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Fan Completes Reverse-Engineering of Source Code for ‘Diablo’

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The original Diablo is still very much a favorite of mine 20 years after its release. There’s just something amazingly fun about this dungeon-crawler that sticks with me even today. And I’m not the only one, as the modding community has constantly been tinkering and toying with the original and its sequels to come up with some pretty cool things. Know what else is cool? Someone finally managed to reverse-engineer the source code!

A coder by the handle of GalaxyHaxz spent over 1,200 hours over the course of 6-12 months to obtain the source code with his project, “Devilution”. Keep in mind that this source code won’t give you a free copy of the original game when you compile it (even though Blizzard stopped updating and selling the original back in 2001). The whole point of the reverse-engineering was to make things easier for the modding community when it comes to creating their mods.

“For years mod-makers had to rely on tedious code editing and memory injection. A few even went even further and reversed a good chunk of the game,” explains GalaxyHaxz. “The problem is that they never released their sources. Usually being a one-man job, they move on with their lives inevitably due to the amount of time/work required or lack of interest. This leaves people with a half-finished mod; one which had countless hours put into it, but left full of bugs and unfinished potential. So we’re back to square one. Devilution aims to fix this, by making the source code of Diablo freely available to all.”

As the goal was to reproduce the 1996 code as accurately as possible, bugs and all, there’s a unique bonus with this: Fans get a look at the development of the game. For those that don’t know, development of Diablo was rushed near the end, with many ideas being scrapped and the multiplayer component being a quick hack job. “By examining the source, we can see various quirks of planned development.”

Writer/Artist/Gamer from the Great White North. I try not to be boring.

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One of Clive Barker’s Final Convention Appearances Will Be at New Jersey’s Monster Mania in August

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Clive Barker

We told you earlier this month that horror legend Clive Barker is leaving the convention scene behind to focus entirely on his writing, with various upcoming projects in the works.

A series of final appearances from Barker will begin at Days of the Dead Chicago this month, and we’ve learned Barker will also be coming to Monster Mania in New Jersey.

Clive Barker will be signing at Monster Mania 59 in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, which runs from August 2 – August 4, 2024. Stay tuned for more info from the convention.

Barker’s official statement earlier this month explained, “… it’s time to focus entirely on writing. I’m not stopping public events because I’ve lost delight in meeting you all over the years. I’m as passionate as ever about sharing my imagination with readers and moviegoers around the world. In the very room where I’m writing these words, I have the manuscripts for a very large number of projects (Thirty-one of them), some very close to completion, others still telling themselves. There are some wild projects in this collection of works, whether close to finished or done. There are also stories that you all knew I would be finishing.”

“Abarat IV and V are amongst the books at my feet,” he continued. “So is the Third and final book of The Art and the sequel to The Thief of Always. There are also return visits to characters and mythologies you may have thought I would never return to.

“I hope I am still able to surprise you in the decades ahead.”

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