Good day

[Lampreia]

Hello, everyone, I'm happy to find this forum! I've been using Cactus for 2 years, and it has rekindled my passion for Diablo 2.
I never played much online, but for about 10 years Diablo 2 was THE game in my home - LANs with my father and sister. And even though we played it for so long, we still ignored many of its mechanics, such as runewords, most Horadric cupe recipes, not to mention the best builds. We often made unpractical choices, like mace-wielding spellcasters, but I love that the game gave us the freedom to roleplay like that.

About an year ago I organized a 1.05b LAN party, using Cactus. This is the poster I made for the event:

Lan.jpg

drive.google.com

Can I ask what became of the Moving Caravan's youtube chanel? The videos there inspired me to switch to the 640x480 resolution (even on LoD), which I now feel best fits the dense, hostile atmosphere, by getting you closer to the character. And the Cactus installation tutorial was very useful and interesting.
Thank you.

 

[Manny]

Well met, @Lampreia! I love to see a new member join our small and passionate community. It also warms my heart to read about the LAN sessions you have enjoyed with your family. Those sound like great memories.

I don't recall the specific reason, but @fearedbliss decided to shut down the YouTube channel some time ago. Actually, in the past I have shared with him my own thoughts regarding creating a new channel to promote our community, and to archive some of our Diablo 2 gameplay. Regrettably I haven't had enough spare time to get the ball rolling on that as of yet, but it's definitely still on my to-do list.

At any rate, as I am sure you've noticed, we are very fond of the legacy patches, such as 1.05b here. So please feel free to share any insights you may have, or as others have (including myself), you can use the forum as a place to archive your own D2 gameplay. And if you ever find yourself craving some multiplayer, you can drop a post in Brotherhood of the Horadrim.

The community has been pretty quiet as of late, as we have all been adulting pretty heavy, but I am always keeping tabs on the forum. Rest assured, The Moving Caravan is here to stay

Take good care, ~Manny

 

[fearedbliss]

Welcome to the forums @Lampreia. Always glad to have new and passionate members for our beloved game, Diablo II <3.

As for the shutting down the YouTube channel, it may not be a surprised but I'm a very privacy and security oriented person. A lot of my decisions over the past 10-15 years have been related to fighting corporations trying to exploit people's data and spying on them. I've tried various methods and "compromises" to deal with various situations, given that we are all part of a larger system and there is only so much that we can do. This is one of the reasons why I only provide support for Cactus for older versions of Windows, specifically Windows 10. Even if it will go EOL at the end of this year, I only run Cactus on a Windows 10 gaming laptop that has no internet connection. To me Windows is just a gaming platform at this point, and I treat it exactly the same as my Gameboy, or any other older gaming platform like SNES, N64, PS1, etc. None of these consoles had an internet connection when I was growing up, but 30 years later we can still continue to play games on them with no issues (assuming the hardware still works). Due to me using Windows 10 in that fashion, the EOL timestamp doesn't apply to me and I can continue using it "forever" without having to worry about any security concerns. My main operating system for both personal and server use is FreeBSD. I want to continue to de-emphasize products and services that focus on involuntary telemetry collection and spying. This connects to The Moving Caravan youtube channel. Even though there isn't anything "critical" on that channel, my ultimate goal for making the YouTube videos was to share some knowledge, experience, and some of my playthroughs with my community. The goal isn't to make money from the videos, and it's not even necessarily to maximize reach. Individuals seeking information will eventually find that information. Given that all of my videos were just regular MP4 videos, which modern HTML 5 (and modern browsers) support natively, I'm able to directly host my videos and give them to the community. The links to the videos are easily found in the Cactus Home Page:

You can find the latest installation video and any other videos I'm interested in hosting there. The Cactus documentation also has direct links to the specific videos in the appropriate sections. Hopefully that clarifies things. It's definitely not the most "convenient" lifestyle, but I'm very happy living my life in this type of way, and also it allows me to continue developing and working on the projects I care about with a calm conscience.

Take care,
Jonathan

PS: The LAN party poster is hilarious.

 

[Lampreia]

Thank you, @Manny and @fearedbliss for the warm welcome!! I look forward to joining you on a multiplayer session in the future.
Right now I'm exploring 1.09b. I just realized that if you don't save Cain in act 1, he will still acompany you, but charge for identifying items. This game never ceases to amaze me.

And thank you @fearedbliss for the reply. Over time I've come to see that changing the world begins by changing how we live as individuals, and then by creating spaces that carry those ideals. This website seems to represent just that. Its stance may seem polarizing, but now that I know more about the values behind it, I like it more - it feels like an oasis. Also, the design and layout are great.
I'm not very informed about corporate practices of data harvesting, but the rythm of data and content flow (not to mention its aesthetics) really wear me out. I've been dreaming of taking an year off the internet at some point. I started by switching to a button phone and haven't regretted it, ahah.

What platform do you recomend for multiplayer games? Hamachi?

Have a good weekend, guys.

 

[fearedbliss]

@Lampreia Haha yea if you don't rescue Cain he will charge you later on .

And yea exactly. You need to "be the change you want to see" if sounds cliche but I suppose this is the reason this is an old saying, and an old wisdom.

I've also thought about switching to an old school phone like an old Nokia brick (the one that has snake). But after thinking about it it would not be a good idea because due to my stance on privacy, it would mean that i would lose encryption support. I only communicate with people over Signal if sending text messages, and I won't be able to use Signal on the old phones. The old phones only have old school unencrypted SMS which isn't safe to communicate over. You would also lose functionality like GPS and stuff which is kinda necessary in the modern world (especially if you drive).

My solution to this for now is using a Fairphone 5 combined with Calyx OS, which is a degoogled Android based ROM. You should take a look into that. I highly recommend them.

As for multiplayer, my gaming laptop doesn't have any internet and I only play offline single player, so I wouldn't be the best person to ask, but definitely not Hamachi given its proprietary nature.