打？有！牛肉乾？有！泡麵？有！麥片和格蘭諾拉燕麥片？有！
蔬菜？有！巧克力、糖果、速食和炸薯條？有！如果那還不夠，
外賣的披薩也能當晚餐... 要不是因為北方暴風雪辦公室沒有淋
浴,我想大概一些員工永遠不會回家

但我同時必須說明的是，1999和2000簡直是地獄似的兩年！當我
們享受我們新的辦公地和那完美的廚房的時候，我們也就進入了
那所謂的「關鍵時期之地獄」。眾所期待的內部發售日期是1999
年11月，北方 blz的D2小組工作兩倍時間，週末也加班，偶爾睡
在桌下，以便遊戲能按時完成..睡袋被發放給夜班的夥計們。在
這關鍵的年份裏，我們雇傭了peter hu－一個對D2充滿點子和建
議以及改進它的方案的粉絲。他開發了數種能讓玩家長期感興趣
的內容，包括大多數的更新（直到他2003年秋天離開去了flagsh
ip）

協同技能？ Peter做的。符文之語？ Peter做的。完美寶石啟動
？ Peter做的。無形裝備？peter做的。1.10更新？還是 Peter
。


即便辛苦，但是我超越了我自己。最後主要的D2候選版本在四月
底終於弄出來了，然後被送到了都柏林來進行本地化（翻譯成其
他語言，修正各國特殊的圖像）以便全時間幾乎同步發售（有些
語言花了更多的時間）。


在開發D2的過程中，有很多粉絲幫助我們讓遊戲弄的更好～很多
新的開發人員一開始都是遊戲的粉絲（包括我自己）所以我們知
道我們要在遊戲裏看到點什麼。我們在論壇和e-mail聽取粉絲的
意見（在D2網站的早期，我個人回答所有的問題）。我們在定期
舉行的聊天中聽取並回答 fansite的問題。我們的目標不是做個
賣五百萬份的遊戲，而是做一個比Diablo I更好的遊戲，以及打
破所有對D1和D2之間的模仿。我們想做個遊戲能滿足普通玩家，
以及一個能滿足大多數骨灰玩家的遊戲。我們成功了。證據就是
在六年之後D2依然在bn上擁有眾多玩家！證據就是diabloii.net
依然存在－在它建立八年之後。


你們一些人可能覺得暴風雪放棄了Diablo系列。一些人認為d3在
開發中。我不知道，因為我不在為暴風雪工作了，我已經有些年
沒去過那了。我有注意到他們有繼續為D2做更新，加入些新的功
能和物品，所以Diablo的世界對我來說不是完全的死去了。暴風
雪那裏真正開發過D1,D2或者D2x的人已經很少了，從D1到D2大概
只有不到六個人還在。


很多開發過d1和d2的人都已經去了其他地方..當我聽說北方暴風
雪永久關閉了之後很悲傷。暴風雪把如何開發真正偉大的遊戲的
理念傳播到了其他遊戲公司。未來的玩家對好的遊戲將有更多的
選擇。


也許你們想知道那些Diablo的開發人員去了哪，好讓你們知道去
支援什麼產品，或者看看是不是要放棄Diablo系列。

我曾經問過前北方暴雪總裁David Drevik，為什麼Diablo不叫做
'David Brevik的Diablo II" ，那時候有很多開發者在遊戲名字
前面冠上他名字。他告訴我：「這個遊戲不單是我的，它是整個
團隊的，這就是為什麼北方暴風雪的標誌在那。」

雖然這麼說，但是david brevik是和我一起做出diablo精髓的人
這也是為什麼我很高興介紹他在flagship 和 Bill Roper以及其
他很多北方暴風雪的人做的 地獄之門:倫敦。如果我說出所有為
d1和d2做出過貢獻的人的名字的話，這篇文章可能會兩倍長度。
簡單來說，你們認識他們，他們在做一個偉大的工作。我前幾個
月看了一下「地獄之門：倫敦」，裡面有很多Diablo玩家會喜歡
的東西 我真的很期待能玩到它

Michio Okamura, Eric Sexton 和 Steven Woo 最近開了家公司
名叫 Hyboreal Games. Michio 和 Eric 是d1的老手， Steven-
Woo 是個出色的程式師。他們最近和 Jon Morin 以及FlipSide
Games 共同開發一個專案。他們還沒有釋出更多的資訊，但是我
有足夠的信心他們會做出個好玩的遊戲。

在 Castaway 娛樂公司， Michael兄弟和Stefan Scandizzo，以
及Rick Seis和他的下屬也在做一個沒有公佈的專案。

Battle.net是為暴風雪的粉絲做的--一個免費的服務來幫助玩家
連接其他的玩家。這段時期其他公司的多人遊戲都開始收費了。
過去的12月是Battle.net的第九個生日，還有玩家在上面玩D1。
我覺得這很酷，兩個暴風雪做bn的高級程式師幾年前開了個公司
叫做 arena.net. 他們就是後來做guild wars(激戰)的NCSOFT的
人

最後，還有一些北方暴風雪的人被遷到Irvine和暴風雪合併了，
他們做了wow和未來的blz產品。

不管暴風雪是不是繼續Diablo系列，暴風雪贏得了他們自己的財
富。他們能做任何想做的事情。玩家有很多選擇－謝謝d1和d2的
開發人員，會有很多遊戲出自他們之手，有一些Diablo的影子在
裏面。



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