Installing Diablo II in Wine, For Dummies

[Joe]

Here's a thing I found in my user folder when getting ready to reformat. Checked it over quick, looks up-to-date, patch might be wrong. If it is, let me know. :)



You will need:
- Linux
- Wine
- Diablo II install and play disc (optionally cinematics), or the files from them in a directory
- Diablo II LOD files, if you wish to install the expansion
- Coresponding CD Keys
- Patience

Step 1 -- Copy files
Create a directory, somewhere, and toss all the files from the Play Disc and Install Disc in there. Copy the Play Disc first and let the Install Disc files overwrite. It should look like this when you're done:

Code Select Expand

joe@desktank:~/Desktop/D2 Install$ ls
AUTORUN.INF  D2DATA.MPQ    D2SPEECH.MPQ  DSETUP32.DLL  playd2.exe  SUPPORT
binkw32.dll  d2music.mpq   DIABLOII.ICO  DSETUP.DLL    playd2.mpq
BINKW32.DLL  D2README.HTM  DIRECTX7      EXTRAS        SETUP.EXE
d2char.mpq   D2SFX.MPQ     DSETUP16.DLL  INSTALL.EXE   SETUP.MPQ

Step 2 -- Configure directory as CD Drive
Open up your wine configuration program (different, depending on your distribution), and set your next available drive to point to the folder you just created. For me, this was E:.

Step 3 -- Execute

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# obviously, switch E: for whichever drive you used in step 2
wine E:\INSTALL.EXE

If you want to play on Battle.net, pick Multiplayer install, NOT FULL. Choosing full will require you to swap discs for Cinematics, and swapping discs in wine is BAD NEWS. After the install, the install, the video test will screw with your screen for a bit, but it put mine back just fine.

Step 4 -- Setup wine to run D2 properly
Open up Wine Config again.
- On the graphics tab, tick "Allow DirectX apps to prevent the mouse from leaving their window."
- On the graphics tab, tick "Emulate a virtual desktop", and enter 1024x800.
- Open the audio tab and tick the box next to ALSA, unless you know what you're doing and want to expirament.

ASIDE -- Verify
Go ahead and run Diablo II and see if everything worked. Feel free to play a single player game (don't try going on Battle.net) to reward yourself.

Step 5 -- Install LOD (optional)
Stick in your Diablo II: LOD CD (or put your LOD files in the "drive" created in Step 2, overwriting Setup and Install) and run Setup.

Step 6 -- Patch
Patching over Battle.net is more hastle than it's worth. Blizzard conveniently hosts a ton of patches for D2 right here. You can always find the latest one (currently 1.11b) there. Go ahead and download and apply the patch.

Code Select Expand

# Look carefully at what directory I'm in
# if you have D2 installed, no LOD
joe@desktank:~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Diablo II$ wget http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/diablo2/patches/PC/D2Patch_111b.exe && wine D2Patch_111b.exe
# for LOD
joe@desktank:~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Diablo II$ wget http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/diablo2exp/patches/PC/LODPatch_111b.exe && wine LODPatch_111b.exe


Step 7 -- ???
profit.

[Blaze]

Newest patch is 1.12.

[Camel]

Why not use VMWare? I doubt d2loader would work in Wine, and I know RedVex won't.

[iago]

Last time I checked, VMWare didn't do graphics very well. Good enough for Starcraft, but Diablo II wouldn't run smoothly.

Granted, that was a year or two ago.

[Blaze]

Last time I checked, VMWare didn't do graphics very well. Good enough for Starcraft, but Diablo II wouldn't run smoothly.

Granted, that was a year or two ago.

Is that with VMWare Tools installed?

[iago]

Last time I checked, VMWare didn't do graphics very well. Good enough for Starcraft, but Diablo II wouldn't run smoothly.

Granted, that was a year or two ago.

Is that with VMWare Tools installed?

Yes, and also with the experimental 3d support enabled (I tried with/without).

[Joe]

Why not use VMWare? I doubt d2loader would work in Wine, and I know RedVex won't.

Overkill, unless you want to use d2loader and RedVex. To be honest, I don't know what RedVex is, even.

[Camel]

Last time I checked, VMWare didn't do graphics very well. Good enough for Starcraft, but Diablo II wouldn't run smoothly.

Granted, that was a year or two ago.

I've been using it for longer than two years with no problems.

To be honest, I don't know what RedVex is, even.

It's a BNCS, MCP, and D2GS proxy with a plugin api; lets you man-in-the-middle with bnet. It's undetectable, assuming you don't send anything that the server doesn't expect. I use it to for pickit, because my bot isn't able to click very accurately for some reason.

[Lead]

Last time I checked, VMWare didn't do graphics very well. Good enough for Starcraft, but Diablo II wouldn't run smoothly.

Granted, that was a year or two ago.

I've been using it for longer than two years with no problems.

To be honest, I don't know what RedVex is, even.

It's a BNCS, MCP, and D2GS proxy with a plugin api; lets you man-in-the-middle with bnet. It's undetectable, assuming you don't send anything that the server doesn't expect. I use it to for pickit, because my bot isn't able to click very accurately for some reason.

AWESOM-O is garbage. Use TurboT

[iago]

Incidentally, Wine is pretty slick now. I just beat Ghost Recon in it, and it ran flawlessly.

[warz]

ah,so the measure of wine is playing a game that came out in 2001 and saying it ran well? :P

[iago]

The measure of Wine is to flawlessly play games that require a reasonable amount of resources, yes.

I've been playing many of my favourite games (keeping in mind that games started sucking after 2001), and they all run perfectly. I haven't had any major problems, just a couple minor ones. I'm very impressed.