The original perspective mode was coded by David Brevik (he states it in an interview). It was designed after LoD to run in 800x600 mode. Diablo 2 classic, as we all know, was designed with fully 2D graphical bitmaps. That means it was traditional animation and you couldn’t rotate maps.
Today D2:R is fully in 3D and there’s no perspective mode, it was in Beta but buggy from what I see on the forums. Since I have run D2 classic in both Glide and Direct X 11 (yes you can, and there’s graphical filters to smooth out the graphics into 32 bit as well), I know for a fact that enabling perspective mode causes low res artifacting because of the limitations to the original code.
For me perspective mode was god tier. Truly amazing. Like magic.
D2:R looks flat without it, but being able to enable Ambient Occlusion is nice at least.
From a fan who misses it.
Or maybe redesign legacy mode to run in DX11/12 so it actually looks decent. The settings in D2:R just aren’t very good. Even glide can be decent if tailored to your system properly. DX11 allows you to use DSR and further smooth things out!
Having said that, I did fall in love with the D2:R look and style, the animations are incredible. In some ways it is better, even though most of the content is censored for 3rd graders. hehe
You could see the dormant fear in the studio as they neared completion, praying/hoping it wouldn’t end like Warcraft 3: Reforged. The difference is D2:R got properly funded, the failure of Reforged was the result of a power play by Bobby. Don’t make a project unless I approve first. Reforged was a passion project. Bobby doesn’t like those. Bye Bobby.
This limited the creative scope of D2:R due to internal politics combined with gaming cancel culture devs fear so much, which can destroy a smaller studio and damn a larger one. And yes, I’ve tried since launch to find a reason to even play it. For me, offline mods is the only way. However, I’ve tried several and none stuck. Now I’m trying a third.
If I didn’t like the new artwork so much and the seamlessness of it all, there’d be no reason to try.
yeah D2 is a far better flatly fundation as D4
hence why they killed D2R in the egg
only using it as a marketing bait
all this assisted by the purists who defend the murder of the game and one of its core pillar, continuous improvement
like a crazy boyfriend who brings his GF with him in the final trip because “if I can’t have you, nobody will”
A marketing ploy I saw as a young man on the back of an outlet store, "If we don’t have it, you don’t need it!
I have seen this sentiment as I began reading the forums. I can’t say I disagree with it.
The D4 devs admitted recently that they tried to make the game like D2, feeling that this is what everyone wanted in a sequel. And in a lot of circles, yes! But they state that the D3 fans were far more rampant than the D2 fans.
I’ve sunk maybe 10 hours into the game, D4. I was waiting for it to stop being reinvented, D4, every few seasons. I’ll buy the expansion on a Christmas sale this year if they will let me, on Steam. LOL.
But I would say, those who love D2:R? Well, I think they REALLY love it. But it is a minority. Like that Lama guy on youtube who admits to playing the game half the waking time he’s been alive. He was at Blizzcon reacting to the D2:R announcement. You know, when they had Blizzcon.
the biggest problem is that different people are of different opinion what is best.
For most suggestions you will find people who disagree.
And then there is Blizzard who very certainly doesn’t primarly care for how d2r could be best - but what would make them the most money.
Yes, each person has a different concern about what keeps the game they always wanted and what makes it no longer wanted or upsets them. Each person has a different thing about the game they love, so the issue is complex. Brevik himself said that simply remastering the game wouldn’t be a success because this is 20 years later and the gaming landscape has completely changed. And if you remake the game, it is no longer D2 and you might as well call it something else. Like, for example, Diablo 4.
Now lets say the creators of Diablo 2 decided to fully support the graphics cards and render things fully in 3D. 3D back then was primitive and the game would have been long forgotten as most early 3D games were (such was the fate of Darkstone). Instead it had a distinguished 2D style that better represented the artistic skill and unique visual style more than 3D ever could at the time, and it is likely one of the chief reasons so many identified with it so well for decades. Well, and the music itself!
One of the many issues vanilla had 24 years ago was that it was a massive strain even on the most modern GPUs while the graphics already looked dated on release date.
yeah - the smart thing they did was make some of the QoL changes optional. You can still use skills like it was 24 years ago if you prefer - or you change to click2cast. I immediately changed my setting to the latter, but if some purist prefers it differently, they can do it like they did 24 years ago.
That’s a clever approach.
Don’t like the new RWs? Don’t use them. You will run into them when playing random MP, true. But if playing solo or with like-minded people, it’s avoidable.
TZs and sunders even more so.
But look at some of those bug fixes, like the FE death explosion in NM diff. Some folks wanted to keep that unfixed.
I would actually applaud if the ever fix that concentrate works with BH. They said it’s a bug and they should fix it. Hammerdins getting weaker by it? So what.
Mosaic was the only “unforgivable” change for me in-game.
The removal of tcp/ip is really regrettable but I personally wouldn’t use it anyway. Others still do with LoD if I understand things correctly.
d2 attempted to give a feeling of 3d through the perspective mode
the visuals were stupendously well done, calculated and thought of, this is not an overstatement
those who spent years and years playing d2 understand the beauty of it
in comparison with the era’s average, d2 was way ahead especially in care and detail. I know of no other game attempting to convey the feeling of 3d and achieving such unique aesthetics. It was nothing short of an achievement, astonishing
because of the gameplay, the mechanics, the design of the game - it is rich, everything makes sense, nothing is exaggerated ( I do not use enigma, dual dream or mosaic : )))) )
ofc, it is still one of a kind !
but we are talking perspective mode… I always thought that successive frames would be somehow different so that they could somehow superimpose and give the sense of depth… I would try to move just a bit my char to try and see if this was intentional… idk if there is an interview of the devs talking about this
It was intentional. And yes, it was in the OP, and everyone talks about what they want and I humored those things too.
Naturally nobody would give a damn about perspective mode if the game wasn’t good.
Also consider, if the game wasn’t hand drawn, that is in 2D, perspective mode wouldn’t have been made, since it was a specific 2D technology to mimic 3D.
I stopped playing LoD in 2005 and haven’t touched it since, so kindly refresh my failing memory. When was perspective mode released? Which patch? Thanks.
Oh, you meant that it was originally in 640x480 and later also adopted to 800x600? When I first read the second sentence I quoted I thought it was introduced after LoD’s release.
So what was PM then? “Just” the normal graphics mode? I’m getting more confused now.
Perspective mode allowed objects with height, like a torch for example, superimpose itself onto other objects around it, as your character moved to different angles.
It might be subjective to say that it was realistic, but it felt incredibly impressive. You have this 2D game and then EXPECT it to act a certain way. And well, it didn’t! It made it appear as if the game was NOT hand drawn, and that in-fact each object was a living/breathing model!
Brevik was well aware of the limitations to the game engine they had just created, as it was similar to what was done before in D1, but since the industry had taken a different direction. If you were to look at the originally pre-rendered character models from 3D studio Max, you’d see their designs were in 3D and were then degraded into 2D to fit into the engine. So perhaps it merely LOOKS like it is hand drawn…
The tech behind Diablo 2 is deceptive, hard to know unless you were there. They were fully aware of and operated in a full 3D space, but when transitioning into the game, there were hardware and software limitations to what they intended the player’s experience to be.
He was at Blizzcon reacting to the D2:R announcement. You know, when they had Blizzcon. 