Revision as of 07:04, 8 July 2020

How to run PoD under linux

Requirements

"Path of Diablo" mod works perfectly under Wine (just as vanilla D2:LoD does), but its launcher requires some additional configuration.
All you'll need is a 32-bit Wine prefix with dotnet 4.0 on it.

Preparing prefix

Make sure you're using Xorg, not Wayland - there were issues with the latter.

• Install Wine and winetricks packages from your distro repositories:

Archlinux: pacman -S wine winetricks
Debian: sudo apt install wine winetricks

• Create new win32 prefix with winecfg:

WINEPREFIX="$HOME/prefix32" WINEARCH=win32 winecfg

Throughfully work out all wine errors it throws at you at this point

For example, ntlm_auth was not found error means you should install Samba package (in Archlinux, it may vary for other distos)

If the winecfg window pops up, that means it's already configured the "prefix32" prefix folder in your user home directory as a x86 (32-bit) Windows.
Ensure you have Windows 7 or higher selected in the drop-down window, as the Path of Diablo installer won't run on Windows XP, and close the window.

• Install dotnet4.0 with winetricks there:

WINEPREFIX="$HOME/prefix32" WINEARCH=win32 winetricks

Select "Choose default wine prefix" on the first screen

Select "install DLL or Windows components" on the second screen, choose "dotnet40" option and press OK

Installing the game

• Download d2 installers & PoD installer to any folder as described here. Make sure to grab English(US) version of D2 and D2LOD from bnet website, along with 1.13 update.

This guide is tested only for patch 1.13 !

To run windows app with wine - always change directory (cd) to those containing exe-file!

• Fire up terminal, cd to directory with exe, run

WINEPREFIX="$HOME/prefix32" WINEARCH=win32 wine Downloader_Diablo2_enUS.exe

• same again but for expansion, run

WINEPREFIX="$HOME/prefix32" WINEARCH=win32 wine Downloader_Diablo2_Lord_of_Destruction_enUS.exe

• go to directory where you downloaded the classic game from the first downloader, run

WINEPREFIX="$HOME/prefix32" WINEARCH=win32 wine Installer.exe

• go to directory where you downloaded the expansion game from the second downloader, run

WINEPREFIX="$HOME/prefix32" WINEARCH=win32 wine installer.exe

• go to directory where you downloaded patch 1.13 update, run it

WINEPREFIX="$HOME/prefix32" WINEARCH=win32 wine LODPatch_113d.exe

• Install PoD launcher. As .msi files aren't executables, MAKE SURE TO USE "wine start"

WINEPREFIX="$HOME/prefix32" WINEARCH=win32 wine start pathofdiablolauncher.msi

Running the game itself (vanilla D2)

• In terminal, enter Diablo II directory and run

WINEPREFIX="$HOME/prefix32" WINEARCH=win32 wine D2VidTst.exe

Select any graphics API you want. Run the game

WINEPREFIX="$HOME/prefix32" WINEARCH=win32 wine Diablo\ II.exe

Game SHOULD work. If wine throws errors - in most cases you missing some packages. Google those errors, find the packages you need and install them. article on Archwiki can be helpful too.

Running Path of Diablo

• In terminal, enter Diablo II directory and then enter Path of Diablo directory which should be inside the Diablo II directory. If this isn't the case you must reinstall pod or you will get an error like "Some or more files are missing from your parent D2 installation". Inside Path of Diablo directory, run PoD launcher

WINEPREFIX="$HOME/prefix32" WINEARCH=win32 wine Path\ of\ Diablo\ Launcher.exe

• The launcher may download some updates and restart itself. You can download updates from whichever download server when prompted.
• Press "Play" to start playing POD mod!

Configuring Glide API wrapper

D2 in Glide mode works better and looks fancier. So, go inside Path of Diablo (not vanilla!) directory, run

WINEPREFIX="$HOME/prefix32" WINEARCH=win32 wine D2VidTst.exe

and select Glide. Next, run Glide configuration app

WINEPREFIX="$HOME/prefix32" WINEARCH=win32 wine glide-init.exe

0. Press "test" - and do that after any settings change, to verify nothing is broken!

1. Press "English/Deutsch" button to switch language

2. Press "Query..." on OpenGL-infos tab and wait until you get you graphics subsystem capabilities

3. Check all boxes at Extensions tab (WGL_ARB_render_texture" should appear after OpenGL query)

4. On settings tab, uncheck vsync and select fps-limit 100 - game can go up to THOUSAND on modern systems! Remaining boxes on that tab is up to you.

5. On renderer tab, select maximum values for texture-memory and buffer-texture-size, 32-bit rendering, texture for videos, bilinear filtering, SUPERSAMPLING, and I personally keep shader-gamma/no gamma unchecked. You can also check keep desktop resolution - but it hits performance hard on old weak laptops (together with supersampling)

6. On wrapper-statistics tab, check "framerate" and select corner to show your game FPS

7. Press test for a last time, then Quit.

• Check -3dfx box in PoD launcher!

Loot Filter and QoL settings

If you find your game crashing when interacting with the Settings button and its content, check this Reddit thread at: https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofdiablo/comments/6h2hju/linux_getting_qol_to_work/