Glide Wrapper 101 - by Dr.Disaster

After successfull tests of Sven Lubasch's D2/LoD Glide Wrapper I decided to make a summary how to get it up and running.

In case you wonder why I did not put this under General forum Sven stated that his Glide Wrapper was exclusivly written to be used with D2/LoD and nothing else. You can try it with other games that support Glide but Sven gives no guarantee at all.

- Extract and copy all files from the ZIP archive into your D2/LoD installation folder. If you want to get detailed information about individual options keep the TXT files.

- Start the Glide Wrapper setup program glide-init.exe and select the language you like to use. Then select "OpenGL-infos" and hit the "Query OpenGL-infos" button. This will check if there may be incompatability issue with your hardware.

The info screen at the bottom is a display of the TXT file content. Scroll thru it if you want further details on something.
If OpenGL parameters seem to be ok you can hit the "Test" button right away to see a test screen.
After a successfull test continue to the next step.

- Let's check thru the menus Settings, Renderer and Extensions.
Don't worry, if the menus look different for you. The setup program adjusts them depending on the results of the OpenGL info query.

"window mode" let's you switch D2/LoD from window to full screen mode and back while the game is running. Also in window mode "captured mouse" will keep your mouse pointer trapped(!) inside the game window! No more mishaps by overshooting borders

Sidenote: When you do not run both game and wrapper setup at the same time Alt-Tab does not work in fullscreen mode. You'll have to use Strg-Esc to switch to your desktop or other apps.

Attention! The refresh-rate shown in the screenshot is specific for my old trusty CRT monitor!
Verify that your monitor supports the selected refesh-rate by running "Test". Most modern LCD or flat screens use a refresh-rate of 60 so best select "60" or "auto".

Vertical sync keeps the system from rendering more screens per second than the selected refresh-rate can display. By the given screenshot my system is fixed to render 85 pictures per second. Toggling VSYNC off results into 400+ pictures per second. It plain saves system resources.

On the right side of this menu the wrapper setup makes a guess on how much RAM should at least be allocate to your texture memory setting. The buffer size defaults to 1024x1024 which is a quite good value. Keep it.

With the other settings shown you most likely won't need to adjust your in-game gamma and contrast at all.

The next screenhots was taken without running the OpenGL query to show all available extension.
When you have run the OpenGL query the list is reduced to the extensions your gfx driver does support.

The selected extensions above work fine with my nVidia GeForce.
With a none-nVidia card you may need to activate more or other extensions.

Make sure to Test all your selections made! When satisfied hit Quit to save your settings.

- Start the D2/LoD Video Test program and either run or skip gfx tests.
On the next screen you will now see the previously missing 3dfx/Glide mode entry. Select it and hit OK.

- Start D2/LoD as you always did and enjoy the now silk-smoothed game

Kudos go to T-hawk who gave the crucial hint about 3dfx and Glide.

And sing a little...

Glide me thru the tombs
Let me zing along jail bars
Let me see what thing is like
In abaddon and marsh

In other words, mold my land
In other words, baby bliss me

Fill my sight with glow
Set me high for ever more
You are all I long for
All I worship and adore

In other words, please paint true
In other words, I love you

Update
Sven has released an update for his wrapper that offer some improvements running windowed mode and figuring out the best memory settings for your gfx hardware.

With newer games requiring gfx driver updates to work properly you may encounter your old wrapper settings do no longer work or seem to perform badly. This happend to me while switching from nVidia ForceWare to nVidia Detonator, a pure software change. I found that now these extensions provide the best performance:

Of course this is for nVidia GeForce only!
None-nVidia users may need to use the Test button and the ingame /fps command for the best results.

Update May/2010

it's up and running fine. Now run D2VidTst and select gfx mode "3dfx Glide".
Check in-game by entering

that D2/LoD does use Glide mode

If the game screen is distort, unreadable or choppy after startup prolly one of the wrappers Extensions interferes with your gfx driver. Try disabling one after another and recheck within the game.

With new Windows OS's going for 64 Bit it seems additional configuration steps are needed to get D2/LoD running in 3dfx Glide mode.

Users of Vista and Windows 7 64 Bit may need to add these settings to the D2/LoD startup shortcut properties:

-> xp sp2 compatability: Check
-> disable desktop composition: Check
-> disable visual themes: Check
-> run as admin
On rare configurations the game may refuse to run in 3dfx Glide mode - although you set it correctly under D2VideoTest - and/or won't show anything in the normal full screen mode. If you encounter this you can add some command line switches into the games startup shortcut. Add

-3dfx

alone to force the game to use 3dfx Glide in the default full screen mode or use

-w -3dfx

to get 3dfx within a window.

Finally you should check an option within the global 3D settings of your gfx driver.
Look for an option called "Texture-Clamp". It should show these three settings:

"Hardware" (which normally is the default)
"Off" and
"use OpenGL Specification"

The recommended setting to run the game is "Off". In case "Off" does not work well - i heard that some new gfx cards on the market got problems here - select "use OpenGL Specification".

- Dr. Disaster