For whom it may concern.
One of the main reasons I moved on to D2R was because the low framerate of classic D2 was actually giving me migraines. I’m sure that isn’t a problem for most people who are used to this game, but for me, at least 60fps gaming is what I came to consider a smooth experience. Recently with frame generation being a thing, many classic games can now be enjoyed at higher framerates without any impact to performance. I even went back to LoD because I’d rather not have a 30GB game on my SSD if I can have a much lighter version of it.
A little program called Lossless Scaling on Steam, which is dirt cheap, allows you to upscale and use frame generation on any window running on your desktop. That means you don’t need to mod the game itself, it just works as a “magnifying lens” of sort, meaning battle.net play isn’t affected (think of it as the same kind of deal glide wrappers do, it’s just acting on how the game is displayed). And because this is frame generation, the logic of the game isn’t affected either, the game is still gonna be running at it’s 25FPS, but generating an extra frame, thus achieving 50fps. All the frame gen will do, is use AI to generate extra frames for you to make the animation smoother. It will basically work the same as how D2R achieves 60fps without changing the game’s breakpoints.
For the upscaling algorithm, you can choose whatever you like, I personaly use Nvidia’s upscaling, but it looks extremely sharp so it might not be for everyone. Just make sure to turn on frame generation and enjoy silky smooth D2. Also works with D1 and basically any game, including emulators. Also make sure to enable “scale cursor” as the game needs the mouse cursor to function.
The downside is that the game must be running on window mode, but it will upscale the game and put it on fullscreen for you anyway.