VOGONS


First post, by mirrorshades

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...I've gone back through all the daggerfall posts in this forum for the past year and beyond, and only found one that mentions the same problem I'm having:

Daggerfall (I can get to character creation but.....) (No resolution was reached in that thread, it just ended.)

Basically, game starts up and runs OK with graphics and sound/music. I can do character creation and then view the two intro animations (the book and the meeting with the emperor)... then it goes to a black screen and just hangs there.

This is an extreme pain in the butt, since I have to go through the entire character creation process every time I make a change to see if it has any effect. :)

I have tried making the changes suggested in most of the other daggerfall-related posts; I tried changing the CPU core (dynamic/full/normal/auto), set cycles by hand and to auto, timesynched or not, different display modes (surface/overlay), frameskip (0-3), different scalars, and different DOSBox versions (0.65 and also ykhwong's CVS build from 10/15/06).

One thing I noticed when running ykhwong's build and setting cycles to auto is that the cycles drop way down at the point where it is sitting at the black screen -- they hover around 6000-6100. While running the rest of the char. creation / intro, it goes between 13000-21000 (-ish). CPU on my computer shows between 40-50% utilization when sitting at the black screen.

I'm fairly new to DOSBox, but not new to troubleshooting and R-ing the FM before I ask questions. However, I'm just about out of ideas and since I've heard success stories of getting this game working, I figured I'd ask you folks for some help.

If anyone actually took the time to read this whole thing, thank you. I will mail you a cookie if you send me your snail mail address. ;)

--> Edit:
A couple other things I thought of, may or may not make a difference.

1) I have Elder Scrolls: Arena working fine in DOSBox. Not sure if that would make a difference or not (I know they're a couple years apart).

2) Maybe someone could try sending me a savegame file? This way, I could try restoring directly into the game, possibly bypassing the point at which it is getting hung up.

3) I can also try the same config on a different computer -- I don't know if that kind of thing makes a difference in the DOSBox world or not.

Reply 2 of 4, by mirrorshades

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I did not run the install routine, I just copied the files over from another directory. Also did not try the other items you mentioned.

Will give them all a go and see what happens. Thanks for the reply.

Reply 3 of 4, by mirrorshades

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Ok, have tried running the installer through DOSBox as suggested, and also running with loadfix and with/without sound. Still gets hung up at the point right after the intro.

Anyone have any other bursts of inspiration? I'm really scratching my head on this one. Would it be worth trying an earlier version of DOSBox? Stuff I've read in the Elder Scrolls wiki and on another forum indicates that it seems to work OK with 0.61 and 0.63 (though I know running an older version is usually not recommended).

Thanks again for any offerings of collective wisdom and experience. :)

Reply 4 of 4, by mirrorshades

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Ok, solved it. Here's the fix.

The z.cfg file did not have the correct pathnames saved in it. I had manually changed them to be the same as the Daggerfall directory (C:\DAGGER), when they apparently need to be the \ARENA2 subdirectory in that directory (C:\DAGGER\ARENA2). Odd that the intro stuff works, then it just sits... I would have expected to see some sort of path not found error or something.

So in short, I was too smart for my own good. Sorry for talking mostly to myself here, but it helped me think through it.

Cheers. :)