Diablo II

This page explains how to install Diablo II and play it under Arch Linux. This works as of patch 1.13c.

Installing

Blizzard downloader dependencies

Those packages are needed in order to run the Blizzard Downloader:

• lib32-libjpeg-turbo
• lib32-libldap

If one of those is not installed, the installation through wine will display this error message :

This application couldn't be executed for some reason. Please close all applications and 
try again.

Step 1

Set up a working Wine environment.

Step 2

Download Diablo II and Diablo II Lord of Destruction installation files from battle.net. I downloaded them on Windows and them moved via USB stick. You can also run the downloaders directly from Arch. They will produce 2 folders: D2-1.12A-enUS and D2LOD-12.12A-enUS (locale suffixes may be different for you).

After that, go to first folder and run:

$ wine Installer.exe

Enter your product key which can be found In your battle.net account and install. After it is finished, go to the second folder and run the same command. Once both are installed, download patch 1.13d from the Internet as updater will not work. After that, run:

$ wine LODPatch_113d.exe

Step 3

Now you need to configure the graphics. Go to ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Diablo II (or where ever you installed) and run:

$ wine D2VidTst.exe

Click on Run Test. Once it's finished, pick whichever you want. Generally I prefer 2D even on Windows as very few modern cards support Glider. You can try 3D though and see if it lags or not.

Step 4

$ winecfg

Then, add Game.exe and make sure it uses ALSA under the sound tab and that it is emulated as Windows XP. I didn't have to change anything as those were default for me.

Additional information

While the information above will work for a fresh install from the actual CD's themselves, if you are a dual boot user you most likely have Diablo II installed on your Windows partition. If this is the case, you are capable of running the installation in Arch Linux, without much hassle.

You can start by mounting your Windows installation to a fixed-name directory, I like to create one in /media and make sure it can be accessed by anyone.

$ mkdir -m 777 /media/windows
$ mount /media/sdb2 /media/windows

Keep in mind that your drive letter will be different than documented, to locate your Windows partition do the following:

$ fdisk -l

The output will tell you what drive is HPFS/NTFS, the smaller size will be your Windows recovery partition (unless you do not have one), and the larger one will be your entire Windows partition.

I also recommend using the package ntfs-3g, which will allow you to write content to your Windows partition, in addition to being able to read it. This will make life much easier at one point or another.

Once you have your Windows partition mounted you may wish to copy your Diablo II directory to a location on the Linux partition, and choose not to mount Windows at all, this is perfectly fine and does not cause any problems, make sure you know whether or not your installation is in a x64 bit folder or a x86 bit folder.

$ cp -dpR /media/windows/Program Files/Diablo II /home/username/Desktop
$ cp -dpR /media/windows/Program files (x86)/Diablo II /home/username/Desktop

Once you have successfully decided how to gain access to your content, you will need to have a Diablo II play disc for either classic, if you play classic, or expansion, if you play expansion. If you do not have the actual disc, and use a ISO I recommend mounting it as root using fuseiso from the fuseiso package.

# mkdir -m 777 /media/diablo

When you mount the actual ISO do it as a regular user, this will ensure the game is mounted with the proper permissions:

$ fuseiso /location/of/diablo.iso /media/diablo

Note: you will need to run winecfg as a regular user, and set up the mounted ISO location under "Drives". I choose drive S: and configured it as a CD-ROM mount to /media/diablo.

You may also have issues running the D2VidTst, noticing that you have no available video displays, if this is the case you must take note to run Diablo II's Game.exe with the window extension, other wise it will crash. WineHQ noted this as a coding error on behalf of Blizzard.

$ wine /media/windows/Program Files/Diablo II/Game.exe -w
$ wine /media/windows/Program Files x(86)/Diablo II/Game.exe -w

Warning: Use of a "NO-CD" crack will result in a ban on Battle.net, and if you do not wish to be restricted from realm play, should invest in finding a ISO you can mount locally.

And on a final note, this is a Windows game and you will notice that you will generate many notifications about missing fonts, this can be corrected by creating a symbolic link between the Wine fonts directory, and the Windows directory.

# ln -s /media/windows/Windows/Fonts /usr/share/wine/fonts

If you do not want to mount the Windows partition as mentioned before, copy the Windows Fonts directory into the Diablo II folder you have on the Linux partition, and create the symlink between wine and that directory.

Playing

If you use a desktop, you can create a shortcut. Otherwise just run:

$ wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Diablo\ II/Game.exe

Warning: Do not append the argument -opengl , because it was left unfinished by the developers and may cause extra problems for you!

Troubleshooting

Error "ACCESS_VIOLATION" on start

Try setting dsoundhw=Emulation. This can be done by starting winetricks Select the default wineprefix and then choose Change settings and check the box in front of dsoundhw=Emulation. Another thing to try is to add -w at the end of the command line. It will launch the game in windowed mode but it should work where fullscreen does not.

Only starts in windowed mode

Try running D2VidTst.exe in the game folder and then select 3dfxGlide. If the game still doesn't start in fullscreen place the glide3x.dll into the game folder from this website http://www.svenswrapper.de/english/downloads.html. It is extra written for running Diablo2 with glide.