# \[HS\] to Sam at Blizzard

**URL:** <https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/hs-to-sam-at-blizzard/7289>\
**Category:** SDL Development\
**Created:** [August 21, 2002, 7:01am UTC](https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/hs-to-sam-at-blizzard/7289 "2002-08-21T07:01:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Alexis1](https://discourse.libsdl.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/a88e57/32.png) [@Alexis1](https://discourse.libsdl.org/u/Alexis1)\
**Post date:** [August 21, 2002, 7:01am UTC](https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/hs-to-sam-at-blizzard/7289/1 "2002-08-21T07:01:01Z")

</div>

OK it’s HS… 🙂  
But come on, plz sam, ask guys at Blizzard to publish a WarCraft III  
postmortem in the GamedevMag.

“Curtis Cooper” a ?crit dans le message de news:  
mailman.1029694925.28785.sdl at [libsdl.org](http://libsdl.org)…

> Hi Sam,
> 
> Now that you’re working for the almighty Blizzard Entertainment, I was  
> curious to find out if you would be at liberty to share any information  
> about their products from a coding perspective? I’m particularly  
> interested  
> in Warcraft III, though if that’s off limits to talk about at all because  
> it’s so new, I understand.
> 
> So, I’ll phrase my questions this way: I know I will never get my hands  
> on the source code itself, but if I were granted as a birthday present the  
> answer to ten questions about the Warcraft III source code, here is what  
> they would be:
> 
> 1. How many lines of code does Warcraft III require?  
> (I was guessing ~ 1 million, but I realize that program length depends a  
> lot on the language used and the programming style).
> 
> 2. How do you guys make the framerates so high? I have trouble getting  
> high framerates in my OpenGL game (though it is very playable on a  
> GeForce card or better), although I don’t have much experience yet with  
> performance  
> profiling.
> 
> 3. Is it difficult or relatively straightforward to simultaneously keep  
> both Macintosh OS, OS X, and Microsoft Windows releases of the product  
> working correctly and in nearly the same way?
> 
> 4. Is SDL used at all for the cross-platform maintenance, and if so,  
> could the game be ported to Linux fairly easily if Blizzard were willing  
> to do so? (Sorry if this is a bold question, but this is a wish-list  
> after all).
> 
> 5. Is the source code C or C++?
> 
> 6. Is the programming paradigm procedural or object-oriented?
> 
> 7. How much of the game’s source code was borrowed from its  
> predecessor, Warcraft II?
> 
> 8. Did Blizzard write all or most of the source code themselves, or does  
> the game make extensive use of multimedia libraries (for example, higher  
> level  
> than OpenGL itself), and if so, which ones?
> 
> 9. Did Blizzard write a “game engine” as the foundation for Warcraft  
> III that could potentially be purchased by another game company to write  
> an  
> RTS based on the Warcraft III “game engine” in the same way that Lucas  
> Arts bought the Age of Empires II game engine to more easily implement  
> Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds?
> 
> 10. Would you consider the game’s source code to be well-designed or  
> hacked? Basically, what I’m asking you here is whether the source code  
> is designed well from a maintenance perspective, and whether it is  
> well-organized and readable enough so that it would be possible for a  
> person  
> who didn’t write it to figure out, at least in some overall sense, how it  
> works.
> 
> You’re probably wondering what the purpose of this message is. The  
> questions are mostly for personal curiosity. But I’m also interested  
> in finding out just how much goes (from a true professional  
> game programmer’s perspective) into a project of the size and complexity  
> of\> Warcraft III–it seems absolutely mind-boggling when I think  
> about it–and how a project of such a grand scale can actually be made to  
> work. I think it would be interesting for a lot of us game programming  
> hobbyists / amateurs to have a sense of what the pros do in approaching  
> the development of a gargantuan and wildly complex computer game like  
> Warcraft III.
> 
> Cheers,  
> Curtis
> 
> ```
> * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
> * Curtis S. Cooper, Graduate Research Assistant *
> 
> ```
> 
> - Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona \*
> - [http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~curtis](http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~curtis) \*
> - Kuiper Space Sciences, Rm. 318 \*  
> \* 1629 E. University Blvd., \*  
> \* Tucson, AZ 85721 \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \*  
> \* Wk: (520) 621-1471 \*
> 
> ```
> * * * * * * * * * * * *
> 
> ```