[rbarris]

See http://www.blizzard.com for more info. This is our new Cocoa-based native installer for OS X, we're going to follow it up with a similar item for Starcraft in the near future.

This installer alllows one to install Diablo II and the Lord of Destruction expansion pack from the original CD-ROM media, on an OS X system without any OS9 or Classic support installed.

the direct link for the download is

http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/diablo2/..._Installer.dmg

Rob rbarris "at" blizzard.com

[Horsepoo!!!]

Originally posted by rbarris:
See http://www.blizzard.com for more info. This is our new Cocoa-based native installer for OS X, we're going to follow it up with a similar item for Starcraft in the near future.

This installer alllows one to install Diablo II and the Lord of Destruction expansion pack from the original CD-ROM media, on an OS X system without any OS9 or Classic support installed.

the direct link for the download is

http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/diablo2/..._Installer.dmg

Rob rbarris "at" blizzard.com

Great stuff!

[OwlBoy]

You guys rock!

-Owl

[iloop]

I'll echo the other sentiments. Thanks tons for continuing to listen to us Mac users. Blizzard has always been my favourite gaming company and continues to impress.

Thanks tons!

[SteevAK]

Totally unexpected! Thank you so much!

I don't know if this means much, but this is one of the reasons I buy just about every Blizzard game that comes out. You guys support your games and give your fans cool stuff like this. Keep it up!

[eevyl]

Thanks a bazillion!

Looking forward to that Starcraft OS X installer. I just love blizzard games and it's wonderfull to be able to play old ones on newest machines and OSes.

[-Q-]

Time to dust off the Diablo II CDs.

[Turias]

Excellent! Thank you!

[MrCaN]

Very nice, the only thing that has been stoping me from installing 2 of my favorite games from a few years ago, and are still great games to play.

[Scotttheking]

yahoo!

Hey SteevAK, it's time to get back into D2 now that our characters have been deleted again

[MrCaN]

Originally posted by Scotttheking:
yahoo!

Hey SteevAK, it's time to get back into D2 now that our characters have been deleted again

So who wants to do a MacNN D2 group?

[Thain Esh Kelch]

Originally posted by MrCaN:
So who wants to do a MacNN D2 group?

Oh no... Dont make me... It'll remove my.. Life...

Must.. Stay.. In... Real world....

[Turias]

Originally posted by Thain Esh Kelch:
Oh no... Dont make me... It'll remove my.. Life...

Must.. Stay.. In... Real world....

Until World of Warcraft comes out...

So, you might as well just give up now.

[juanvaldes]

You guys kick so much ass!!!

[MacGallant]

Hey rbarris, I'm just curious, but why is the single player portion of Diablo 2 capped at 25 fps?

If there were no fps limits then the fps would be higher and might allow for smoother gameplay, right?

I would love for the single player portion of Diablo 2 to have less lag and slowdowns and smoother gameplay if it is possible.

Oh and by the way, thank you rbarris and to the wonderful Mac programmers at Blizzard for putting out a OSX native Diablo 2 installer.

[Thain Esh Kelch]

Originally posted by Turias:
Until World of Warcraft comes out...

So, you might as well just give up now.

I have to earn some money so I can keep playing WOW nonstop... ;D

[olePigeon]

Speak of the Devil.

[a2daj]

Originally posted by MacGallant:
Hey rbarris, I'm just curious, but why is the single player portion of Diablo 2 capped at 25 fps?

If there were no fps limits then the fps would be higher and might allow for smoother gameplay, right?

I would love for the single player portion of Diablo 2 to have less lag and slowdowns and smoother gameplay if it is possible.

Oh and by the way, thank you rbarris and to the wonderful Mac programmers at Blizzard for putting out a OSX native Diablo 2 installer.

All of the animation is based around the 25 fps limit. If you're getting exactly 25 fps, you're not going to see any differences in animation if you're getting 80 fps (in Diablo II specifically). Even in multiplayer, with framerates in the 100s in some areas you won't see your character moving any faster than 25 fps.

I do have a hypothesis why they don't cap multiplayer but I need to verify that in single player when your performance drops below 25 fps that the game time slows down as well. It's kind of hard to explain but here goes... In multiplayer, you can't have the main server slow down just because one of the players drops down to 14 fps for a few seconds. While that player's client is below 25 fps, everyone else might be up in the 40s-80s and getting smooth gameplay. When the slow client finally gets above 25 fps there's some fastforwarding that goes on as the client plays catchup but none of the other players are affected.. I don't believe single player has that fastfowarding effect when the client goes back to the 25 fps limit (again, I need to verify this sometime).

[rbarris]

Originally posted by MacGallant:
Hey rbarris, I'm just curious, but why is the single player portion of Diablo 2 capped at 25 fps?

If there were no fps limits then the fps would be higher and might allow for smoother gameplay, right?

The answer to that question has to do with minimum system requirements and being able to support a mix of fast and slow machines in the same multiplayer game. I'll also point out that D2 is sprite based so some of its animations are tied to that fundamental frame rate. As with many programming questions the issue is subtle and has effects in a lot of places in the code.

Rest assured that if you notice choppiness that it has nothing to do with the FPS cap, more likely texture thrashing or file loading from disk.

Rob

[MrCaN]

Yea, installed it, got online and played for 30 min and now have a level 5 sorc. I play on the west server, were does everyone else play

[starman]

What's the largest resolution this game will support? Can it do 1920x1200?

Mike

[MacGallant]

Originally posted by starman:
What's the largest resolution this game will support? Can it do 1920x1200?

Mike

I believe it's 800x600.

[starman]

Yeah, just installed it. Bummer.

I was hoping that someone could have at least bumped it a LITTLE bit to 1024x768.

Mike

[OwlBoy]

That is due to the fully sprite based interface and world.

-Owl

[motoyen]

Now I can ditch OS9 once and for all. One problem tho, it plays super smooth on my 867/G4Tower with 1GB RAM, but my friends 700/G4iMac with 384MB RAM the game kept locking up. I switched to software mode and it seemed to play fine. Is this because of not enough RAM on her computer? We are both running 10.3.3 and have the same video card, GeForce 2MX 32MB.

[Graymalkin]

*sigh*

Thank you so much Blizzard! These sort of antics are specifically why I keep buying your games. I've been missing D2 since I got my Powerbook because I have never been able to get it installed correctly. The installed craps out in Classic and no matter what I do I can't move the files manually onto the disk and have the game play correctly.

If any other game developers are reading by chance: learn a lesson from Blizzard. While the Mac gaming market is by no means huge it does exist and we do buy games. Real support for our small but loyal market means continued business from us.

[starman]

Originally posted by OwlBoy:
That is due to the fully sprite based interface and world.

-Owl

I thought of that this morning. It's been SO long since I've played a sprite-based game that I completely forgot WHY it was locked in at 800x600.

Mike

[ARK]

I have several characters on the west server non ladder. Im trying to organize an 8 player griswold wearing paladin team. Anyone interested?

http://homepage.mac.com/ark/web/home.html

[SteevAK]

Originally posted by Scotttheking:
yahoo!

Hey SteevAK, it's time to get back into D2 now that our characters have been deleted again

I don't have much time, but I might be game.