[Black_Rain]

ok... so i'm new to mac, this is my first, c2d mbp 2.16/1gb

I recently installed diablo 2 and the Lord of Destruction expansion set on my mac...

it doesnt work... I installed along with it the download from apple that makes games playable... i dont know what its called..but i searched their site and it said for diablo2 i needed to dl a specific file...so thats what i got...

now when i put it in the drive... and load up the game...it loads and the sound is there... BUT the visual is all f'd up. The screen is scrambled and i cannot make anything out but the familiar colors...

if anyone has any idea...that would be great... thanks in advance for any help!

EDIT****

this game is made by blizzard and hosted on battle.net

so is Starcraft and the respecting expansion set... Starcraft works flawlessly on my mbp, made by blizzard and hosted on battle.net...

any ideas?

thanks again!

[mr. burns]

there's two ways to run Diablo II. in software and in hardware/openGL mode. the openGL way has been completely useless for years. on my old machine, the graphics weren't glitched, it just ran really slow, even though my graphics card had more than enough power to handle it. on my mac pro it's just a garbled mess. i don't remember it ever being playable, and blizzard has shown no interest in fixing it. so you have to run the game with no hardware acceleration. luckily the game is old and that's no problem. hold down the option key, then open up D2 and a video settings window will come up. turn on software mode and start the game. it'll play fine. there isn't much difference between hardware and software graphics really, besides this nausiating perspective effect that tried to make the game look 3D.

[Black_Rain]

ok great..i'll try this tomarrow when i have my cd...thanks

[webb3201]

The good news is it looks and runs fine in hardware.

[joe]

Definitely try the software rendering option. You will get more much better frame rates- especially when there are plenty of baddies on screen.

[mr. burns]

Originally Posted by webb3201 

The good news is it looks and runs fine in hardware.

did you read anything in this thread?

[Black_Rain]

thanks for the help guys


It works great...

the ONLY thing i dont know how to do is minimize it...

like instead of exiting the whole game to view my desktop, is there a shortcut to hide it for a little bit so i can go about doing my shiz in another program?

[joe]

IIRC, the "Command+M" key combination will allow you to get to to the desktop. That's suppose to work with any Blizzard game on Mac. The Command key is the Apple key next to the space bar. I just started up DiabloII to verify this works (it's running in the background as I type this).

However, this actually runs the game in a window. The closest thing I can think of to the WIndows "minimize" function is to use Expose. The default keys are F9 for "all windows" and F11 for "desktop." If you use a multibutton mouse you can assign these to a mouse button. I use the middle mouse button (scroll wheel button ) for "All Windows" as thats the most common Expose feature I use. However, I also use "active screen corners" to assign these when I'm using my MacBook. This is especially handy when in a public place since in addition to the Expose features, as I can activate my screen saver with password lock instantly. Probably not as useful on a desktop computer. But I thought I post it anyway since you have a MacBook Pro.

Another tip coming from 'doze: Command+Tab works the same as Alt+Tab if you want to quickly switch through all your active programs and the Finder/desktop. This doesn't work when running D2 full screen tho since it assigns the tab key for the mini-map. So as with the Expose feature above, you have to already have switched to window mode (Cmd+M). In my case clicking the middle mouse button is faster than the Cmd+Tab key combo. But YMMV. Good luck.

[mr. burns]

once you go to window mode by pressing command-m, you can minimize the window.

[Black_Rain]

thanks a lot guys.

I did discover the comman+tab, but it does not work in full-screen mode. But anyway, I will try the comman+M next time I play...

once again...thanks for putting up with my ignorance, i'm still in the switch mode from windows to mac...