Why does Diablo 2 look like hell on a new iMac?

[CoffeeMonkey]

I'm trying to run the Carbonized version of D2 on a new iMac, and it looks horrible. I've tried the various settings, and either I get a poor frame rate, or the colors look all washed out.

I read the note at the Blizzard support site saying that they knew about issues with the Nvidia drivers on MacOS versions after 8, but the note was a pretty old one. I'm assuming that the iMac shipped with the latest drivers, but I find a drivers section on Apple's support site.

Has anyone found an optimal video setting for D2? I know its an old game, but I still like to go back to it on occasion.

Thanks.

[Hakon]

don´t know:(

[Einherjar]

I run Diablo II on a Dual 800 with 1.25 gig of RAM and a GeForce3, and it runs like absolute trash on anything except 256 colors (go into the configure video, select software rendering, and run it at 640x480 (hit the expert tab) if it runs poorly for you at 800x600....also in game, hit escape and play with the video options to fix your color and gamma issues...on my G4 it looked okay but there wasn't enough contrast until I played with it a little.

Keep in mind that the Diablo II patch is upwards of a year old, and so it's not up to date on Mac OS X's fixes and such.

Please, Blizz, give us a new update!

[TEG]

It will only look right if your video settings are equal to the max resolution of your iMac. If not, no matter what the color depth, the colors will look washed out. Its the drawback of LCDs they only work well at optimal resolution.

TEG

[DavPeanut]

Diablo=Devil, and the devil is suposed to live in Hell.
:D :D

[Einherjar]

Originally posted by TEG
It will only look right if your video settings are equal to the max resolution of your iMac. If not, no matter what the color depth, the colors will look washed out. Its the drawback of LCDs they only work well at optimal resolution.

TEG

Not to be a flamer, but that is entirely useless to point out. Diablo II only runs in 640x480 or 800x600, so of course it's not native res for the iMac. I've got a 17'' Studio, and with some tweaking in the Video, it doesn't look hardly washed out at all. What he means, Coffee, is just explaning how LCD's don't look quite right at anything other than native res (which should be obvious).

What I'm saying is that the default gamma and and general video settings on D2 suck, and to get optimal performance and image quality (be it on a CRT or LCD), you must play with the settings, particularly the 256 color setting. If it runs like crap on a unified NVIDIA driver on my machine, it'll run like crap yours, too. Just be sure to either play in 9 on the original Diablo II installed app, or play in 256 in X.

What also may be to blame is that D2 is having to work with the widescreen of the iMac, and can't handle it.....

[mattmack]

Originally posted by Einherjar
What he means, Coffee, is just explaning how LCD's don't look quite right at anything other than native res (which should be obvious).
It might not be all that obvious to someone who is new to LCD's

[Einherjar]

The focus is the performance, though....I already prescribed the fix for the colors..

[FelixDerKater]

Did you'll set the graphics to OpenGL? If not, do so.

D2 performance under OS X sucks for me on my 8MB Rage 128 Mobility card. I get about 7-20 FPS under OS X with OpenGL mode. Under OS 9, with RAVE mode (not available in X), I get between 80 and 120FPS.



-Word! 450/500 posts! 50 more and I get a 'tar.

[DeusOmnis]

I cant get it to run fast at all on my computer (see specs below). I think blizzard "just doesnt give a ____." I suggest just getting use to the low quality, or, run it in OS 9.

[MacBandit]

Run it in OS9. I use to run it on my old B/WG3 400 with an ATIRadeon at 800x600 with no problems.