The Making of Warcraft 1: Origin of the series & creation of multi-unit select | Hacker News Reader

The Making of Warcraft 1: Origin of the series & creation of multi-unit select

codeofhonor.com

223 pointspwnyx61 comments

> Before I started in the game industry I had worked extensively with several low-end “Computer Assisted Design” (CAD) programs like MacDraw and MacDraft to design wine-cellars for my dad’s wine cellar business, so it seemed natural to use the “click & drag” rectangle-selection metaphor to round up a group of units to command.

> I believe that Warcraft was the first game to use this user-interface metaphor. When I first implemented the feature it was possible to select and control large numbers of units at a time; there was no upper limit on the number of units that could be selected.

I wonder if this wasn't a possible case of patent infringement given the current definitions folks are using to sue.

[note: I wrote the Warcraft article]

/agree

If the patent-standards for the 80's and 90's were as awful as today, I'm sure that some CAD company would have locked up the idea of drag-select, and the Macintosh WIMP interface (and hence MacDraw/MacDraft) would have been legally impossible to create.

On a related note, after Blizzard Entertainment was acquired along with Sierra Entertainment in a corporate merger, I got to meet one of the principal developers of some of the old Sierra-style adventure games. One of his first questions was about the Warcraft path-finding algorithm. When I explained how I had written the algorithm (which I invented independently -- never having done any reading on path-finding), he said (more or less) "yeah, Sierra has a patent on that, but we don't enforce it". Incidentally, the algorithm was awful but functional -- it's apparently known as "crash and turn", but was clever in using minimal CPU since it had to run on the limited computers of the day.

The fact that it was possible for Sierra to patent something that a junior programmer like myself (at that time, 3 years of professional experience) could invent from whole cloth shows how weak the patent system is for software engineering.

Well, apropos of nothing, i just wanted to say this was a great article to read, and I hope you won't mind me indulging in a fan-boy moment by saying that the original Warcraft was a formative experience for me, and I spent much of middle school dreaming up and sketching out a game that was almost identical to Starcraft. :)

Glad you enjoyed the game, and thanks for the kind words. It was very exciting to build the game, particularly after the multiplayer code was functional -- we just knew folks were going to like it!

I discovered time travel with warcraft1, 25 min in mind-time, 8 hours in realworld-time.

'we decided to allow players to select only four units at a time based on the idea that users would be required to pay attention to their tactical deployments rather than simply gathering a mob and sending them into the fray all at once.'

Damnation! Sometimes I would just build huge mobs for the fun of it, but trying to get them to attack at the same time was a pain.

Great game though, artistically I enjoyed it more than Warcraft II.

Looking back, I really wished warcraft2 would've allowed you to bind groups of 9 to numbers.

Actually, you can; I wrote that feature all the way back in Warcraft 1.

Select a group of units. Press Ctrl+# (where # is 1..4 or maybe 1..9; I can no longer remember) to bind that group of units to that number key. Then press the # key by itself to select that group.

While it is fun to bash on now and assume things were different in the "good ol' days", the conversations around software patents and the complaints from developers in the field about large companies were the same then as they are now; any difference is only attributable to more fervent journalism playing up the battles, as well as the rise of legal play-by-plays of court cases.

For some evidence, back in May 2000 people on Slashdpt were up in arms about Microsoft nigh-unto patenting package management; the conversations were newer (Slashdot was maybe "Web 1.5"), but even back then I had to point out this wasn't really new: take any patent you don't like, start tracing back the references, and you realize IBM or Xerox probably patented the basics back in the 80s.

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/00/05/05/1033208/microsoft-pat...

http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5330&cid=1089815

Soooo, Warcraft 1 was mostly made by a junior programmer with 3 years of experience.

That's so awesome and so very bad for my ego at the same time.

> It’s surprising now to think what might have happened had Blizzard not controlled the intellectual property rights for the Warcraft universe — it’s highly unlikely Blizzard would be such a dominant player in the game industry today.

This seems a very important observation. Its interesting how most of the major pre-computer fantasy universes with big fan-bases (Battletech, Dungeons and Dragons, Warhammer, Star Wars etc.) never managed to really transition seriously into computer games (a few hits but lots of misses and certainly no dominant series like warcraft and starcraft). I think the licencers of these worlds have been guilty of being far too greedy over the years as a general rule, and hurt their own pockets through doing so...

Also - great article. I loved playing Warcraft 1, and despite the fact that the 'RTS race' soon exploded and left it in the rear-vision mirror, it was still incredibly important in defining the genre... (as a side note, most of the other Blizzard games around this time were great too - must have been a great team).

> Its interesting how most of the major pre-computer fantasy universes with big fan-bases (Battletech, Dungeons and Dragons, Warhammer, Star Wars etc.) never managed to really transition seriously into computer games (a few hits but lots of misses and certainly no dominant series like warcraft and starcraft).

Don't think that is entirely accurate. Star Wars: The Old Republic is the fastest growing MMO ever, achieving 1 million users in 3 days. It might never be WOW but it is definitely a major game.

What? DnD was the dominant force in 90's computer rpgs (BG/BG2/IWD/IWD2/Planescape Torment), and continued into the aughts with NWN/KOTOR/KOTOR2. There are several candidates for greatest rpg of all time on that list.

Star Wars has had its share of filler games, but also produced many truly great games. X-Wing/Tie Fighter were huge, and Dark Forces/Jedi Knight were pretty important in the early fps days. I've already mentioned KOTOR.

I guess that statement was a bit of a stretch, probably I could have worded slightly differently, but I'm not sure its too far from reality. If you look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PC_video_g... the only games which are up there are BG/BG2, NWN, and Star Wars Galaxies. Which is pitifully few for such previously dominant companies which had huge fan bases.... Also probably reflects that WoTC did a better job after buying the D&D trademarks (1997 - just before for 3/4 of these games) after TSR completely failed to capitalise for 15 years or so...

Lists like that are dominated by recent releases because of how rapidly the industry has expanded over the last 30 years.

This is true, but through the 80s and 90s (excluding the last few years discussed above) there were very few big games from these franchises either. Battletech had its most successful game in Mechwarrior 2, but this wasnt really huge. Star Wars fared a the best with a few reasonable hits - Tie Fighter, X wing vs., Dark Forces and Jedi Knight, but none of these were really anything approaching the scale of Warcraft 2. D&D released games all the time but few of them were better than mediocre (Eye of the Beholder was probably the biggest). Warhammer had nothing either.

Dune (mentioned in the article) is one counter-example I can think of.

> Stu is quite memorable as a voice actor in the role of Human Peon, where his rendition of a downtrodden brute-laborer was comedic genius.

Nice to finally know the person behind the still-funny-in-my-head warcraft phrases - "Yes me lord", "Who me", "Uhuhuh"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoMhMZZjbGg

I'm not listening.

"Your sound card works perfectly." "Your sound card works perfectly." "Your sound card works perfectly." "Enjoying yourself?" "Your sound card works perfectly." "Your sound card works perfectly." "Your sound card works perfectly." "It doesn't get any better than this!"

For those wanting to experience those days again (or for the first time?):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_A1GNx0M9M

Another one that springs to mind is from Constructor; "Hello this is constructor are you receiving?" with that very distinct British accent.

I spent my youth playing Dune 2 (and then Warcraft, etc).

This brings back so many memories. I had to find some Dune 2 gameplay on youtube... Hoping some people here will enjoy it too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiJLOjeyDxs

Being a fan of Starcraft 2, I can't believe how painful it was to have to select each unit individually... Glad the mechanics of RTSes have evolved.

Dune 2 was pretty much the sole reason why I wanted Amiga initially.

Same here. Dune 2 is the game that made me a gamer. It's also the game I beat the most times consecutively (iirc twice per side, so 6 times), with the next closes being Westwood's Nox (which coincidentally was the game that showed me how awesome multiplayer could be).

Ah nostalgia hit, thanks OP!

Dune 2 is favorite Tower Defense + Tank Rush game. Last month I played Dune 2000 Ordos to Level 8 (it's quite hard, or I suck more than I did in the youth).

There's also a "Super Dune 2" somewhere on the net for more difficulty.

I read that World of Warcraft was born when playtesting prototypes of Warcraft III, the first 3D version in the Warcraft series. People were having so much fun just running around with their 3D heroes that the concept grew. This is a great example of letting the product lead you.

Unfortunately, while the heroes may have inspired WoW, they also ruined the series. With the 3rd installment, Warcraft ceased to be a real-time strategy game and became an action-rpg. The heroes were so overpowered that you could win by focusing entirely on power-leveling your hero instead of building a city and managing units.

Do you mean the single player? While Warcraft 3 is much more micro-focused than earlier games, in even mildly competitive online play 1 grunt early on or mildly incorrect base layout is often the difference between winning and losing. You couldn't possibly win with only heroes.

Heroes are definitely the fun part in war3, it brings a lot more strategy to the game.

Update: Whoever down voted me, you never understand the game.

Clearly you are entitled to your own opinion about whether or not you enjoy heroes, but I fail to see how it adds "strategy" to the game.

Total Annihilation is a good example of a game that had a super-powerful unit that didn't completely break gameplay. The problem with Warcraft 3 was that I could build a massive army, yet if my hero was more than a couple of levels lower than my enemy, he could destroy everything I made using only his hero.

He could only do that when his opponent is a couple of levels lower than him.

I agree. Although the hero units were a nice spin on the RTS genre, I would have preferred to play without them. I was glad to see that they weren't used in Starcraft 2 multiplayer.

I think it's a clever move. It means they avoided conflicting with the Starcraft series' gameplay style. WC3 is halfway between SC2 and DOTA

> While Warcraft was a DOS “Protected Mode” game, the modem driver could be called from both Protected Mode and Real Mode due to quirks in the DOS operating system and the 80386 chip-architecture it ran on [...]

Could someone provide more information on this? I'm guessing it had to do with the fact the serial interrupt could occur while some DOS system call was executing 16 bit code (or perhaps BIOS code)?

Yes, you've got it exactly.

When running in real mode, if an interrupt arrived the processor would switch to protected mode, handle the interrupt, and return to real mode.

This real->protected->real switching process was so slow on the computers of the day that it was possible to lose data, so it was necessary to write both real and protected mode interrupt handlers to grab data off the serial port.

You can imagine how much fun this type of code would be to write without any debugging tools or an Internet filled with code-samples.

It's a great illustration, this story, about how seemingly unimportant decisions can be made that then get carried down through a company for years into the future.

I can't wait for part 2. I wish there was a book written about the early days of Blizzard or Westwood Studios and those kind of great companies, kind of like the book Masters of Doom about id Software, or Revolution in the Valley about Apple.

There is a video series on YouTube covering the early days of Blizzard (and back when they were S&S), Westwood and id.

Search YouTube for "All Your History Are Belong To Us".

Thanks, I had no idea this existed!

Have you read the journals of Jordan Mechner from when he was developing Prince of Persia? They're a fascinating look at the development of early computer games.

http://jordanmechner.com/old-journals/

Looks fascinating, but I can't get to page 2 :(

This makes me wonder; would it be possible to get software patents on various game mechanics? What if the first RTS producer had patented a lot of it? Is that so different from smartphone interface patents?

Yes, there are some that have already been granted. The most famous one I'm aware of is the patent on having mini-games in loading screens:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2008/03/patents-on-video-game-...

Kinda like this?

http://kotaku.com/5595453/youtube-easter-egg-lets-you-play-s...

Thanks so much for the article. I grew up on W2, C&C and after 15 years, it's always nice to know how it all came to be/worked in the back ground and the little details of it all.

"Work, work."

For some reason I love reading about the development of those old game classics, be it Warcraft, Prince of Persia, or Paradroid...

What about Dune II? It was way ahead of its time. If I remember correctly it had unlimited unit select.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_II

The article mentions that. Apparantly it was playing Dune II at lunch that inspired Warcraft, and the unit selection was put in since Dune II only allowed you to select one unit at once.

It was apparently Command & Conquer that added unlimited unit selection.

> Unlike Dune 2, which only allowed the user to select a single unit at a time, and which necessitated frenzied mouse-clicking to initiate joint-unit tactical combat, it was obvious that enabling players to select more than one unit would speed task-force deployment and dramatically improve game combat.

Dune II is the grandfather of all of modern RTS (for good and for bad, the genre hasn't changed that much). But the unlimited unit select wasn't there and starting/cancelling an attack when you had twenty or so units was a joke. I wasn't even a teenager at the time and I can remember desperately trying to get large groups of units off the sand when the sandword was inbound (some people will know what I am talking about).

What I find really interesting in the article is this:

> Later in the development process, and after many design arguments between team-members, we decided to allow players to select only four units at a time based on the idea that users would be required to pay attention to their tactical deployments rather than simply gathering a mob and sending them into the fray all at once.

This, this is probably the reason why Warcraft and Warcraft II (even Starcraft!) had this limitation. As a kid I could never figure out why this was the case when Westwood had no limits on unit selection from Command and Conquer and onwards.

Starting and canceling an attack was actually quite easy: Turn game speed all the way down to a crawl, click all the stuff you have to click, turn speed up again :).

No, it didn't. Eventually it was rewritten (by fans I think) as Dune2000, and this version did have unlimited unit select.

Dune2000 is an official successor by Westwood Studios. It is based on the C&C-Engine and basically plays and behaves like Red Alert 2, right down to the awful C-Movie cutscenes.

Actually it was Red Alert 1 with altered graphics and just a single new feature: technology overview screens. The graphics for the G.I.'s were exactly the same as in RA1.

He admits to the Warhammer influence.

Mass fanboy seppuku in 5, 4, 3...

I thought that influence was common knowledge?

Ditto. Especially for Starcraft.

Actually the influences for Starcraft were -- I think -- much broader than those for Warcraft.

Warcraft was heavily inspired by Tolkien and Warhammer, whereas Starcraft drew inspiration from basically every sci-fi series ever made, most particularly the Alien series (compare the Zerg Hydralisk to Giger's Alien) and of course from the art direction of Starship Troopers. But yeah, Warhammer 40K was inspirational too.

The artwork for the two alien races in Starcraft were each redone three separate times. The biggest challenge was that players couldn't easily (and quickly) grok the differences between the various units.

In Warcraft, you look at a lumber mill or barracks, and you have an idea what it is and what it might be used for. In Starcraft the difficulty was that -- upon initially playing the game -- it was tough to tell what any unit or building did for you.

Consequently making game units that looked visually familiar by including known sci-fi elements is useful in that -- when done well -- gives players a clue as to the function of a unit.

Or at least that's what we told ourselves when we ripped elements from other games & movies :)

It was playing warcraft & starcraft that got me into warhammer and warhammer 40k when I was in high school, rather than the other way around. Funny that.

I feel like I've mostly heard about people talking about W40k being influenced by (or "ripping off") Starcraft and not the reverse.

W40k was the primary inspiration for Starcraft (W40k has been around since the 80s), and the company that owned it was in talks with Blizzard for an RTS game based on the IP. However, when that deal fell through, Blizzard expanded their sources of inspiration to include more popular Sci Fi sources, i.e., Aliens. and Starship Troopers.

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