Command line help for a Mac

[Gaio Macareg]

Hello all. I'm trying to teach my roomates to play and one is having a real hard time with lag on his computer. I've heard that playing in a window instead of full screen and or turning off the sound can help lower-end computers. Is that true for macs as well as PCs? And all the advice I've seen to edit the command line is for the PC, can someone tell me how to turn off the sound and force a window on a Mac, please? I'm asuming that it's the same command, but how do you enter it? From Get Info? He's got both OS 9 and the first release of OS 10 if that matters.

Thanks.

[Cattleya]

I can't help you with the command line, but you can run in a window by hitting Command-M once the game is loaded.

One thing to look at would be the video configuration, and try different options. (If the config window doesn't normally come up when you start the game, hold down the option key when starting up the game.) If he's using the first release of OS X (10.0.X) that could be part of the problem as well. As an OS, it was pretty much a beta. He should run at least (10.2.X). Even on older equipment, it should be faster than the older versions. (If the computer can run 10.3.X, that would be the best option.) That of course assumes he is actually using the OS X, and not OS 9. OS 9 on older computers works just fine.

I've been able to run Diablo II under OS 9 on a Wallstreet Powebook (G3 266 MHz, no USB- yup, that old) with a tolerable amount of lag, although MP was a little more frustrating. More details on his system might help. What type of computer is it? Is it dual boot OS X/OS 9? Which does he use primarily?

-Cat

[farting bob]

Slap him with a wet fish and tell him to go buy a PC. that'll solve all his problems in D2 and all compatability problems.

[Howitzer Al]

But then he'd have to deal with Windows crashing, viruses, adware, spyware, etc. :D

[Gohanman]

In essence, you're just trying to pass command line arguments to the program.

Go to the command line, change to the directory where the D2 program is. Type:
$ <D2 program's name> -w -nosound [enter]

That might very well work (although the way that MacOS "applications" are often bundles, you might have to go inside the "application" and run the actual D2 binary).

Lastly, my memory of what the options are might very well be wrong. Try -win and -ns as well before you give up (or look around and find out what they are for sure).

[DurfBarian]

Gohanman: Those things don't work. Terminal.app will try to parse them as unix commands and nothing will happen.

The best thing to do is either to
1. boot into OS 9 if the machine supports it, or
2. get a hold of some 10.3 CDs and move up to the smooth Panther goodness. Once 10.4 comes out later this year you'll be able to pick them up for cheap (or free, maybe, if you know someone) as people move to the newer OS.

Holding down "option" as you start the game gets you to the screen where you can make adjustments to the video settings. Switch to Software Mode and see if that improves things for now. Like Cattleya says, you can toggle between window and full-screen mode once you're in the game wih command-M (Apple-M on an Apple keyboard).

Last, ignore farting bob. Nothing good ever comes of his advice. :D

[jgreg7]

I second Durf's recommendation of trying Software mode. Some of the OS X releases had conflicts with Blizzard's OpenGL code, causing extreme slowdowns.

That also makes me a little nervous about 10.4. Will Diablo be compatible, or won't it? Only time will tell...

[Gaio Macareg]

He actually can't use the newer versions of OS 10 because of several hundred dollaers worth of Poser and Photoshop pluggins that aren't upgradeable to the newer versions without buying them over again otherwise he'd have upgraded more than a year ago.

Thanks for the advice, I'll pass it on. Hopefully it works.

[DurfBarian]

I haven't heard of much stuff that gets broken between 10.x and 10.x+1 . . . 9 and X, yeah. But then again I'm not a graphics wizard. :) The benefits of going to 10.3 are great in every other respect, so hopefully he can find ways to get those plug-ins moving in an OS that's newer than three years old!

Best of luck in software mode. Failing that, booting into 9 really does get you a responsive game in my experience.