How to install on computer with no internet access?

Please excuse me if I missed this, but I've been searching for a solid hour now to no avail.... I recently built a late-DOS/Early-Windows98 Pentium III PC to play games like Diablo II (amongst many others) - it's specs are more than adequate for the game, and it currently has Diablo II LoD installed on it. It doesn't have any sort of internet access though.

How can I get Median XL onto this computer? Some posts point to two little files being all I need to add to the Diablo II directory, but those files are still super small so that can't be it (I also can't find recent versions of those). Others have posted their entire install directories online, but the several links I've tried are dead.

Any help would be appreciated - totally trying to relive my childhood, but with a little re-vamp with to this game with this awesome sounding Median XL.

i'm afraid your operating system might be too old to be able to run the Sigma engine/launcher (you need something better than windows xp , either windows 7 , 8 or 10 but i am not sure if your rig is good enough to run those operating systems... ) , still it could be compatible with older median xl versions , which came before Sigma .

i think you can get enough info in this thread below about how to install the 2017 version . your PC should be able to run median xl 2017 , the predecessor of Sigma .

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4561&hilit=median+xl+2017+v1.3

you don;t need to install d2se (you can skip that) , you can use your curent instalation just as good -> install the diablo2 installer and LODPatch_113c from the info found here https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofdiablo/c ... 3/d160fdh/ , download the the mod files (from here https://www.moddb.com/mods/medianxl/dow ... dian-xl-13 ) and paste them in your diablo installation folder , good luck !

Compatibility with any Windows sistem prior to Windows7 has been dropped for the Launcher, so that its use is out of the question if you're running Windows98, but for the current MedianXL iteration itself I'm not sure. In any case you'll have to proceed with a manual installation to try out if Sigma works well in your configuration, thus it's required the following:
- Make sure your game is patched exactly to the 1.13c version, or a manual installation will not work.
- Download these files: MXL.mpq • .dll and extract them to your Diablo II folder (where "Game.exe" can be found) using a program like 7-Zip. Both files are archives and both files need to be extracted. At the end of the exctraction process you should have obtained 3 new files (MXL.mpq, D2Sigma.dll and Fog.dll).
- (optional) Download the latest version of the Glide-Wrapper and extract its archive content to your Diablo II folder to use the Glide video mode with its configuration interface.

ChuckNoRis wrote:i'm afraid your operating system might be too old to be able to run the Sigma engine/launcher (you need something better than windows xp , either windows 7 , 8 or 10 but i am not sure if your rig is good enough to run those operating systems... ) , still it could be compatible with older median xl versions , which came before Sigma .

i think you can get enough info in this thread below about how to install the 2017 version . your PC should be able to run median xl 2017 , the predecessor of Sigma .

viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4561&hilit=median+xl+2017+v1.3

you don;t need to install d2se (you can skip that) , you can use your curent instalation just as good -> install the diablo2 installer and LODPatch_113c from the info found here https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofdiablo/c ... 3/d160fdh/ , download the the mod files (from here https://www.moddb.com/mods/medianxl/dow ... dian-xl-13 ) and paste them in your diablo installation folder , good luck !

Thanks! I'm going to give the below a shot first though - all the things I've read have said that if your computer is fast enough to run Diablo well (and mine has like quadruple the specs when it was launched), then it should run Median XL just fine (but for all I know you could def be right and it's about the OS and not the speed...and it's not like I'm going to upgrade my entire computers' OS for this one game tbh).

RequiemLux wrote:Compatibility with any Windows sistem prior to Windows7 has been dropped for the Launcher, so that its use is out of the question if you're running Windows98, but for the current MedianXL iteration itself I'm not sure. In any case you'll have to proceed with a manual installation to try out if Sigma works well in your configuration, thus it's required the following:
- Make sure your game is patched exactly to the 1.13c version, or a manual installation will not work.
- Download these files: MXL.mpq • .dll and extract them to your Diablo II folder (where "Game.exe" can be found) using a program like 7-Zip. Both files are archives and both files need to be extracted. At the end of the exctraction process you should have obtained 3 new files (MXL.mpq, D2Sigma.dll and Fog.dll).
- (optional) Download the latest version of the Glide-Wrapper and extract its archive content to your Diablo II folder to use the Glide video mode with its configuration interface.

Thanks, I'm going to give this a try before I revert to the one from 2017. I have the 1.13c version downloading from ChuckNoRis' post above so I'll be sure to update my Diablo II LoD install to that before trying the get the newest version of Median to run.

For the files you linked to, I downloaded the ~382mb MXL.mpq file, but when I click on the the .dll link I only get a single file called "1.4.1.dll.update" which is 391kb in size. Can't unzip that one to get D2Sigma.dll and Fog.dll. Please let me know what to do.

I might try the glide wrapper as I don't have a glide card right now (just an old GeForce 4 ti 4600 for this retro build), but I assume people like the graphics of that version better than the Direct3D (think that was the other option I use)? I actually have a 3dfx Voodoo 2 in the mail so I'll be able to do native glide soon enough. Is the new Median XL engine compatible with actual Glide (i.e. NOT the gl glide wrapper) just like the original Diablo II is?

Dochartaigh wrote:For the files you linked to, I downloaded the ~382mb MXL.mpq file, but when I click on the the .dll link I only get a single file called "1.4.1.dll.update" which is 391kb in size. Can't unzip that one to get D2Sigma.dll and Fog.dll. Please let me know what to do.

You should be able to extract the "1.4.1.dll.update" with a program like 7zip, but I guess that if you're using WinRAR maybe you could try to change the extension from ".update" to ".rar" to avert issues with the reading of it, and that will most likely solve it.

Dochartaigh wrote:I might try the glide wrapper as I don't have a glide card right now (just an old GeForce 4 ti 4600 for this retro build), but I assume people like the graphics of that version better than the Direct3D (think that was the other option I use)? I actually have a 3dfx Voodoo 2 in the mail so I'll be able to do native glide soon enough. Is the new Median XL engine compatible with actual Glide (i.e. NOT the gl glide wrapper) just like the original Diablo II is?

Usually people like Glide (gl wrapper) more because is highly cutomizzable, depending on your sistem configurations (work better with nVidia), while they like Glide in general for the enhanced light effects it provides (though that is more a matter of tastes) and performance optimizations (also depending on your sistem). Sigma, as far as I know, doesn't support natively fullscreen while using Direct3D or DirectDraw (2D) and, while in those video modes, it might need to be achieved via third party software (i.e. Borderless Gaming).
As for the second question, I pernonally don't know the answer, maybe you can find out and help me know more ^^

Speaking of the latest version of MXL aka MXL Sigma, MXL Launcher is not gonna work either way because it's based on Chromium engine from Google, so you need at least Windows 7 (or Windows Vista?). Although it's not obligatory to run the mod through the launcher and I believe that its core (D2Sigma.dll) is statically linked with VC++ Runtime Library, that is you don't need to install (presumably incompatible) vcredist packages, however that doesn't mean that you can even launch it under Windows 98.

Nonetheless it's technically possible to launch (run?) MXL Sigma under Windows XP, but even then there is quite a few issues that you'd need to solve in order to be able to play the game. First of all, there is a few missing UI files (EditTextBoxWide.dc6 and TileableDialog.dc6) which is not a problem by itself because you can easily find them inside the patch_d2.mpq archive, extract them and run the game through the shortcut with -direct switch. The main issue though is that D2Sigma.dll wasn't compiled with Windows XP compatibility in mind, consequently you can't assume that it would work properly because of that. As an example, your game will immediately crash while you try to access an escape menu, that is you can't adjust any preferences or even press save&exit game. There is a workaround for that but I'm not going to discuss that because it involves modification of the core module and even then I can't guarantee you anything apart from the working escape menu.

I think its worth noting that this game needs quite a bit more computing power than regular d2. Just look at k3k for example, you have like 50+ enemies on the screen, half of them shooting projectiles at you while you are shooting flashy spells/attacks or whatever. Even my laptop which has a shitty, but a dedicated gpu struggles in that place. But that might be because the laptop is very old, and dying, but who knows

Have you tried tethering? If your PC have USB port, you can have internet access that is provided by your phone.