Demo

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A "demo" generally refers to a playable piece of a game. Many game developers release a demo, comprised of some early section of their game, for promotional purposes before or shortly after the release of the full game.

Demos are also constructed for exhibit to fans, often in playable form for gaming conventions. Blizzard created a playable demo of Diablo III for the fans and media to try out at Blizzcon 2008, 2009, and 2010. They've taken these same demos to other gaming shows as well, including Gamescom, PAX, and even Warcraft III tournament events.[1] Whether or not a playable demo will be at an event is often a mystery until just before the event, resulting in delighted or disappointed fans.[2]

There are often rumors about leaked or stolen demos of games. These are almost always lies; ways to trick eager fans into downloading viruses and trojans, and Diablo III has been the source of several such rumors already.[3]


Diablo III Release Demo?

There will be a Diablo III demo, but it will not be released until after the game is completed. Blizzard no longer rushes out demos of their games pre-release, now that they are guaranteed to sell so well that they don't need that sort of publicity.


Diablo III Demo Contents

The Diablo III demos at Blizzcon 2008, 2009, and 2010 were specially-prepared for the event. Characters were pre-made, all set to a level that matched the content in the demo, equipped with reasonable gear, and with all of their skill points already assigned. The point in a demo is for fans to jump right in and start playing, and the developers don't want fans playing a brand new character without any skills or equipment, or spending their whole demo time looking over the skills and trying to decide how to spend their points.

Game features are included or excluded from demos depending on what the development team wants to show off at that point. For instance, Runestones were in the 2008 demo, but they were only enabled for Wizard skills. Runestones were not included in the 2009 demo at all since they were under heavy remodeling, but they were a major feature in the 2010 demo, though only for the Wizard, Witch Doctor, and Barbarian.

The game areas, quests, NPCs, and other features have also been custom tailored in the Diablo III demos. This was not the case with Diablo II; the playable demos they showed off at E3 in 1998, 1999, and 2000 were basically entire acts, with all the characters, skills, NPCs, quests, etc. The D3 Team has been much more conservative in showingg off the game, and all three demos so far have been small, self-contained areas of the game, with very little of the story or NPCs in place. No demos to date have shown off a town area, and only the 2008 demo has had an NPC (Captain Rumford) to speak with about more than the more generic quest details.


2008 WWI Demo

Diablo III was not playable at the WWI debut event in June 2008, but a lengthy gameplay movie was released, with much gameplay action and explanatory narration by Jay Wilson. The demo introduced the Barbarian and Witch Doctor characters, as well as memorable monsters like the Thousand Pounder and the gigantic Siegebreaker.


2008 Blizzcon Demo

Female Wizard.

The 2008 demo was the first playable build of Diablo III. It introduced the Wizard class, and she was playable in the demo, along with the Barbarian and Witch Doctor. The demo began in the gloomy ruins of New Tristram, before players descended into the Tristram Cathedral and down to the dungeons below, where the Skeleton King awaited as the end boss of the demo.

Starting characters were level 6, the demo was PvM only, and fans on the show floor had 20 minutes per play session.

2009 Blizzcon Demo

The 2009 demo introduced the Monk, who was playable along with the Wizard, Witch Doctor, and Barbarian. The demo was set in Act Two, in the scorching sandy wastes outside of Caldeum. Players fought through the wastes and several random dungeons, dealing with a wide variety of new monsters on their way to Alcarnus, a ruined, Cultist-infested city at the end of the demo.

The male Monk.

This demo contained numerous quests, but almost no plot or story, with only a few NPCs who spoke only of non-story quests. New characters were level 12, and began the demo just outside the gates of Caldeum, just after they would have received a great deal of story and quest information (in the final game). The ending town of Alcarnus was modified for the demo as well, with much of the town unreachable and no particular focus to the final battle there.


2010 Blizzcon Demo

The 2010 demo came in two parts. The PvM demo introduced the Demon Hunter, who was playable along with all the other characters. Numerous new features were in place, including Runestones, the Talisman, traits, and much more. The dungeon area was set below the Tristram Cathedral, in dungeons that were similar to those from 2008. The demo did not include the Skeleton King again, and ended with a battle against the Warden. New characters began at level 9 in this demo.

There was also a PvP demo, which introduced the Battle Arena. Players were pitted in 3v3 teams, with pre-made level 30 characters of the Barbarian, Witch Doctor, and Wizard class to choose from.


Demo Preparations

Siegebreaker.

In April 2009, Bashiok shared a good amount of information about the preparation for and recording of the 2008 WWI gameplay demo movie. [4]

It is indeed the siegebreaker’s giant hand that grabs him. It was an extremely difficult and trying shot to create and capture. The way the interior and exterior sections were set up and shot it made it necessary to capture them uncut.
The hand shot just wasn’t working that well, so we’d tweak it, hope that the physics would move the debris properly. Shoot, it didn’t work right. Tweak it again, reshoot the entire interior run, something else might go wrong, etc. Over and over. In the end we had to settle with what would appear to most as a wall collapse simply because we didn’t have time before the announcement to keep tweaking it and reshooting everything to make it more clear that it was a hand busting through the wall and grabbing him. Especially when the one we went with had some very perfect moments in it (zombie corpse landing on railing).
I’m glad that someone caught it though, a lot of work went into those animations, and unfortunately we just ran out of time to showcase them.

See the Siegebreaker snatch article for screenshots and more information about this scripted event.

Demo Machine Specs

Demo machines are generally quite powerful, to handle the pre-optimized demo version of the game. Bashiok spoke about this in May 2009.[5]

They were insane. There’s a few reasons why it doesn’t matter what those machines were though.
Most machines are lent to us by hardware vendors. It’s in our interest to have our games look good and run well, and it’s in their interest to show off the latest and greatest their company has to offer. So generally they’re top of the line, using all the newest and best hardware.
Because we’re working with a pre-release version we work with the hardware that’s going to be on the show floor to build a final show floor build. The game hasn’t hit (obviously) final QA and hardware compatibility testing as it would before release to the public, so we need to ensure it’s going to run smoothly on this one specific set of hardware for the show.
It can also help, to a degree, overcome some potential technical hurdles we could run into with a pre-optimized build of the game. Throw more CPU/RAM/3D processing at it, and generally those pre-optimized problems won’t throw a wrench into the brief glimpse of a game that isn’t finished yet.
So, the combination of having hardware vendors showing off the latest and greatest, coupled with our interest to have a unoptimized version of the game look good, leads to show floor specifications that are probably way beyond what even the final “Recommended” specs for the game would be, let alone “Required”.
This is the general outcome anyway, it could turn out that hardware we had is EXACTLY recommended spec and I’m TOOMA here. But regardless it really wouldn’t matter at this time, and also… I’m noooot goooonna teeeeell yooooou! wink
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