Temporary Hiatus and OpenDiablo2

[Manny]

Yo yo, what's up caravanners?

I haven't been playing any D2 the last few weeks. I was past due for a break, as I went pretty hard from the time I picked the game back up after 20+ years. I had forgotten just how fun and addicting it can be, but I don't regret it. I had a blast and reached my goals and then some!

Also, I do still peruse some Diablo II related topics on the net here and there when it's slow, and I came across an interesting project. It's called OpenDiablo2. I can't tell if it's still in active development, but I sure hope so. I think it'd be so cool to be able to play this game on my 2019 iMac some day, or who knows, even a Linux/BSD machine.

I thought maybe you guys would find it interesting. Obviously I'm not affiliated, but if I can somehow find out if it's still active, I will probably support the project financially. Just a little something every month for a good cause

Here's the link: https://opendiablo2.com/

TTYL!

[galaxyhaxz]

Hey Manny!

Diablo 2 is indeed a drug, so much that it can suck you back in even after decades. I have seen OpenDiablo2, but sadly the project is more or less dead. The authors had second thoughts about using Golang which led to various issues with it. I'm more interested in D2MOO:

https://github.com/ThePhrozenKeep/D2MOO

This is sort-of like Devilution for Diablo 2, they are reversing the core game components in 1.10 to reconstruct the source code. While they don't plan to reverse the network parts, if they really manage to pull off replacing D2Game/Common it would encourage someone else to finish the rest. This would finally give us D2 on linux with bug fixes and QoL

Oh, and I've been in the opposite mood, looking to take a break from coding and play D2 for a bit. Can't decide between 1.10 or 1.11. It seems the uber quests have been fixed offline for 1.11 (perhaps someone ported the code from the remaster) so it's worth a play

[fearedbliss]

Yup I've also been taking a D2 break recently but there's been a bunch of stuff happening. Once things settle down more I'll play again, but in the meantime I did start playing Pokemon Gold (original gen 2) on my RG351p.

As for which version, 1.10 or lower of course. Blizzard North all the way. There isn't really anything important in 1.11 anyways, and I don't believe the backported Uber quests are actually 100% faithful to the original network code since the Uber AI was server side.

[galaxyhaxz]

I've been busy with work (a good thing!) so don't have much time for gaming anymore. I don't buy games with DRM/microtransactions so that basically limits me to older games, and Diablo 2 is always refreshing to come back to every few years.

I have an RG350m. Anbernic makes cute little devices, but they still aren't powerful enough for my taste. I want one that can play gamecube games.

Regarding 1.10 vs 1.11. I have a similar stance to you, in that I definitely don't consider anything made after Blizzard North shut down to be canon. To that end however, 1.11 was the last patch made by them, even if it wasn't made by Peter Hu, it could have had notes he had taken down for what he wanted. Given that 1.11 released a few weeks before the closure announcement, It seems to me that it was done because they knew they would lose their jobs soon and released what they had, as 1.11 contains some unfinished runewords. If you wanted to stick with 1.10, you can at least enable the Diablo clone as his AI is there.

D2R finally added the ubers offline, but regardless if someone ported the code from there, I've tested it and it's no different than my experience playing in battle.net. I feel like 1.10-1.11 hit a good spot in that they had far more content to grind for than 1.09, but it's significantly harder to get runes than 1.13+. So if you play true SSF you will have a lot of good years to come

[galaxyhaxz]

Hmm so after careful consideration, reading Singling's rational for excluding post 1.10, and watching David Brevik's D2 post mortem, I've came to the conclusion 1.10 is the last legit patch made by any of the original developers. This seems to make a lot of sense, given you can see a stark difference in the ladder season 2 runewords and how ridiculously broken they were, and the fact they kept the uber quest online. Essentially it seemed like a last ditch attempt to get people online and keep the game alive after its leadership quit. 1.10 it is <3

[fearedbliss]

1.10 and lower forever <3.

As for the RG351p, yup, I only care to use it specifically for GB/GBC/GBA gaming. For anything else, you'll need a stronger device.

[galaxyhaxz]

Yep but they recently released the RG353 series which is quite an upgrade. N64, Dreamcast and a few others run decently now. I'm holding out for the perfect 4:3 retro console that can do up to PS2 games, so I can run all my childhood games. Currently I just use a PSP which can handle GBA games great.

Oh and also on another note. If you look at the rich information for D2, 1.00 - 1.10 were all compiled using Visual C++ 6 (VS1998). 1.11-1.13 used 7.10 (VS2003) and 1.14 used 8.0. So, it's obvious the codebase changed hands.

[fearedbliss]

<3 I have heavy positive nostalgia for Visual Studio 6. Both Visual C++ 6 and Visual Basic 6.

[dariustriplet]

I remember hearing back during the wait for 1.10 that one person was doing everything for it. Was that actually true, and did that include design (synergies et al)?

[Manny]

As for which version, 1.10 or lower of course. Blizzard North all the way.

And all the people said, Amen.

@galaxyhaxz
Hey galaxy! Thanks for the heads up on D2MOO... that looks AWESOME.

@dariustriplet
yeah, IIRC, Peter Hu was basically behind the entirety of 1.10