[davidflas]

I noticed after upgrading my soundblaster equipped G4/466 from 9.1 to 9.2.1 that I was getting some really low frame rates in Diablo II Lord of Destruction. We're talking 2-3 fps. (that's right single digits!) WTF is going on here. I also noticed that when SETI was running my Mac would connect to the internet anytime it wanted. Has anybody else had similar experiences?

I'm glad I'm not the only one experiencing this.
I also get frequent crashes in single player mode. This coupled with the 1.09 problems means my game is virtually unplayable (Battle.net patch at 0% when the patch is already installed, can't tell which version etc.)
Another thing since installing 9.2.1, my desktop gets seriously messed up when I exit a game!!???

[davidflas]

Monsoon,

Testify Brother! I know the standard ATI card in the G4/466 is junk but 9.2.1 is much worse! After a clean install of 9.1 things are back to tolerable levels!

[-Q-]

Interesting. I haven't had a bit of problems with D2:LoD since I've installed 9.2.1. Been using it on both a Dual USB iBook with the <font color = red>blazingly</font> fast Rage Mobility and a Beige G# with a Radeon.

Framerates aren't spectacular (but they never have been) but it certainly is playable....

[ 08-27-2001: Message edited by: -Q- ]

[giantmike]

My brother and I, with the MacFixIt people, have extensivly tested this, and it seems the problem lies within the ATI drivers that come with 9.2.1. You can remove them, and replace them with the latest Radeon update drivers (works with Rage 128s as well), to get the playability back.

[davidflas]

Thanks for the tip giantmike. I was wondering one other thing, what's the best way to get the most out of Diablo II LOD? My G4/466 has the Soundblaster Live! card installed which I understand should boost video performance a little, I have 896MB of RAM, 326MB alotted to Diablo II, and the stock ATI video card. Should I use Open GL or Rage to get the best fps. I'm thinking of upgrading my VC soon since its the weakest link here it seems. Should 25fps be about what I can expect with all the eye candy turned on? Thanks for the help so far, I really would like to use 9.2.1 if possible.

[a2daj]

Originally posted by davidflas:
<STRONG>Thanks for the tip giantmike. I was wondering one other thing, what's the best way to get the most out of Diablo II LOD? My G4/466 has the Soundblaster Live! card installed which I understand should boost video performance a little, I have 896MB of RAM, 326MB alotted to Diablo II, and the stock ATI video card. Should I use Open GL or Rage to get the best fps. I'm thinking of upgrading my VC soon since its the weakest link here it seems. Should 25fps be about what I can expect with all the eye candy turned on? Thanks for the help so far, I really would like to use 9.2.1 if possible.</STRONG>

The SBL! doesn't boost performance. I've heard it slows down the game slightly on both Macs and PCs, but I haven't experienced any major slowdowns with Environmental Sounds enabled. I turn off music for a big boost. I'd recommend NOT allocating more memory to Diablo II than the default. Anything above the default is massively overkill. Diablo II uses the system heap for dynamic memory allocation so you need plent of free memory, plus having VM on will help against memory fragmention due to the high amount of dynamic memory allocation and deallocation. I wouldn't recommend OpenGL to anyone right now for Diablo II. It's slow on all the cards I've tried (ATI 128, Radeon, Voodoo5, Voodoo4, Voodoo3, Voodoo2, Geforce2MX). I'd recommend using RAVE with ATI cards, Glide with 3dfx Voodoo cards, and Software mode with NVIDIA cards, or grabbing a Voodoo2 to complement your NVIDIA card so you can use Glide, which performs the best out of the 3 Mac 3d Accelerated modes.
Wait for the new Radeon cards to be released for the Mac before you buy a new VC.
I have a G4 867 with a Radeon and a Voodoo5 (my monitor has dual inputs!). I use the Voodoo5 for all Glide games, such as Diablo II and Unreal Tourmanemt.

[davidflas]

a2daj,
thanks for the tips, I'll try them out right away.

[-Q-]

From MacFixit:

OpenGL and games: a follow-up Regarding our previous mention of OpenGL problems with games in OS 9.2.1, Brian Greenstone (of Pangea Software) offers this fix:


"A number of OpenGLgames are failing on startup after people have installed OS 9.2.1. The error message will generally be about OpenGL failing to initialize. There are at least 4 games known to exhibit this malfunction on OS 9.2.1 including our own Cro-Mag Rally.

Thanks to one resourceful user of ours, we were able to track the bug down: Just delete all Nvidia extensions, reboot, and OpenGL will work fine."

That might help...

[Scotttheking]

What is the link to get those drivers?
Do they work on a Ti?

I too have been having untolerable performance on my G4 with Diablo in 9.2.1. I will try the radeo driver fix.

Muskie

[timster]

Thanks for the tip. I'm also getting absolutely horrendous performance in Diablo2, especially in Act V, or when theres plenty of monsters on screen.

When you say to remove the ATI drivers and install the Radeon update, do you mean the Radeon drivers for the aftermarket Radeon card (from ATI itself) or Apple provided software drivers?

-tim

[timster]

To answer my own question, I tried using the drivers from ATI's website, even tho ATI says they're not for the OEM cards that come in the G4. I put them in and it solved every problem with Diablo 2, and now it runs perfectly smooth!

What you need to do is:

1. download Radeon drivers from ATI for the aftermarket card
2. Disable all ATI drivers for OS9 in Extensions manager. Picking group by "package" usually helps get them all together for easy deselection.
3. Reboot, and install the Radeon drivers
4. Reboot again, and play.

This will work with G4s with Rage 128 Pro like mine. A friend tried it on his Yosemite G3, and had some screen problems, so bewarned.

-tim

[BannanaFiend]

Well that's great but what about those of us who own nVidia cards?

[tg-007]

yeah i just got a new 867 with 640MB RAM and a GeForce3 card and Diablo II plays like Sh!t no matter what i do....any suggestions?

[Scotttheking]

My Ti is unplayable too.

[Osirisis]

tg-007 have you disabled the ATI extensions? I don't own the retail version of the game ( I intend to soon), but I have played the demo and the game ran very well on a DP 800 with GeForce 3.

[BannanaFiend]

ATI extensions are indeed disabled on my Quicksilver 733/385mb/geforce2, but both rave and open gl rendering produce practically unplayable results under 9.2.1 (The system's shipping OS). The same applies to running in the classic environment. Some good news though is that on a whim last night I tried out software rendering and the game now plays fine.

The fact remains that I would like to be able to play in hardware rendering mode, so does anyone at all have any ideas there?

[BannanaFiend]

arg

[ 09-06-2001: Message edited by: BannanaFiend ]

[timster]

A couple other things I found out.

1. Doing the Radeon install I described above, will cause Classic to break under OSX. It will load up till all the extensions are done, then just stall there. Disabling the ATI drivers gets it to work fine.

2. Under OSX 10.1 (5G40) Diablo II ALMOST is fast enough to play in this mode. This was previous to the Radeon patch. So I plan to tinker around and also try software rendering and see if I can get Classic to give me acceptable playrate for Diablo. This would be great because then I wouldnt need to reboot in OS9 to play Diablo II.

3. Banana - you arent missing much by using software rendering. I have hardware rendering on, but I turn everything off anyway (Dual 450 w/ 1GB RAM) because it still slows down the game somewhat, and I value response time and game smoothness over some eye candy 3-Dish effects.

[tg-007]

I finally got my setup going in software...woohoo!