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Erayz

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Hey, I just found this little forum!

So happy to see fellow D2 time travellers! Hopefully this forum is still alive!

I’ve been playing 1.09d for almost 20 years now (off and on), and accumulated quite a bit of wealth over the years, but have nobody to show off my finds and progress to :D . I’m on 1.09d because I wasn’t aware of players X going all the way up to 64 back on 1.09b when I started, plus the Chance to cast bug lol. And I’m way too deep in to start over (6/7 level 99s as of now).

I also play Classic 1.09d and have 4 barons/baronesses, and 1 King.

I also play a bit of 1.06b (again, wasn’t aware of the dupe detection when I started) in order to feed my Classic characters with Sojs to add sockets to my rares and also to find OP rares. Though I enjoy the patch by itself as well.

I played a bit of 1.07 to get Arkaine’s Valor, and some Max damage charms, but nothing more, I didn’t push it much further.

My ultimate goal in D2, which is 100% unrealistic, is to reach level 99 with all classes in LoD SC, LoD HC, Classic SC and Classic HC. I’m almost done with LoD SC. Lod HC might be possible, but I know Classic is borderline impossible unless I waste all my life playing this game lol. I have other priorities, so I’ll just see how far I can get.
 
Welcome, [mention]Erayz[/mention]!

Glad you found this place. I am happy to meet a fellow 09’er.

Lately the forum has been very quiet, and besides the admin/fearedbliss, often I think I’m the only one here, lol. Obviously the majority of the D2 community has moved on to D2R and other games.

Please feel free to share some of those great finds and progress with us. Six 99’s is an incredible accomplishment. My primary patch/home is 1.09b, and I just dinged my first 99 on my Bowazon about a month ago, after picking this game back up around DEC 2021. Besides her, I have a 95 Javazon, 94 Nova Sorc, and 87 WW Barb.

Maybe we can link up on TCP/IP sometime? Thanks to Cactus, I can easily clone/forward one of my characters to 1.09d in order to see all your GG progress and wealth in-game, and then perhaps you’d be willing to show me what you can do in Hell CS & Cows. :D
 
Thanks Manny for the welcome!

It could be fun to play TCP/IP, I haven’t done that in forever haha.

As for what I can do in Hell CS and cows, don’t expect much as I am a slow player. I have a few videos of some of my characters on Youtube where I show my gear, stats, skills and do a Cow level run. I have a video of my necromancer reaching 99, too. But I have many more items in my characters’ and Atma’s stashes.

There are still many items I’ve never found, such as Tal armor, and Windforce, the latter being the reason why my Amazon is my only non-99 in LoD SC (I wanted it before leveling), but I gave up running Pindle after doing enough runs to find myself a Stormspire, IK Armor and 4 Grandfathers, but still no Windforce in sight lol :(
 
FOUR Grandfathers, IK armor, AND Stormspire? Wow!

Put me down in the \"I don’t have any of those\" club, lmao.

BUT... to date I’ve landed 3x Tal’s armors, and a Windforce (ironically the WF was a Pindle drop where you were hunting), so I guess that makes us somewhat even, lol.

And no worries about not moving fast. It would be purely to kick back and have a bit of fun. I am level 36 IRL after all. :lol:

Hmm. I should make some videos too. Could be a fun way to reach other D2 time travelers.
 
[mention]Erayz[/mention]

So I became curious about something...

This afternoon I did some compatibility testing, and have discovered that both character files and item files (in ATMA V) are interchangeable between 1.09b and 1.09d. Since forwarding characters to newer patches is pretty much always a given, the main takeaway/win here is that I was able to port characters and items created in 1.09d back to 1.09b without issue.

I thought this was pretty cool, and figured you’d might like to know. If you ever want to attempt this yourself, please make sure to profusely back up all your files/stashes first, and please ask me if you need any help or direction.

P.S. -- 1.09b is compatible with Singling... ;) :D
 
Oh that’s interesting...

I always had doubts 1.09d saves were compatible with other 1.09 versions, just never really tried. It might be worth trying. Though I never used singling, nor do I know what it does. Does 1.09b work with ATMA for muling?

All I need is to be able to run multiple instances, and the game not requiring a CD. I’ll look it up
 
Erayz said:
Oh that’s interesting...

I always had doubts 1.09d saves were compatible with other 1.09 versions, just never really tried. It might be worth trying. Though I never used singling, nor do I know what it does. Does 1.09b work with ATMA for muling?

All I need is to be able to run multiple instances, and the game not requiring a CD. I’ll look it up
Click to expand...

Yes, ATMA fully supports 1.09b. And Singling does both of those things. I highly recommend it. ;)

https://github.com/fearedbliss/Cactus/blob/master/README-SINGLING.md
 
Ok, I installed and setup everything for the patches I play. Moved my 1.06b to 1.05b and did a bit of testing, save files seems to be compatible, which is good. Did the same to move from 1.09d to 1.09b. Works well.

I also changed the .ini file to be in fullscreen.

But now I’m having a small problem, whenever I’m in the main game menu (before entering a game), everything slows down/freezes when I move the cursor. It does not happen in game, but i’d like to know why, as it is irritating. Same problem in windowed mode.
 
Erayz said:
Ok, I installed and setup everything for the patches I play. Moved my 1.06b to 1.05b and did a bit of testing, save files seems to be compatible, which is good. Did the same to move from 1.09d to 1.09b. Works well.

I also changed the .ini file to be in fullscreen.

But now I’m having a small problem, whenever I’m in the main game menu (before entering a game), everything slows down/freezes when I move the cursor. It does not happen in game, but i’d like to know why, as it is irritating. Same problem in windowed mode.
Click to expand...

[mention]Erayz[/mention] Great news! So glad you started to transition to 1.05b & 1.09b. ;)

As far as the lag at the main menu, I want to help, but need a bit more info. Are you running the Singling DLLs or Vanilla? FYI, Singling corrects the main menu lag in all the versions it supports (including 1.05b and 1.09b). The lag, from my understanding, is due in particular to the D2Client.DLL. Apparently that old file (remember D2 is a 20+ year old game) doesn’t play nice with multi-core processors, so 1x CPU core will get assaulted when you launch the game, causing the \"lag\". I used to experience it as well before I updated to Singling, which is why I ask.

An easy way to tell if your files were updated correctly to Singling for any given patch is to note whether or not the introduction cinematics play when you launch the game. If they don’t, and/or the battle.net button is disabled, then Singling is enabled.
 
Hey [mention]Erayz[/mention], welcome to the forum!

Our community is definitely small (give that this is a very unique niche at this point) and I don’t try to artificially promote the forum. The only advertisement is really on the Cactus home page and my YouTube channel (The Moving Caravan), and of course word of mouth. I would rather people find the forum organically and want to sign up and stay here. If you know, you know. IMO the forum is as strong as ever and I’m happy to have the people we already have here. If we only got 20 people to play old time traveling versions worldwide that already amazing. If you played MP, you only need 8 people for a full game haha. The bar is not that high and I’m confident over time we will have a consistent 8 player game for people that want to MP on old versions. The forum is primarily single player time traveling, but it’s fun to time travel in old versions via LAN ;).

Definitely start and continue to show us your findings ;), we are always are open to enjoy (and be slightly jealous) of your findings haha.

Regarding 1.09b and d, from my experience and research, all 1.09# versions are compatible. I would recommend backing up your characters and downgrading to 1.09b and using Singling as well.

Regarding 1.05b and 1.06, I was going to recommend not upgrading (at least not for those current characters, but definitely downgrade to 1.05b w/ Singling) if you ever do your own ladder reset, primarily because i know 1.05 and 1.04 are not compatible and there were changes that cause your characters’ items to get wiped if you go backwards. However from your experiment it seems 1.05-1.06 are fine which also makes sense (besides the newly introduced 1.06 anti duping code). Since you already backed up your characters and downgraded to 1.05b with no issues, definitely stay on this patch, and welcome to the club!

Finally regarding the lag in main menu, [mention]Manny[/mention] is correct that it is related to my multi CPU fix so that your laptop doesn’t get hot due to processors back in the day not sleeping and thus using 100% of a single cpu core. This only happens for versions before 1.10, and it’s specifically only for the CPU fix in the main menu (D2Win.dll) not the CPU fix in game (D2Client.dll). To fix the lag in the main menu, you should switch to cnc-ddraw as your video renderer. I’m guessing you are using the normal video renderers which seem to not play well with modern versions of Windows for a long time now. cnc-ddraw, Singling, and OpenAL/DSOAL (3D Sound and Environment Effects), are all part of Cactus.

Singling only contains non gameplay modifications and i would highly recommend using it. Singling also includes my players command for versions before 1.09. You can read all about Singling here:

https://github.com/fearedbliss/Cactus/blob/master/README-SINGLING.md (also linked by [mention]Manny[/mention] above).

The Singling page also describes the lag issue and how to fix it, and any other info you should be aware of:

If you experience extreme lag in the Main Menu for versions 1.00-1.09b, try using cnc-ddraw, this should fix it. If for whatever reason that still doesn’t work, you’ll need to revert the CPU fix for the Main Menu specifically (You’ll still have the fix for Single Player and LAN). Simply replace the D2Win.dll you are currently using with the one in the Singling Stock Directory for the affected version.
Click to expand...

- fearedbliss
 
Yeah I should have mentionned I have installed Singling. The Battle.net button is disabled and also players X worked in 1.05b when I tested. Maybe I’ve installed it wrong? All I did was to copy paste the files from the singling folder into the corresponding version’s folders in my Diablo II\Platorms.

I don’t know what’s the role of each .dll file and what exactly they do, but it seems like it messed up something my D1 installation as well lol. The game still works, but the pentagrams don’t spin when in the ESC menu (in D1, in D2 it’s fine), everything else works. Maybe it may be a clue of what is the problem.

[mention]fearedbliss[/mention] , when you say to switch to cnc-ddraw for the renderer, you mean the \"renderer\" setting in the ddraw.ini ?
The file says the possible values are: auto, opengl, gdi and direct3d9

I tried putting cnc-ddraw and I still have main menu lag
 
fearedbliss said:
@Manny is correct that it is related to my multi CPU fix so that your laptop doesn’t get hot due to processors back in the day not sleeping and thus using 100% of a single cpu core. This only happens for versions before 1.10, and it’s specifically only for the CPU fix in the main menu (D2Win.dll) not the CPU fix in game (D2Client.dll).
Click to expand...

Thank you for the knowledge and correction bro :D :geek:
 
[mention]Manny[/mention] Lol np.

[mention]Erayz[/mention] I’m 99% sure your problem is that you are probably launching Diablo II with either -w or -3dfx. There should be no flags passed to Diablo II where it overrides the cnc-ddraw renderer. If you open D2 and you press Alt + Enter and it doesn’t switch between full screen and window mode, then cnc-ddraw isn’t being used.

Since cnc-ddraw is going to be used for all D2 versions, it shouldn’t be in the Platforms folder and should stay in the Diablo II root folder alongside Cactus.

There should be no interference between Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 since Cactus only effects the Diablo II registry paths and all of the files are only in the Diablo II folder. However, if you are using the original Diablo 1 versions (and not GOG), I would recommend copying the cnc-ddraw files into your Diablo 1 folder and using it as your D1 video renderer as well! You also shouldn’t need to tweak anything major in the ddraw.ini since it is using my sane defaults. But feel free to tweak the window sizes, full screen, window stuff to your liking.

This should be of interest:
https://github.com/fearedbliss/Cactus/blob/master/README-RENDERERS.md#quick-testing
 
No I have no flag set up for Diablo II in cactus. Judging from everything you told me, and the testing I’ve done accordingly, for some reason I cannot get the game to use cnc-ddraw.

Is it ok that I installed Cactus in what was originally my 1.14d directory? I don’t know if it changes anything? The root directory is D:\Diablo II and that’s what I have set up in Cactus. For each version, the launcher is just Game.exe (I guess it picks the one under the selected version’s folder, and not the Game.exe from the root directory?). I left the Flags field blank in all cases

Anyway, for now, I replaced the D2win.dll with the stock one for all the patches I use, and now the Main menu lag is gone, and the playersX setting works in all versions.
 
[mention]Erayz[/mention] sounds like you’re making progress. :)

My original D2 folder also started as a 1.14 install, so personally I don’t think that’s what it is, but [mention]fearedbliss[/mention] is the expert when it comes to these things.

Did you follow the steps under \"Setting your video mode to DirectDraw\" found here?https://github.com/fearedbliss/Cactus/blob/master/README-RENDERERS.md

I will attach an image of what my registry looks like under Diablo II in case that helps any.
 
[mention]Manny[/mention] Yes I did that as well! And that didn’t change a thing lol.

I mean, I’m ok with the game running as it is right now. I have no lag in the main menu, and I have all the features I wanted from Cactus/Singling, which are the easy version switching, no CD required, and open multiple instances of the game. Plus I got the playersX for 1.05b and 1.07 (still unsure if I should consider this a bit cheaty)
 
Erayz said:
@Manny Yes I did that as well! And that didn’t change a thing lol.

I mean, I’m ok with the game running as it is right now. I have no lag in the main menu, and I have all the features I wanted from Cactus/Singling, which are the easy version switching, no CD required, and open multiple instances of the game. Plus I got the playersX for 1.05b and 1.07 (still unsure if I should consider this a bit cheaty)
Click to expand...

Hmm, I see. Well, it sounds to me like you are ready to go! Have fun. :D
 
[mention]Erayz[/mention]

- It selects the one in the root directory. Since Cactus makes you set up the \"Diablo II Root Directory\" (In your case it’s D:\Diablo II),
and every entry just asks what the .exe you want to run should be (\"Game.exe\", \"Alpaca.exe\", etc), you don’t really need to worry about the other stuff, other than adding your platform, and then pressing \"Reset\", if you’ve made changes to that folder.

- The 1.14d thing doesn’t matter ultimately. All you need are the original MPQs and the D2.LNG file. Those MPQs will need to be patched so that they work on pre 1.13 versions using my MPQ Fixer (specifically if you want to play 1.08-1.13d). If you have the original MPQs before Blizzard’s 1.12 installer, then you are fine and don’t need to patch to play older versions.

- I personally don’t consider the ’players’ command pre 1.09 as cheating and the rationale is that we are already using the multi-instance DLL for that purpose. People usually use the multi-instance DLL in 1.09+ for:

> Rushing
> Power Leveling
> Muling

and in pre 1.09 versions, it’s also used for opening \"8 copies of Diablo II in TCP/IP for the purposes of simulating the players command\". Given the CPU problems, opening up 8 windows is slow, annoying, and takes up A LOT of processing power. I’ve carefully implemented the ’players’ command to be as equivalent as possible as the 1.09b version so if you didn’t know any better, you would think Blizzard implemented it themselves haha. Either way, using the players command still scales the difficulty of the monsters hp, exp, and anything else affected by the command, so there is no free hand out and you still need to work for it. But if anything, you can just not use the `players` command on pre 1.09 versions and stay on p1.

--

On another note:

1. What Windows version are you using?
2. Did you try out my Alt + Enter test notes from above? If it doesn’t flip between Full Screen / Window Mode, then cnc-ddraw isn’t running.
3. As [mention]Manny[/mention] mentioned above, if cnc-ddraw isn’t automatically picked up, and you’ve already used the D2VidTst.exe from a pre 1.14 version (or even if you didn’t), you should nuke that registry path completely (The \"Diablo II/VideoConfig\" key).

Lastly, I would highly recommend watching my \"How to play any version of Diablo II with Cactus\" which goes into everything step by step from a fresh installation. You’ll be able to get a better understanding of how it works and if there are any things you may have missed. It seems you are almost there.

https://youtu.be/kAFfc-kjTxE
 
[mention]Erayz[/mention] I’ve fixed the main menu CPU bug and released the changes. Please take a look at this thread in the technical support section, where some other people experiencing the issue are also talking/testing. Thank you!

https://themovingcaravan.com/viewtopic.php?p=1019#p1019
 
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