Installing Diablo II on Linux

diablo games guide linux

Originally released in 2000, Diablo II can be a hassle to get up and running on any modern operating system. The setup process is even more involved if you wish to make the game look its best via the GLIDE3-to-OpenGL-Wrapper, while enabling online-only features with PlugY in single player… all on Linux, using images of the original disks!

Install Base Game and Expansion

  1. Install Wine:
    sudo apt-get install wine # for Ubuntu

    sudo dnf install wine # for Fedora
  2. Make a virtual CD-ROM directory in your home directory:
    mkdir ~/cdrom
  3. Mount the Diablo II install disk image:
    sudo mount -o loop /path/to/install.iso ~/cdrom
  4. Run install.exe from the CD-ROM, and select “Full Install” when prompted.
  5. When prompted to do so, unmount the currently inserted disk:
    sudo umount -f ~/cdrom
  6. Proceed to mount and unmount disk images as needed until installation is complete.
  7. The installer will prompt you to run the video test; skip this step for now.
  8. Mount the expansion disk image, and install Diablo II Lord of Destruction:
  9. Copy over d2xvideo.mpq and d2xmusic.mpq from the expansion CD-ROM to your game install directory.
  10. Update to the latest version of the game (1.14d at the time of this writing).

Install GLIDE3-to-OpenGL-Wrapper

  1. Download and install GLIDE3-to-OpenGL-Wrapper.
  2. Extract the glide wrapper to your game install directory and run glide-init.exe.
  3. Change the language to English if necessary by clicking the second to last button on the left.
    .
  4. Under the “Extensions” section, make sure the “WGL_ARB_render_texture” checkbox is ticked.
  5. Under the “settings” section, tick the desktopresolution checkbox.
  6. Under the “renderer” section, tick the “no gamma” and “supersampling” checkboxes.
  7. Run D2VidTst.exe from the game directory and select “3dfx Glide”:
    .

Install PlugY

  1. Download and install PlugY.
  2. Edit the PlugY.ini file in the Mod PlugY directory; in the LAUNCHING section, set Param=--3dfx.
  3. Run PlugY.exe from the Mod PlugY directory to start the game (don’t use Game.exe directly).
  4. Don’t forget to change the resolution from 640x480 to 800x600 in the settings menu!