Is there a way to increase the resolution for Diablo II past what the game allows?

I believe that currently Diablo 2 only supports 800x600 resolution (though it may have gone up to 1024x768). Is anyone aware of a hack, mod, etc. which allows for increasing the resolution?

I'm aware that this is probably against the rules for Battle.NET, so before anyone warns me of that know that I don't plan to use it competitively; I play mostly with friends over LAN.

Solution 1:

Since Diablo 2 is a sprite based game there is no way to increase the resolution, however, you can increase the drawing size of the screen (ie. be able to see more). I am aware of a couple mods to do this (I won't link them here), but it is against the ToS and will get you banned on Battle Net.

I will tell you that editing a shortcut to add the -w option will put you into windowed mode; which I highly suggest.

Also a good site for knowing about different games screen resolutions is Wide Screen Gaming Forum. Usually if its possible they will show you how, and if its not they may have other advice. I'd start there if I were you.

Solution 2:

This Glide3 wrapper worked for me. Basically you put the dll in your Diablo2 directory and run the D2VidTest.exe and it'll let you select the Glide driver (which was used by the Voodoo3 cards back in the day). Then it'll wrap the Glide calls to OpenGL calls. This, of course requires you have a vid card which supports OpenGL, but who doesn't?

The wrapper also comes with a config utility (glide-init.exe) which you can run and there's an option for "desktop resolution" which will cause it to render full screen at your native resolution. It has to scale things a bit so it's a little blocky, but not bad (I run at 1440x900). It puts bars on the sides so that it's not all stretched out too.

I've been playing on Battle.Net with this without issue so far. And I don't see how it could be considered a hack or cheating, it's just a video card driver.

Solution 3:

The latest patch (v1.13, patch notes) support scaling the image up to the largest available. On a widescreen, the graphics are a bit distorted, but at least there are no black bars on the side of the screen to deal with.

Solution 4:

I think your best bet is to wait for Diablo 3 :)

I researched this a few months ago, was in the same situation. The only fix I found was on the good old Widescreen Gaming Forum (http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19227). There is a mod called D2MultiRes, but if you look at the results on that forum post you'll see it really doesn't work well at all. The hack makes the game unplayable.

I suggest: run the game windowed