Diablo 1 Lives - Awesome hack for HD/64bit OS support

[Tanooki]

I have to thank pulsar_t indirectly for this as he attempted to help me with getting MS Pinball Arcade going recommending this patch/hack site for older games in widescreen (or better) http://www.wsgf.org/

I got curious an hour ago about Diablo 1 as I can't run this (no one can) on a modern-ish 64bit OS. I went in there, found nothing, but being curious I saw ONE forum post, and wow what a gem and a resurrection of dead gaming it was.

It referred me to this site: http://diablo1.ovh.org/hd/

Check it -- The 'beta' (it's really done) finished in late 2014 allows Diablo 1 to run on a modern OS perfectly and not only that in high res, HD no less up to 1080p at least correctly. You just install Diablo normally, take their zip file (they call the project Bezelbub) and extract that into the Diablo directory. Find their bezelbub.exe file and run that, problem solved. Just go into the native Diablo video area, they hacked it some, and you can set whatever you want for your screen. I never thought I'd be able to play this again, but it came in that D2 battle chest so it's been rotting in the box.

Also that mpq file in the main diablo directory on the CD, like D2, drop that sucker in your Diablo directory and bye bye CD check with this hack.

Enjoy

PS -- there is another alpha they are more currently working on, it's for the multiplayer online or lan play but I have no idea if it's sketchy or not.

PPS -- Forgot how slow it walked without D2's faster pace/stamina bar, unless I'm missing something, same goes for no town portal scrolls (so far.) I got to look that up.

[MrPopo]

TP scrolls exist, they're 100 gold apiece and don't drop nearly as often as they do in D2.

[Tanooki]

Hmm I'll have to go around Tristram and find the things as I didn't see them in Adria's inventory when I last looked. Not much fun having to walk all the way out from the 3rd floor.

[Anapan]

+1 glad WSGF was mentioned - it's the best for screen tweaks, and if your favorite game isn't there, there's an extensive library of unsupported but useful universal exe patchers. It's usually my goto, along with gamecopyworld and gameburnworld for compatibility and update patches.

I played Diablo 1 last year, tho it wasn't 1080p, and I don't think I used anything but a really old generic patch (nocd inclusive). I've never had problems playing it in any newer oses, tho I may have been playing in virtual environments. My old backups bit the dust so I don't know how I did it last time, but it was definitely X64 and I had no trouble, tho I have always played it with Hellfire installed even when I didn't care to do the farmer and alchemist dungeons (too-stupid enemies and all - there's no way that crappy alchemist made up 200 4-wheeled squeaky rollerskates for his 200 throwaway-squidcrap golems to hobble around on). It's all about the oils and "Jog" function. All those expansion missions are skippable (tho if you want to transfer equipment between savegames, the second dungeon is useful).
I think I played the last time with some other well-known MPQ expansion that added a whole bunch of new loot and a crazy amount of unique enemies and items - well beyond Hellfire - this was a many-year dedication for some group of hardcore fans.
Can't remember the site or name, but it was really great to play D1 with so much new stuff.
I made it to Archbishop Lazarus, tho the crazy new bosses and ramped difficulty took a lot longer. Then my co-worker and brother broke in and turned the lights on (I was playing it in a hotel room with my shoes propping my pico laser projector onto the roof for a 160" screen with 480P scanlines) and his winged bat tit-girls killed me.
Still, if you're gonna revisit it, just find that patch on one of those still-relevant diablo hubs and give one of those patches a whirl. The people who made them mostly seeked to improve streamline the gameplay while adding (usually) over double the loot possibilities - Godly Plate of the Whale is no longer the goal that takes 2 months of grinding - It's irrelevant because of a whole new schema.

[Tanooki]

That patch/HD bit I did I read more into it, there is added goodies, new creatures all thrown into the same procedurally generated maps that D1 does. We maybe speaking of the same thing as it encompasses Hellfire and then some.

Sure vanilla Diablo would be nice and all, but given it works or doesn't at all, I'll take works and works great no less.


Also that site, where are the generic patches? I didn't see that, love to see if one of them can resurrect MS Pinball Arcade as they have no entry for it there.

[Anapan]

I think this was what I was looking into - it's some of the utilities the members of the forum use to get unsuported games working, tho they don't come with much explanation and usually require manual tweaking to work properly.
http://www.wsgf.org/software_list

[Tanooki]

Ahh ok I saw that, didn't see much of any use unfortunately with what I was interested in.