[mac freak]

I got Diablo II about a week and a half ago, and I've really enjoyed it, except that it will, sometimes, run VERY choppily. I will sometimes end up missing a good 50% of the frames! And even worse, the cursor will sometimes have very delayed responses, causing much trouble (you'll understand if you have the game as well.

These periods will last for about 5 minutes, usually with the CD drive making noises the whole way through...
And then it will run at a speed similar to how it runs on friends' PIII's.

I have tried quitting the finder, setting up a base system on my spare partition, updating the game to v1.02, updating my CD drive's firmware... no change...

I'm running it in RAVE mode at thousands of colors on the stock graphics card on an iMac 350 with 128 MB RAM (I have 125 MB allocated to D2). I have the video options set to - Lighting Quality: medium (low makes no difference); and Blended shadows & Perspective off.

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

From what I can gather, and I haven't played the game on a Mac yet, the problem is install size. You say that the CD is constantly whirring...well this would lead me to believe that a larger more "recommended" install of the game is necessary. If I recall correctly, the optimum install is close to a gig or something...

So try that and see if there's any performance increase. (Also, the iMac only exactly meets the minimum graphics card size requirements for D2 sooo.....)

Trevor Haldenby www.vividimagination.com

[mac freak]

I did the "reccommended install" of 900 MB (allows multiplayer & single player). I suppose I could have done the "Full Install" of 1.5 GB, but the installer tells me that all that achieves is not having to swap CD's to watch the movies. Plus, I try to preserve as much HD space as I can.

And I know that the iMac just meets the requirements, but I've heard stories of the game running perfectly on 300 MHz iBooks, so I figured I shouldn't be having trouble on a 350 MHz desktop system.

But thanks for the advice

[DocWest]

Can you make an image of the CD and run it off that? That way it totally avoids the iMac's CD Drive which isn't that fast.
But if you want to conserve your hard drive space, then I guess it's not an option.

From what I'VE heard, stories of Diablo II running perfectly on an iBook of any kind should be few and far between. Firstly, the iBook only has HALF of the minimum required video memory to run the game with 3D Acceleration, and secondly, the processor speed is in most cases 50 MHZ SLOWER than that of the iMac...

I think perhaps these tall tales of people running D2 perfectly on their iBooks are just that...tall tales

As to why it still won't run on your machine optimally, I haven't a clue if you performed the recommended install, and I have been told that the 1.5 gig install really isn't worth it unless you're a no-disc-switch-freak.

A possible problem could be that you only have 128 MB of physical RAM, and you're allocating 125 to D2. This either means that you're running your system on 2 or 3 megs of RAM, or you're using a whole bunch of Virtual Memory, which could be the cause of the problems.

Trevor Haldenby www.vividimagination.com

[Bubba Jones]

I think we're stuck until the next blizzard update. I'm running diabloII on my pismo 400 and have experienced similar problems. they seem to disappear after i've been playing the game for a while. i figure it's not looking for as much new information off the disc. granted my machine is more powerful than yours, i really think that for what we see an g3 at 300mhz should run fine. This just mt opinion, but i think we're playing diablo 1.9 or something. Fair amount of bugs, if you have finished the game once you will see a fair amount of places where a story piece or an idea seems to have been omitted. Have you heard the rumors about the expansion pack? I think were going to see a slew of updates from blizzard. They just thought after 2 years they had to get this bad boy out. Oh, to actually get back to your question(sorry for the ramble)i'm using bare set too and have 192 ram. The video options within the game don't make any difference. I'm running on 95% quality and i've tried it on the lowest settings too. It's just the damn cd access time.

------------------

[mac freak]

When I run the game, I always use a utility called "Finder Quitter" to, obviously, quit the finder first so that I can allocate as much physical memory as possible to the game. I do have VM on, set to 200 MB... should I turn it off?

I will also try creating a CD image to run of my hard drive... sounds hopeful, although it leaves me with less than a GB of internal HD space...

[krb]

So, I'm not sure if you all are experiencing a problem with the ATI card not being supported in D2, but in case you haven't seen tips floating around the web...

This link contains a hack w/ResEdit that will allow D2 to work with OpenGL with a ATI Rage 128 installed. Apparently, D2 won't work with RAVE. Don't know if this is true or not, but just something I've read. http://www.macwarrior.com/features/d...ay2/index.html

Also, there is another hack available at http://www.arcticrain.com/ This is a compressed file and unfortunately I'm not able to see if it contains documentation since I'm not currently using my mac and it's an .hqx so I'm not sure what it actually does.

Don't know if this will help, but it might be worth a try or at least worth the touble to investigate.

Good Luck.

[mac freak]

Yeah, I have seen both of those... haven't tried them, though, because D2 must recognize the card if it allows me to run in RAVE mode (and why would I want to use OpenGL if RAVE is available?).

As for the CD image method... no good. After mounting the image and starting D2, it still asks me to insert the "Diablo II Play Disc."

But, to everyone, thanks for all your suggestions . I know that Blizzard us working on a rather substantial update -- v1.03 -- that might fix the problem. But even if not, the game is still very playable, just with a few annoyances every once in a while. And anyway, even if the game is buggy, I'm glad I have it instead of still waiting for Blizzard to finish it (which I have been for years).

[Evangellydonut]

Here's my experience with D2...
I'm on a G4/450 w/384 megs of RAM and the latest drivers/updates etc. (200 megs assigned to D2)

First, tried full install of D2 onto a partition that had 1.52Gig of HD space left, and got an error toward the end of installation, probably 'cuz it was short of space...Then I installed the basic 500meg version (later, installed full Deus Ex, but that's for another discussion), and placed the Playdisk in my stock DVD ROM and Movie Disk in the Yamaha 6/4/16 CDRW. (Tried the same thing macfreak did, same result)
Diablo loaded fine, but didn't recognize anything, so I had to run in software mode only. I even installed the OpenGL that came with D2, knowing that I already have it installed. No luck. So I applied the hack program, and things worked fine. I hated the fact that D2 doesn't support sprockets, thus I wasn't able to use more than 2 buttons, nor was I able to use my gravis-pad.
My game resolution was set to 640*480 (I wish I had either Radeon or FSAA of V5...) and things ran as smooth as can be. Only glitch was on initial attack of any monster, it'll freeze there for a second or two, that's it.
I certainly hope a new update is here to support OpenGL and RAVE...sprocket support is optional, but would be nice too...

I wouldn't expect the performance of Diablo 2 to change much between now and any patches that come out. Some of the problems you're talking about seem more RAM related than anything else. I'd reccomend at least 128MB of physical RAM to play Diablo 2 well, and probably more. My upgraded PTP/200 (373mhz, 64MB RAM, V2) was unplayable, and my iMac DV SE (350mhz?, 128MB RAM) was slow but tolerable except in busy areas or in network play. The game even lurched sometimes on my friend's P3/550 128MB RAM, although as a general rule it was silky smooth. The lurching went away after he brought that up to 256MB RAM.

The moral of the story? You need a ludicrous amount of RAM to play the latest games. Diablo 2 and Deus Ex are just the start.

-dung aka shaft aka taavo

ps. My Dual G4/500 320MB RAM crashes during the initial video test. I'm confident that it'll be relatively silky, once that little technicality gets resolved. It's all about the RAM.

[mac freak]

The box says that 64 MB is bare bottom, and runs perfectly on a friend's brand new PIII 800 with 96 MB (and a 48x CD drive), so I still think It's CD access time, not RAM, that is causing the sluggishness. Doesn't the old iMac 350 (my computer) still have a fraggin' 24x drive?

I mean, whenever it runs slowly, the CD drive makes noise, if anyone read the original post, and the noise goes away at the same time as the sluggishness...

[Evangellydonut]

Isn't the stock Toshiba 5x DVD also 24x CD? I've had no problems with it. Don't think D2 really uses the Movie CD yet, except maybe the intro movie (couldnt' tell 'cuz I got both cds in), which ran fine.
I think more RAM is definitely the way to go. I just read somewhere that turning off VM will improve the performance by a lot. (currently 128 megs of PC100 RAM only run for about US$130 w/tax 'n shipping) With VM off, Deus Ex suggests 170 Megs of RAM!!! D2 suggests 100ish, if I recall correctly...

[blizzard]

If I recall correctly, there isn't that much of a functional difference in CD read times above 24x. I doubt that the CD is what's causing the problems. Do a full install and if the problem still occurs then come back. In a number of games on my computer, it's the CD spin-up time that cause the most problems when in the middle of a game, and this problem is solved by doing a full install of whatever it is you're playing at the time.

[mac freak]

Well, if VM causes sluggishness, I will turn it off! I do have 128 MB of physical RAM, so if I allocate 120-or-so MB to D2 and quit the finder, will speed noticeably increase?

The 1.03 beta patch for Diablo 2 fixed my crash bug, but I was disappointed to see that the game isn't as silky as I had expected. I'm used to playing on my friend's P3/550 with 256MB RAM, and my Dual G4/500 with 320MB RAM just can't compete.

Upping the RAM allocation from 75MB to 150MB helped a little, so I'll try upping that to 250MB tonight.

Performance is overall good, but things can get jerky at times, which I don't approve of at all, given the $3k price tag on my machine...

Diablo II Performance Problem SOLVED

For those of you experiencing laggy D2 performance, especially when it involves the CD drive flogging away at the disc, here's one more thing to try. As Blizzard suggests in the ReadMe, copy the music file (all 320+ megs!) to the hard drive.

I didn't do this initially because I thought (dumb, dumb!) that the "Full Install" option would actually install all the files. Everything but the music file, apparently. But with the music file copied, my performance woes are *gone* and the game performs beautifully on my G3-upgraded 9600.

[mac freak]

Where do we PUT that sound file, TheGib???
I WANNA KNOW!!!

Put it in the Diablo II Files folder with similar files such as Diablo II Graphics, Diablo II Speech and Diablo II Game Data (there may be less there depending on which install you chose).

[mac freak]

Does this prevent D2 from using the identical file on the Play Disc? Just wondering...
I don't want to have this thing eat up 350 MB of space if it won't even be used by the game.

[mac freak]

Well, I just connected to Battle.net and I was updated to v1.03. And I must say...
The framerate has increased A LOT.
Now it runs silky smooth almost all the time (with 128 MB real RAM, and 64 MB VM allocated to D2).

I guess Blizzard addressed our concerns, as one of the documented improvements was "increased framerate when running in RAVE mode."

Yeah, it uses the one on the hard drive as opposed to the one on the Play Disc. I know this for a fact because I used to play it with the music on the CD, and I could consistently see the activity light on my CD-ROM flash as music played. Now that it's on the hard drive, the activity light does not flash as music plays.

[Zwilnik]

I found the same improvement by turning the music off.

The only thing that bugs me is the stupid save and exit concept. I like the way it forces you to play your character properly (no jumping to the previous save tricks), but it sucks when you actually have a life. If you want to save, you absolutely have to make it to the next waypoint, otherwise when you come back to the game, your town portal is gone, and the dungeons you were playing through are repopulated. That and I managed to lose a vital 'plot' quest item (the staff of the horadrim) because it was on the floor of the dungeon when I quit and saved.

[PeteL999]

I am running D2 on 160 mb ram an 266 mhz rev C iMac and it runs very well. I am running in RAVE with thousands of colors if that helps

[This message has been edited by PeteL999 (edited 08-06-2000).]

I have a 500Mhz Pismo With a Gig of Ram. Yes a Gig.

I also have a 400 Mhz PC Desktop with 512 Ram.

I would like to know which computer I should run D2 on for I have not yet bought it.

Will it run smoothly on the Pismo?
IF i output the video from pismo to 21inch monitor will it be alot worse than if I just bought the PC version put it on my pc and used the monitor?

[PeteL999]

What is a pismo?

Just buy the Mac version and try it out on the Pismo. If the framerates and graphical quality isn't to your satisfaction, install it on the PC (the Mac box contains hybrid CD's).

[blizzard]

A 'Pismo' is the current generation of Powerbooks (400-500 mHz).