DeviluitionX: Enjoying The 23 Year Old Diablo Game Atop An Open-Source Engine

[phoronix]

Phoronix: DeviluitionX: Enjoying The 23 Year Old Diablo Game Atop An Open-Source Engine

The latest open-source game engine project working to re-implement a legendary commercial game is DeviluitionX. This new effort is an open-source re-implementation of Blizzard's Diablo game from 1996 while now working on Linux and other operating systems nicely...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=DeviluitionX-Open-Diablo

[Cape]

Oh yes! I already have the original CD !!

Diablo and Diablo II are drugs basically. I was totally hooked to them back in the days 🤗

[ldesnogu]

The sources look odd. Some parts look like the result of reverse engineered code.

See this for instance: https://github.com/diasurgical/devil...ource/sync.cpp

EDIT: confirmed. IDA is mentioned here https://github.com/diasurgical/devil...s/CHANGELOG.md

Is this legal? I'm afraid not

[Zajec]

The sources look odd. Some parts look like the result of reverse engineered code.

See this for instance: https://github.com/diasurgical/devil...ource/sync.cpp

EDIT: confirmed. IDA is mentioned here https://github.com/diasurgical/devil...s/CHANGELOG.md

Is this legal? I'm afraid not

It's based on a different project:

https://github.com/galaxyhaxz/devilution

that used a leaked code.

[Zajec]

From the devilution project:

> I think that's about all, but is Devilution even legal?

That's a tricky question. Under the DMCA, reverse-engineering has exceptions for the purpose of documentation and interoperability. Devilution provides the necessary documentation needed to achieve the latter. However, it falls into an entirely gray area. The real question is whether or not Blizzard deems it necessary to take action.

[Jabberwocky]

Even if it was not reverse engineered I would expect Blizzard to sue them.

[Redfoxmoon]

Needs a clean room implementation

[Drago]

Blizzard is digging their graves now. Especially with Diablo mobile fiasco. Let them sue, and good luck! People re-implemented the whole MS Windows, let alone one/two little games.

[Drago]

For the "clever" guys above... how you imagine reverse engineering a game? If your algorithm,constants are not exactly the same as original, you end up with a different game, that plays differently? At first they will use decompiled code, then understand what that code does, they will replace it with their own.

[ldesnogu]

I already went that route: disassemble an AtariST 68k program, translate it to C, hook the necessary HW emulation part from an existing simulator, and rewrite some parts of it. I still consider distributing it as illegal and would never share it, even though that's a 30 years old program.

The audio and graphics are considered as proprietary. Why would the code be any different, even if it's only parts from it?