The Moving Caravan

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.

@fearedbliss , 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 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 12, 2023 12:43 pm @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).

Thank you for the knowledge and correction bro

@Manny Lol np.

@Erayz 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/b ... ck-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.

@Erayz 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 @fearedbliss 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/b ... NDERERS.md

I will attach an image of what my registry looks like under Diablo II in case that helps any.

@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)

Erayz wrote: ↑Sun Mar 12, 2023 3:08 pm @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)

Hmm, I see. Well, it sounds to me like you are ready to go! Have fun.

@Erayz

- 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 @Manny 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