Diablo II: Resurrected • Hacker News Board

Re: Diablo II: Resurrected

#111

Post by Espionage724 » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 2:12 AM UTC

Well, I'm excited!

The screenshots and small snippets of gameplay presented look familiar and fun. There's going to be controller support on PC as well (was one of my favorite things about D3). And cross-platform progression sounds interesting.

I'm not entirely happy about what happened with WC3:R, but I'm assuming some kind of lessons were learned with that, and with D2:R being made with a different team with closer interactions, I believe it will end up in a better state at launch.

(of course I'll also back-up my old copies of D2 and its installers as well just in-case)

Re: Diablo II: Resurrected

#112

Post by vetinari » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 2:13 AM UTC

ttepasse wrote: post #99

Nailgun wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha this always made me laugh since 96. - It doesn't work on Linux - It doesn't work on Mac

The original D2 was released for MacOS, both Classic and OS X.

From what I remember, D2 was released for Classic, and had update for Carbon/OSX.

Which turned out to be a problem, once the Classic environment was no longer shipped with OSX and you wanted to reinstall the game.

Re: Diablo II: Resurrected

#113

Post by encom » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 2:13 AM UTC

Note there's even the cursed chat gem on the bottom of the page.

Re: Diablo II: Resurrected

#114

Post by hellcow » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 2:17 AM UTC

scythe wrote: post #37

skocznymroczny wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will have a key to switch between old and new graphics. They mentioned they don't want to touch the gameplay, not even bugfixes. It's primarily a graphics remaster, the gameplay will stay the same.

Some bugs in D2 and pretty silly. Like how Strafe displays (animation) a 2-frame attack while doing a 3-frame attack. Or how Fend will miss every hit if you trigger a Dodge. Or how the Blaze synergy on Fire Wall just doesn't work. I guess cashing in is supposed to be cheap, and D2 was good enough that I might still play it.

Don't forget the paladin's charge! Hit it just right and you barely move.

Re: Diablo II: Resurrected

#115

Post by Espionage724 » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 2:19 AM UTC

ksec wrote: post #90

EduardoBautista wrote: post #17

Shame that it's not coming to macOS. Does anyone have any experience gaming through Parallels? I have a 16-inch MBP. I have never ran Windows on it though.

Considering Diablo II Re should not be GPU demanding I was surprised as well. My experience has been you should always do BootCamp for Windows gaming due to performance losses. But for something like DII Re I guess it could be good enough.

We have better wrapper software available nowadays, but I was really surprised at how Starcraft II launched. The Windows version of it only included a D3D9 renderer.

Notably, every major game before this point that had a native macOS version, also supported an OpenGL renderer on the Windows version. Specifically in my case, my experience with Wine back then wasn't ideal, and I believed that if SC2 had just had the OpenGL renderer, I could have gotten along fine with it.

I don't expect D2:R to be using Vulkan on any OS, or else that would have made x86 macOS support relatively easy. With my limited macOS usage in Mojave and Catalina, two MMORPGs (Guild Wars 2 and FFXIV) used Wine wrappers. Can't quite remember what GW2 did, but if I recall FFXIV, it used D3D11 -> Vulkan -> MoltenVK. Surprisingly worked well, but I don't know if that was something any random user could have done with any other game easily (not sure if there were pre-compiled solutions around).

Bootcamp should be fine, at least on x86 Macs. I've heard some initial work being done with M1 Macs, but I doubt anything ideal will exist by the time D2:R releases.

Re: Diablo II: Resurrected

#116

Post by egfx » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 2:21 AM UTC

grawprog wrote: post #22

I was pretty addicted to Diablo 2 for a couple years as a teenager. Never got into WoW or anything, but I wasted at least one entire summer doing nothing but playing Diablo 2. Never was a big fan of 3. It felt more like playing some kind of diablo themed version of gauntlet or something with a bit more depth. It didn't feel like Diablo 2. I tried another recent one that was supposed keep the spirit of diablo 2. I thi…

Did you ever end up playing the expansion set? Strangely I don’t see it talked a lot about in the context of Diablo 2 at all but it added new levels and 2 more playable characters (barbarian, assassin) to the game and really expanded the playability. I have some inside into the thinking behind the franchise because I started my career at Blizzard working on D2 expansion set. Anecdotally we had an X-men vs Street fighter game that I found appreciated play style at a very top level. Whatever character you chose that’s how you played. It was street fighter after all and I’m convinced that some of the specializing in character attention in d2 and wow was inspired by the way the coin-op played and QA as well as the game designers played nonstop. Now this sort of attentive character specializing outside of role playing games is all over the place and it’s not novel anymore but back then this was very innovative and immersive in an action game. The Lost Vikings and Rock and Roll racing another blizzard classic had the same mechanic.

Re: Diablo II: Resurrected

#117

Post by jitl » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 2:28 AM UTC

EduardoBautista wrote: post #17

Shame that it's not coming to macOS. Does anyone have any experience gaming through Parallels? I have a 16-inch MBP. I have never ran Windows on it though.

WINE will probably be fine. It’s quite well maintained these days.

Re: Diablo II: Resurrected

#118

Post by minimaxir » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 2:30 AM UTC

m463 wrote: post #104

minimaxir wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Torchlight requires mods to be playable. The recent rereleases of Torchlight 2 for console (even with some QoL additions) that did not support mods were...not good.

what? that's ridiculous. I've played torchlight 1 & 2, on both mac and pc. They were both high quality and very well done. There was no evident shortcomings that required mods to fix

More skill/loot balance than the general presentation.

Re: Diablo II: Resurrected

#119

Post by enraged_camel » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 2:35 AM UTC

Espionage724 wrote: post #109

throwaway13337 wrote: post #35

If anyone is looking to play a modern version of Diablo 2, the spiritual successor is probably more a game called Path of Exile (rather than Diablo 3 or this). The developers managed to capture the aesthetic while improving the game in the direction of what gave the original game its replay-ability. Their development cycle of new content every 3 or 4 months with a league reset is unique and keeps things fresh. They'r…

I've heard Path of Exile suggested plenty of times, and personally I just couldn't get into it. Notably back when Diablo III was still fresh, lots of people suggested PoE. To me, D3 felt more of an arcade-like game that I can quickly jump into and have fun, whereas PoE is more of an efficiency and numbers game. Like it's fun, but I just don't have that sense of being "powerful". I gradually progressed up until Act 5…

PoE is good, but there are three things that annoy me about it.

First, the non-traditional currency system. There's no gold; instead you have different types of "orbs" of varying rarity. Vendors have different exchange rates for some of them, but the system is generally difficult to grok, especially for a newcomer. To make matters even more confusing, orbs themselves are useful, e.g. they can enhance item stats, upgrade items to higher quality, etc. and you need to be careful to not accidentally continue using orbs yourself when you'd be much better off trading them.

Which brings me to trade. There's no centralized auction house - instead you need to rely on a third-party website where items are listed by other players. The process of listing them is done via an in-game API I think - but then once you find an item you want, you need to whisper that player, then go meet them at their hideout and manually do a trade. Just an absolutely atrocious system overall.

The third one is the zoom level. The game feels like it plays at 800p, or maybe 1024p, and there's no way to zoom out further. Unacceptable for a game that is two decades more recent than Diablo 2, imo.

Re: Diablo II: Resurrected

#120

Post by andrewprock » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 2:46 AM UTC

thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #91

andrewprock wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time my kids die in a game, I ask them what happens. The answer is never: "I lost everything!" I still haven't found anything quite like the feeling you get when you die in Diablo II hardcore.

Nethack: https://www.nethack.org/ Diablo II is easy compared to Nethack. I love them both, but at least in D2 you know what a potion does when you pick it up and none of the equipment is cursed. There's no feeling quite like being surrounded by too many monsters and looking at all the unidentified potions, spell scrolls, and wands in your inventory, choosing one, and hoping that it will magically teleport you out of…

I've played many rouguelikes over the years. My current favorite is Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. But the adrenaline rush just does not compare, probably because it lacks the real time interface.