First post, by maximus
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This is a follow-up to my earlier post, Diablo II and Glide wrappers: what's the point?.
After playing Diablo II using both Direct3D and Glide renderers, I've found that there are some good reasons to use Glide.
First, patch 1.4 removes DirectDraw support from the game. Many Diablo II players have traditionally preferred DirectDraw to Direct3D, citing better performance and visual quality. With DirectDraw gone, these players are being forced to use Glide wrappers to avoid Direct3D. The Direct3D renderer can also have major performance problems on newer systems, making the Glide renderer the only viable option for some players.
Second, after playing the game with a Glide wrapper (nGlide), I can say that the Glide renderer does offer some advantages over Direct3D, at least on my system.
- better texture quality
- better lighting quality
- higher average framerate
- better color balance
The Glide renderer does have some downsides, though.
- minor FPS drops in some areas
- game always starts with music muted 😕
Here are some screenshots for comparison. Direct3D is on the left, Glide is on the right.
Test setup:
Athlon 64 X2 4200+
Radeon X800 XL
Windows XP SP3
Catalyst 8.2
Diablo II: Lord of Destruction patch 1.14d
nGlide 1.05
I should add that patch 1.4 also removes the d2vidtest.exe program originally used to switch renderers. Blizzard has added a -3dfx command line option that starts the game in Glide mode.
