Increase Diablo II's maximum resolution with this handy guide.
For an eight-year-old game, Diablo II is doing pretty well. In fact, it's still so popular World of Warcraft has only recently overtaken the game in terms of sales. And it's not hard to see the sheer influence Diablo II has had on recent games: the open-world questing of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion owes a great deal to Diablo II’s point-'n'-slash mechanics, and it goes without saying that World of Warcraft is a natural progression from battle.net online play.
And with Diablo III peeping over the horizon, it's about time we took a look at an ageing classic. 'Ageing' being the operative word here - Diablo II hasn't got older gracefully. Blizzard's new patch will get the game up and running in Vista, and there are a couple of tricks to get it running without lag and at a slightly higher resolution...
If you've lost your discs, you can enter your CD key (if you haven't lost that, too) on www.blizzard.com and download it, without the rigmarole of having to patch it. You now have absolutely no excuse for not playing this classic game again. Bring it on.
Children of the resolution
Open the Pseudoreso zip file, and then browse your way to your Diablo II installation folder. Copy the RemoteLib_Demo folder into the Diablo II folder, as well as main.cpp and pseudoreso.dll. Next, you'll need to right-click on your Diablo II program icon, and add "-w" to the target, which will force the game to run in windowed mode - unfortunately the larger resolution fix isn't available in fullscreen yet.
Library card
Run Diablo II and start a game - either a single or multiplayer. Alt-tab out, and browse to the RemoteLib_Demo in your Diablo II installation folder. Double-click on Demo, then next to HWND click 'Find'. Click on Diablo II in the list, and then click ok. Next to DLL Path click 'Browse', then locate Pseudoreso.dll and click Open. Clicking 'Call: RemoteLoadLibrary' and getting a "function succeeded" message will let you know if the code's working properly.
You're playing the game
Exit the remote library demo, and return to your beloved Diablo II game. Pressing minus on the numpad will now up the game's resolution to 1,300x700. It won't be perfectly aligned to start with, but opening and closing your inventory by pressing T should fix that. It be tricky to play the game in windowed mode - bear in mind that clicking out of the game area will minimize the window. But it does get you a bit more game real estate.
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