I didn't get the feeling that aw3c2 was being a jerk. The demo really does use sprites ripped from Diablo and it's in alpha quality. I could neither move nor attack, all I could do is watch that first monster attack me and wait while it completely depleted my health, at which point I did not die but just continued to stand there. Tested on FF 18.
The problem with this demo isn't that it's pretty alpha (and to be fair, it is, you can move, and attack, that's about it).
The problem is that it uses stolen assets from another game.
That is 100% not ok, even for a tech demo.
(...there are plenty of free game assets out there, creative commons license; drawing attention to yourself by stealing someone elses art is douche behaviour)
People sample audio all the time. This isn't a commercial project and sampling some sprites from a 13 year old game doesn't seem like it's going to impact Blizzard in any way. He should, of course, give the original creators credit in his README at some point (judging by the fact there is no README the project may be still undergoing development).
Sure, it's not a commercial interest thing, its just about ethics. :)
I'm not going to stand up and tell someone its mean and unethical put some harsh criticism out about a project which is in itself unethically stealing art assets and associating itself with a brand it has nothing to do with.
If you're happy to accept this project and what it's doing, you should equally be happy to accept it's going to get some flack for it. You can't have it both ways (doing this is ok even tho its unethical AND but its unethical to criticise it and that's bad).
It won't impact Blizzard but it's going to make it to the front page of HN. If the same demo was made with custom sprites, we would probably never have heard of it since it indeed doesn't do much.
Related question. Can I use the Quake 3 sounds for debugging purposes in my open source project? Or are they copyrighted and I would be doing something bad by including them in my project's folder.
I don't blame him for being a bit frustrated though. I doesn't say anywhere that it doesn't support firefox. Was only able to move around and kill things when I switched to chrome.
OT: Gamers tend not to have a lot in between hatred and love to begin with, and if you're at all familiar with the current Diablo community, well, Diablo 3 hasn't brought out the most civil side of the fans.
