Diablo II....Plays OK...Reccomended Settings?

vandewaalsvandewaals
Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
Hi!



I used to LOVE playing Diablo with a buddy in school on his PC. I just bought Diablo II and installed all the patches to bring it up to date and to play in OS X. It plays pretty good...but it can get choppy during some battles. I am on a 667 MHz Powerbook with 1 GB of RAM, and I was wondering what setting people have used to coax the best performance out a similar (or lower powered) set-up. Many thanks. This is the first retail game I have bought since my Commodore 64 . Thanks for any replies. Laterz.



I.M. VanDeWaals

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 15
    mac's girlmac's girl Posts: 556member
    i dunno, i gave up on diablo2 when i got my new imacG4. it never performed well. battle scenes had way too much lag and it was no fun, if not impossible, to fight. oddly, it worked best on my decrepit powerbook G3 233mhz with a 2mb ATI card. i had no HD space to install the expansion pack, so i put it on the new imac to discover Nvidia didnt do the game any justice. never played the game again and i dont know how well it does with the newer ATI cards. however, there are a gazillion patches and you may just need the right one to get it working better. also, i am not sure if you can play the game in OS X (back then you couldnt), so try booting up in 9.
  • Reply 2 of 15
    noseynosey Posts: 307member
    OS9 is definitely better for playing the game. I tried it in OSX but it was just too slow, and choppy, too... no 'flow' to the movements.



    In OS9 it performs really well, and that is the system it was designed for.
  • Reply 3 of 15
    jimdadjimdad Posts: 209member
    Yup, diablo 2 LOD in OSX sucks, I'm afraid. Plays v. well in 9, though. Wonder why that is. I thought that with 10.2.3 some of that would have been resolved but I played it the other night and suffered ritual humiliation on the cow level by being killed 4 times in a row just after going through portal

  • Reply 4 of 15
    noseynosey Posts: 307member
    Simply overhead. They designed the program to work with the minimal overhead of OS9 behind the screens. With OSX grtabbing so much memory, using its own paging system and memory management it adds enough cycles of unseen activity to cause the game to behave slowly.



    I never tried it on a fancy-golly-wow system, but it sure did bog down on my (almost) antiquated B&W at 350mhz...
  • Reply 5 of 15
    westiewestie Posts: 2member
    [quote]Originally posted by nosey:

    <strong>Simply overhead. They designed the program to work with the minimal overhead of OS9 behind the screens. With OSX grtabbing so much memory, using its own paging system and memory management it adds enough cycles of unseen activity to cause the game to behave slowly.



    I never tried it on a fancy-golly-wow system, but it sure did bog down on my (almost) antiquated B&W at 350mhz...</strong><hr></blockquote>
  • Reply 6 of 15
    westiewestie Posts: 2member
    [quote]Originally posted by westie:

    [QB][/QB]<hr></blockquote>



    The Diablo II works fine in my G4 Imac flat panel, Did you guys download the Diablo II (Carbon) patch from Battle.net.

    I've have so much fun everyday with my barbarian.
  • Reply 7 of 15
    jimdadjimdad Posts: 209member
    Yeah, I've got flat panel as well with 512 mbs. D/loaded patch but runs like a dog at crucial moments.
  • Reply 8 of 15
    vandewaalsvandewaals Posts: 450member
    Thanks for your replies...



    I downloaded the OS X patch, along with the 1.09 patch for the game (needs to be installed before the OS X patch). Anyway...I've found that there is an option to use Open GL for the graphics...or to render in "software". The software option is MUCH smoother. I also tweaked the graphics down in terms of lighting, etc. In really intense battles (lots of bad guys swarming) it gets a little choppy..but not bad! And this is on a revison B TiBook.



    I.M. VanDeWaals
  • Reply 9 of 15
    a2daja2daj Posts: 30member
    Diablo II definitely plays best in Software mode in OS X for both ATI and NVIDIA cards, and when using anything NVIDIA related, in both 9.2.2 and 10.2.3. RAVE under 9.2.2 is alright with ATI cards, but IMO runs better in Software mode. Software mode offers lower peak framerates but more consistent framerates.

    In OS X, software mode for everything. The OpenGL renderer has serious issues. Whether it's Blizzard's fault, Apple's fault, or a combination of both, that's up in the air, but Blizzard points fingers at Apple and OpenGL's texture loading/unloading performance. DII has to load and unload textures constantly on the fly.

    DII Carbon seems to fly on dual proc machines in software mode. I haven't played with it enough through the various levels since I don't own a dual proc system yet.

    IMO, best experience you're going to have playing Diablo II on a Mac requires OS 9 and a 3dfx Voodoo 3,4, or 5 as the engine was designed with Glide (3dfx's 3D API) in mind. When I know I'll be playing a bunch of Diablo II, I boot my G4 867 into OS 9 and use my Voodoo5. I can play with everything turned on high quality and everything runs great.
  • Reply 10 of 15
    eliahueliahu Posts: 71member
    DII runs well on my GHz powerbook. I wanted access to my browser while running Diablo, so I ran it in windowed mode (command-M) and framerates jumped through the roof. Dramatic performance improvement.
  • Reply 11 of 15
    a2daja2daj Posts: 30member
    [quote]Originally posted by eliahu:

    <strong>DII runs well on my GHz powerbook. I wanted access to my browser while running Diablo, so I ran it in windowed mode (command-M) and framerates jumped through the roof. Dramatic performance improvement.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    I believe Diablo II (Carbon) defaults to OpenGL mode with your Powerbook, which is complete crap in terms of performance. By switching to windowed mode, the render switches to software mode, thus the leap in performance.



    BTW, for those that don't know how to check your framerates in Diablo II, hit Enter to bring up the chat box, then type "fps" with out the "s. Hit enter again, and some data should appear at the top of your screen. Along with your fps (which is updated every few seconds), you should see your Ping and which renderer you're using. If you play in Single Player mode, your framerates will cap out at 25 fps. All the multiplayer modes have uncapped framerates.



    [ 01-08-2003: Message edited by: a2daj ]</p>
  • Reply 12 of 15
    rogue27rogue27 Posts: 607member
    It runs bad in OpenGL mode in OS X.



    I heard that the 1.10 patch for Diablo II will improve the performance, but nobody really knows when that will be released aside from "when it's done".



    It was supposed to come out in April, and the date kept getting pushed back and it's still not out. I hear it's supposed to be close though.



    Until then, I just run in software mode.
  • Reply 13 of 15
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Paramedic12 View Post


    First, sorry for bringing up an old thread but I am currently playing the Diablo 3 beta and I am wondering what are the best/recommended settings for the game.



    As you may know, the Diablo 3 beta has just been released ! I got my hand on a beta key and I finished the beta with most of the characters so far. Also, Blizzard announced today (on the official battle net website) that the official release will be earlier in 2012. They announced some other news such as the new barbarian skills system, and the introduction of the new runestones.



    Any Mac users in the Diablo 3 beta so far? If yes, shoot me a PM!



    There was absolutely no reason for you to necro a nine year old thread.
  • Reply 14 of 15
    tontontonton Posts: 14,067
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


    There was absolutely no reason for you to necro a nine year old thread.



    Yeah, I don't get it. Why not just start a new thread? Something smells fishy here. A bot from within Blizzard?
  • Reply 15 of 15
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by tonton View Post


    Yeah, I don't get it. Why not just start a new thread? Something smells fishy here. A bot from within Blizzard?



    In retrospect, I'm pretty sure it's just spam. I don't play any of their games, but that link of his raises SO many red flags to me.
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