7 ms·

The Beautiful Diablo 2 Resurrected Machine

138 points by phenylene 4y ago

mathnode 4y ago
Slightly related, it's been posted before; OpenDiablo2 is an effort to re-write Diablo 2, in Go: https://github.com/OpenDiablo2/OpenDiablo2 https://github.com/OpenDiablo2/OpenDiablo2
nickjj 4y ago
Fun read as I also played that game in the past. In the article he mentions "the game has changed" with new quests and a synergy system but these weren't added to resurrected. The extra act came with the D2:LoD expansion in 2001 and skill synergies became a thing in the 1.10 patch in 2003.
- btmiller 4y ago
  The game changes in dimensions beyond synergies and quests. For instance, there are new runewords. D2 is the pinnacle ARPG with a die-hard community, so even minor changes to area levels, runewords, or skill attributes can open up all sorts of new possibilities. I’d personally prefer if the gaming community wasn’t so monoculturally driven to a prescribed set of game attributes (e.g. end game content, DLC, battle royale, loot boxes, skins, sandbox, open world). D2 isn’t for everyone nor should it be :)
- kemayo 4y ago
  Yeah, the only real changes in the initial Resurrection release were the obvious graphical improvements, and some fairly minor quality-of-life improvements to the stash system. That said, they have started to make actual gameplay changes since then. Last month gave us the first gameplay patch to Diablo 2 since 2010: https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/diablo2/23788293/diablo-ii-resurrected-patch-2-4-ladder-now-live https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/diablo2/23788293/diablo-ii-r...
  - matttb 4y ago
    Weapon swap glitch was also 'fixed'
- nathias 4y ago
  yea, and you can play a pre-LoD mode as 'classic' when making a new char since then ...
- thriftwy 4y ago
  You are killing me since I was thinking of synergy system as "that recent thing"
PainfullyNormal 4y ago
> "Maybe Diablo 2 difficulty and savageness belong to another era." The popularity of the dark souls series would indicate otherwise. I feel the invisible hand of upper management here, using words like "casual" and "accessible" to justify the decision to make games "easier".
- boomboomsubban 4y ago
  Dark Souls lacks permadeath. People are fine with hard but ultimately fair, die and learn the patterns then eventually win. Diablo 2 could erase weeks of work by one monster spawning an unfair combination. Practically nobody is truly looking to bring that back. Though, people are fine with that work improving further runs with rogue-likes.
  - ar_lan 4y ago
    > Diablo 2 could erase weeks of work by one monster spawning an unfair combination. Only if you play Hardcore mode, which is entirely optional.
    - selbyk 4y ago
      There is also an experience penalty on softcore in hell. 10% experience at lvl 98 is a few weeks of work for me.
      - whiskyant 4y ago
        Getting to level 99 or playing hardcore mode isn’t the objective for 99+% of players. Diablo 2 is a fairly forgiving and moderately casual game imo. Most builds require only one skill for damage, and respeccing and how easy it is to get a character rushed means it’s easy to experiment or fix builds.
        iamacyborg 4y ago
        I played D2 pretty obsessively for a few years during my teens and never bothered going higher than 92, rolling new builds was always more fun than endless baal runs for me.
clircle 4y ago
I just replayed diablo 2 a month ago, but since I don't have a windows computer, I went for the Path of Diablo[1] mod. This is an excellent mod that stays pretty close to the original experience, but makes the game a bit faster and more comfortable for the 2022 gamer. [1] https://pathofdiablo.com/ https://pathofdiablo.com/
outworlder 4y ago
I'm wondering why they even bothered with an external GPU, when an APU would have way more power than the best GPUs of the time even dreamed of.
- Cuuugi 4y ago
  The new game "Diablo 2:Resurrected" has more modern requirements ( i believe an NVidia GTX 1060 card for example).
- neogodless 4y ago
  The game mentioned is Diablo II: Resurrected. See system requirements[0]. Minimum: Nvidia GTX 660, AMD Radeon HD 7850 Recommended: Nvidia GTX 1060, AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT They aren't terribly steep, but they are not on the same level as the original game[1]! > DirectX compatible video card, 8MB Glide or Direct 3D compatible video card for optional 3D acceleration [0] https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/284798 https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/284798 [1] https://www.pcgamer.com/diablo-2-resurrected-pc-system-requirements/ https://www.pcgamer.com/diablo-2-resurrected-pc-system-requi...
  - viraptor 4y ago
    That's close to Skyrim remastered requirements and that works ok on an integrated Intel.
    - Beltalowda 4y ago
      A lot of games list nvidia something or AMD something as "minimum" requirements, but I haven't had a dedicated video card in about 8 years and many games I want to play actually work just fine (I don't play many 3D shooters and the like obviously), and my laptop is five years old.
Aragorn2331 4y ago
Amazing setup for amazing game ! Thanks for this post, i love to read you :-)
doikor 4y ago
> One thing we never got to do was slay Diablo clone. Installing software to track IP address of the server was too unappealing. This was actually changed in 2.4 (the patch with the ladder season added). Diablo clone now is tracked by the region. https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/diablo2/23788293/diablo-ii-resurrected-patch-2-4-ladder-now-live#uber https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/diablo2/23788293/diablo-ii-r...
- tomwojcik 4y ago
  Yep. And here's the tracker updated by volunteers https://diablo2.io/dclonetracker.php https://diablo2.io/dclonetracker.php
jhartwig 4y ago
I love this guy's books!
rodolphoarruda 4y ago
Kind of off topic. What an impressive post! It's refreshing to see that the open web is not dead yet.
etempleton 4y ago
Interesting read. I have never played Diablo 2, but might have to try resurrected now. I found Diablo 3 boring, but hearing about some of the differences maybe Diablo 2 will be more interesting to me.
- _carbyau_ 4y ago
  Grim Dawn(kinda gritty) and Torchlight II(kinda cartoony) were also a good time for myself and friends. I only bother to play with friends though, I'm not really into singleplayer.
causality0 4y ago
Why is this guy torturing himself like this? He picks about the hardest way to do everything he does. He breaks his back trying to build his setup around Thunderbolt and fails, like it has failed him on his previous peripheral-sharing post. He uses a silly $150 workbench intended for component reviewers instead of a $50 mini-itx case. Instead of getting a slightly larger case he spends probably over a grand on a different GPU. At this point, I don't know what to do with desktop machines. USB is a mess and Thunderbolt motherboards either don't support video or have stability issues. You use the video output on your GPU like a sane person. Streacom design at its finest. The best Streacom can do is a Power Mac G5 with achondroplasia?
fileeditview 4y ago
> It also made me reflect about Diablo III and how I felt about it. While it was a fun game, I found it too safe to be enjoyable. Players have separate loot, loots always matching their character class, items bound to the account, and no trading. People were siloed, making it a game played side by side, not together. Very much agree with this. It is true for basically all games today. I remember Ultima Online in the early days where you could basically do anything. It just made every discovery and achievement more valuable and exciting. I miss the risk in today's games. Maybe I am old but games these days rarely can excite me at all while I still like to play old games from time to time.

138 points by phenylene 4y ago

Slightly related, it's been posted before; OpenDiablo2 is an effort to re-write Diablo 2, in Go: https://github.com/OpenDiablo2/OpenDiablo2 https://github.com/OpenDiablo2/OpenDiablo2

nickjj 4y ago

Fun read as I also played that game in the past. In the article he mentions "the game has changed" with new quests and a synergy system but these weren't added to resurrected. The extra act came with the D2:LoD expansion in 2001 and skill synergies became a thing in the 1.10 patch in 2003.

btmiller 4y ago
The game changes in dimensions beyond synergies and quests. For instance, there are new runewords. D2 is the pinnacle ARPG with a die-hard community, so even minor changes to area levels, runewords, or skill attributes can open up all sorts of new possibilities. I’d personally prefer if the gaming community wasn’t so monoculturally driven to a prescribed set of game attributes (e.g. end game content, DLC, battle royale, loot boxes, skins, sandbox, open world). D2 isn’t for everyone nor should it be :)
kemayo 4y ago
Yeah, the only real changes in the initial Resurrection release were the obvious graphical improvements, and some fairly minor quality-of-life improvements to the stash system. That said, they have started to make actual gameplay changes since then. Last month gave us the first gameplay patch to Diablo 2 since 2010: https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/diablo2/23788293/diablo-ii-resurrected-patch-2-4-ladder-now-live https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/diablo2/23788293/diablo-ii-r...
- matttb 4y ago
  Weapon swap glitch was also 'fixed'
nathias 4y ago
yea, and you can play a pre-LoD mode as 'classic' when making a new char since then ...
thriftwy 4y ago
You are killing me since I was thinking of synergy system as "that recent thing"

PainfullyNormal 4y ago

> "Maybe Diablo 2 difficulty and savageness belong to another era." The popularity of the dark souls series would indicate otherwise. I feel the invisible hand of upper management here, using words like "casual" and "accessible" to justify the decision to make games "easier".

boomboomsubban 4y ago
Dark Souls lacks permadeath. People are fine with hard but ultimately fair, die and learn the patterns then eventually win. Diablo 2 could erase weeks of work by one monster spawning an unfair combination. Practically nobody is truly looking to bring that back. Though, people are fine with that work improving further runs with rogue-likes.
- ar_lan 4y ago
  > Diablo 2 could erase weeks of work by one monster spawning an unfair combination. Only if you play Hardcore mode, which is entirely optional.
  - selbyk 4y ago
    There is also an experience penalty on softcore in hell. 10% experience at lvl 98 is a few weeks of work for me.
    - whiskyant 4y ago
      Getting to level 99 or playing hardcore mode isn’t the objective for 99+% of players. Diablo 2 is a fairly forgiving and moderately casual game imo. Most builds require only one skill for damage, and respeccing and how easy it is to get a character rushed means it’s easy to experiment or fix builds.
      - iamacyborg 4y ago
        I played D2 pretty obsessively for a few years during my teens and never bothered going higher than 92, rolling new builds was always more fun than endless baal runs for me.

clircle 4y ago

I just replayed diablo 2 a month ago, but since I don't have a windows computer, I went for the Path of Diablo[1] mod. This is an excellent mod that stays pretty close to the original experience, but makes the game a bit faster and more comfortable for the 2022 gamer. [1] https://pathofdiablo.com/ https://pathofdiablo.com/

outworlder 4y ago

I'm wondering why they even bothered with an external GPU, when an APU would have way more power than the best GPUs of the time even dreamed of.

Cuuugi 4y ago
The new game "Diablo 2:Resurrected" has more modern requirements ( i believe an NVidia GTX 1060 card for example).
neogodless 4y ago
The game mentioned is Diablo II: Resurrected. See system requirements[0]. Minimum: Nvidia GTX 660, AMD Radeon HD 7850 Recommended: Nvidia GTX 1060, AMD Radeon RX 5500 XT They aren't terribly steep, but they are not on the same level as the original game[1]! > DirectX compatible video card, 8MB Glide or Direct 3D compatible video card for optional 3D acceleration [0] https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/284798 https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/284798 [1] https://www.pcgamer.com/diablo-2-resurrected-pc-system-requirements/ https://www.pcgamer.com/diablo-2-resurrected-pc-system-requi...
- viraptor 4y ago
  That's close to Skyrim remastered requirements and that works ok on an integrated Intel.
  - Beltalowda 4y ago
    A lot of games list nvidia something or AMD something as "minimum" requirements, but I haven't had a dedicated video card in about 8 years and many games I want to play actually work just fine (I don't play many 3D shooters and the like obviously), and my laptop is five years old.

Aragorn2331 4y ago

Amazing setup for amazing game ! Thanks for this post, i love to read you :-)

doikor 4y ago

> One thing we never got to do was slay Diablo clone. Installing software to track IP address of the server was too unappealing. This was actually changed in 2.4 (the patch with the ladder season added). Diablo clone now is tracked by the region. https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/diablo2/23788293/diablo-ii-resurrected-patch-2-4-ladder-now-live#uber https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/diablo2/23788293/diablo-ii-r...

tomwojcik 4y ago
Yep. And here's the tracker updated by volunteers https://diablo2.io/dclonetracker.php https://diablo2.io/dclonetracker.php

jhartwig 4y ago

I love this guy's books!

rodolphoarruda 4y ago

Kind of off topic. What an impressive post! It's refreshing to see that the open web is not dead yet.

etempleton 4y ago

Interesting read. I have never played Diablo 2, but might have to try resurrected now. I found Diablo 3 boring, but hearing about some of the differences maybe Diablo 2 will be more interesting to me.

_carbyau_ 4y ago
Grim Dawn(kinda gritty) and Torchlight II(kinda cartoony) were also a good time for myself and friends. I only bother to play with friends though, I'm not really into singleplayer.

causality0 4y ago

Why is this guy torturing himself like this? He picks about the hardest way to do everything he does. He breaks his back trying to build his setup around Thunderbolt and fails, like it has failed him on his previous peripheral-sharing post. He uses a silly $150 workbench intended for component reviewers instead of a $50 mini-itx case. Instead of getting a slightly larger case he spends probably over a grand on a different GPU. At this point, I don't know what to do with desktop machines. USB is a mess and Thunderbolt motherboards either don't support video or have stability issues. You use the video output on your GPU like a sane person. Streacom design at its finest. The best Streacom can do is a Power Mac G5 with achondroplasia?

fileeditview 4y ago

> It also made me reflect about Diablo III and how I felt about it. While it was a fun game, I found it too safe to be enjoyable. Players have separate loot, loots always matching their character class, items bound to the account, and no trading. People were siloed, making it a game played side by side, not together. Very much agree with this. It is true for basically all games today. I remember Ultima Online in the early days where you could basically do anything. It just made every discovery and achievement more valuable and exciting. I miss the risk in today's games. Maybe I am old but games these days rarely can excite me at all while I still like to play old games from time to time.