Diablo II

You should be able to use wine to install Diablo II from your installation CDs. Going with the defaults will install the game to .wine/drive_c/Program Files/DiabloII.

Based on your wine configuration, the game may not be able to detect the next CD it asks for (as this installer asks for more CD swapping than any I've ever encountered). If this is the case, you may need to mount the CD manually and adjust your wine configuration.

Most people will want to upgrade to the LOD expansion, which follows the exact same characteristics as above. Once you've completed the installation, you'll need to download the latest patch from Blizzard and run that using wine as well.

As suggested in the LOD documentation, you'll also want to copy the .mpq files from the LOD cd-rom to the DiabloII installation directory so you don't need the CD-Rom in your drive when you want to play the game.

When configuring DiabloII in wine, you'll need to add Game.exe in the application tab, as that is the binary that actually runs the game. Suggested wine settings for Diablo II are to enable all of the options in the "Window Settings" portion of the "Graphics" tab with an emulated desktop of 800x600. This should allow you to play the game in a window without having to change your desktop resolution.

You may want to create your own shortcut to run DiabloII that works properly with wine. Here's an example that will work with the xfce menu.

$ sudo nano -w /usr/share/applications/diablo2.desktop

Add the following to the file. Replace the paths to the executable and icon to match your settings.

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=DiabloII
GenericName=DiabloII
Comment=Play DiabloII
Type=Application
Terminal=false
Exec=wine ".wine/drive_c/Program Files/DiabloII/Game.exe"
Icon=/home/gr0x0rd/Pictures/icons/Diablo-II-2-48x48.png
Categories=Application;Game;

Diablo II and Compiz

Compiz has a number of default settings that conflict with Diablo II gameplay, but these can easily be altered using the CompizConfig Settings Manager tool.

Open CCSM and select "General Options", then click the "Key bindings" tab. For the mouse setting on "Window Menu", change the setting from <Alt>Button3 to <Super>Button3. This should prevent the Window menu from coming up when you're holding the Alt key looking to pick up items while using your right-click action.

Next, go to the "Window Management" section and click on "Move Window". Change the mouse action from <Alt>Button1 to <Super>Button1. This will prevent you from moving the window while holding the Alt key when trying to get your character to pick up an item.