Diablo 2 runs slow in OS 9 but fine under OS X

Okay, this is something that's going to seem silly to some people, but
it's been pretty annoying to me. I've always had a problem with getting
ANY version of D2 to run under any settings on a non-OS X Mac without
its exhibiting a bizarre sort of stuttering in its FPS rate, this goes
all the way from running the D2 demo on a 6500 through running the full
version on an 8600, several G3s & three G4s (the D1 demo did not exhibit
this behavior.) The only thing similiar about these machines is that
none of them were/are booting anything earlier than 9.0.4.

The stuttering isn't performance related, as it ran fine when under
versions of OS X from 10.0 to 10.3.9 on the exact same machines. This is
very irritating, as I often switch from one OS to another.

The only thing I've managed to gather from reading about it is something
I've heard from several places about D2 being broken ever since 8.6,
which strikes me as a bit odd considering that there was a pretty long
wait between 8.6 and carbonized D2, and I'd have imagined Blizzard would
have gotten flamed to cinders over something like that.

Oh, also, is there some way of activating the FSAA that the GLIDE
version had from the Voodoo 3 on modern cards? OpenGLIDE doesn't seem to
do it.






Eric,

In article <eric-060443.03162329052005 DeleteThis @corp.supernews.com>,
Eric <eric DeleteThis @surfvh.com> wrote:

 > Okay, this is something that's going to seem silly to some people, but
 > it's been pretty annoying to me. I've always had a problem with getting
 > ANY version of D2 to run under any settings on a non-OS X Mac without
 > its exhibiting a bizarre sort of stuttering in its FPS rate, this goes
 > all the way from running the D2 demo on a 6500 through running the full
 > version on an 8600, several G3s & three G4s (the D1 demo did not exhibit
 > this behavior.) The only thing similiar about these machines is that
 > none of them were/are booting anything earlier than 9.0.4.
 >
 > The stuttering isn't performance related, as it ran fine when under
 > versions of OS X from 10.0 to 10.3.9 on the exact same machines. This is
 > very irritating, as I often switch from one OS to another.
 >
 > The only thing I've managed to gather from reading about it is something
 > I've heard from several places about D2 being broken ever since 8.6,
 > which strikes me as a bit odd considering that there was a pretty long
 > wait between 8.6 and carbonized D2, and I'd have imagined Blizzard would
 > have gotten flamed to cinders over something like that.

Your best bet on the older OS is to just stick with the software
renderer. We don't expect any new driver revs for OS9 that would help
address the hiccups in VRAM management that can cause D2 to suffer.

On OS X we are able to use newer GL extensions that reduce or eliminate
the hiccups, but there is no easy way to fix OS9.

Rob<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->