Diablo II (and other games) on RetroPie!

Brigane · 25 Aug 2018, 06:07

@bizzar721 amazing, I can't wait to try this out!
Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

space cadet · 25 Aug 2018, 09:46

Cool beans so excited!

BiZzAr721 · 26 Aug 2018, 14:20

It is noted that for best performance, it is recommended to dual boot Raspian (full) alongside retropie. Reason being is that from what I've read, RetroPie is built on top of Raspian Light which only had legacy drivers available where as Rasbian Full utilizes OpenGL drivers along with a modified kernel and a custom built wine.

There is a noticeable performance gain in resolution as well as sound (no stuttering). Other than that, it is still fully playable through RetroPie.

I am considering if it is worth it to go through the hassle of dual booting. The good thing is that it can be done clean from RetroPie and vice versa as I have seen with people do with kodi/pixel/RetroPie.

Dual booting from 2 custom images

Here is a video of gameplay from Raspian using OpenGL.
Instructions and custom files needed are in description. (Game is not included)

Crash · 26 Aug 2018, 17:34

While it does work better on OpenGL I only found sound issues with the music on the retropie side. Gameplay is unaffected.

BiZzAr721 · 29 Aug 2018, 12:21

Just a little public service annoucement getting Diablo to run with no CD:

Diablo II no CD instructions

"If all required Diablo 2 '.MPQ' files are installed on the
hard drive, the game will no longer require the CD to play.

For users that originally performed a 'Full Installation'
and wish to run without the CD, all '.MPQ' files should
be copied from the Diablo 2 CDs to the Diablo 2 directory.
Most users will only need to copy D2Music.mpq from the
Diablo 2 Play CD and/or D2xMusic.mpq from the Lord of
Destruction CD. Mac users will need to copy these music
files and rename them to 'Diablo II Music' and
'Diablo II Expansion Music' respectively.

Anyone who did not perform a 'Full Installation' will need
to re-install from CD again to ultimately play without the CD.
In this case, a 'Full Installation' is required, followed by file
copy step noted above."

@Crash Thank you. Got everything up and running following your video. Works pretty good on my Pi3B.

Spiky · 29 Aug 2018, 17:12

Can this be done without the PIXEL package? I want to know before I spend hours watching the video and trying to achieve the same result.

mitu · 29 Aug 2018, 17:23

@spiky I don't think it runs without X.org, since it uses Wine.

CapNinja · 30 Aug 2018, 20:11

It's really cool, congrats for this great job. Seeing this made me curious, can Age of Empires get a port to Retropie too?

BiZzAr721 · 31 Aug 2018, 16:50

All I have done was bring attention to their hard over here on RetroPie forums, but yes I do believe we will be seeing Age of Empires as well as other games from that era. They laid out the foundation, which will be expanded & improved upon.

jandalf81 · 31 Aug 2018, 22:05

I'd really like to see Spelunky Classic running on RetroPie. Unfortunately, I'm too dumb to get it running myself...

BiZzAr721 · 31 Aug 2018, 22:50

@jandalf81 said in Diablo II (and other games) on RetroPie!:

n

They offer the source code right on their site, so it shouldn't be too difficult for someone with the skills to port it to retropie. Possibly @zerojay could point you in the right direction for your request. (As well as get your Savestate selector script added to Retropie-Extra scripts)

BiZzAr721 · 18 Sept 2018, 14:16

I finally can get rid of Stratagus - even though I never played it for lack of campaign and replaced it with official Starcraft with Brood wars expansion!
The only thing is I can't get it full screen, but I did get it windowed with just a blank border. I believe I could use your trick for diablo, but it would mean lowering resolution to 640 x 480.

@Crash Since I already used your guide to get Diablo 2 up & running, it was simple using the same wine deb and compiled exe by Salvador. It plays great. I didn't notice any issues.

Any more games in the works? I saw your andriod video of Morrrowind. May I suggest Postal?

Cybrasty · 28 Sept 2018, 13:28

Instead of dual booting, is there a way to expand the raspbian lite to full raspbian and use openGL?

mitu · 28 Sept 2018, 13:57

@cybrasty said in Diablo II (and other games) on RetroPie!:

Instead of dual booting, is there a way to expand the raspbian lite to full raspbian and use openGL?

Not really, RetroPie will not work correctly when you enable the openGL driver.

cyperghost · 28 Sept 2018, 14:16

@mitu Well I think you can disable the OpenGL by editing /boot/config and then reboot, so a "dual" boot is possible with just one OS ;) But I think I would simple boot to annother partition to have the best of both worlds ;)

Cybrasty · 28 Sept 2018, 14:25

So changing the driver would require a reboot?
Can't I just enable the driver from console, go to Pixel, play diablo II. Then after I am done kill Pixel, go back to console, disable openGL, run emulationstation again?

mitu · 28 Sept 2018, 14:28

@cybrasty said in Diablo II (and other games) on RetroPie!:

So changing the driver would require a reboot?

Yes, it needs a reboot.

Cybrasty · 28 Sept 2018, 14:40

@mitu Thanks, yeah, then having a dual boot seems the best way of doing it. Thanks!

BiZzAr721 · 28 Sept 2018, 14:40

Using @Crash 's guide, I got it running using legacy drivers.
He convinced me that was the way to go. Minimal sound stutter in Diablo II when many characters on screen but no issues with gameplay. Starcraft works perfect so far. (I'm also using a 3b, so the plus may eliminate that)

WizardInfinite · 3 Oct 2018, 20:54

Hi folks. I'm making accounts and pointing things out that I notice when they come up in relation to this. This development has me excited for more developments of its kind, so I figure it's time to pony up some data.

I was running the image from crash gaming on a usb stick in a pi 3 (not plus, i don't think). I personally noticed hangs in certain spots, but each one was related to reading data, specifically a new enemy or item appearing in the game at that moment. I've never read up on how cache works with d2, but I'd imagine that's a big part of what's going on there. Aside from that, butter smooth. Anything from d2 takes me way back. I'm going to go digging through archives and see if I can find an old mpq mod I had working with this, multi"pi" servers... I'm geeked over this.

After all that, I'm going to take a stab at a few more games around the directx 7 era and see what happens, maybe move from there in one direction or another, and definitely move into a real usb hdd instead of sd or usb flash, see if we can't get that data moving any faster and see if that actually helps. Might also try OpenGL specific games of that era on the newer driver and see what that does. TONS of stuffs to get to doing.

Have fun. That was always the point.

-Wiz