I fixed it 😀 for anyone curious here's what I did:

Start dosbox, make sure the cd is in the e drive
Hit alt, ctrl, and enter to make a full sized screen
Type "mount e c:\" and hit enter
Type e: and hit enter
Type cd dagger and hit enter
Type dagger and hit enter

Okay, thanks for your help.

I used dosbox to install daggerfall in the directory c:\dagger. had to use the freesize command to free up some rume for the huge install.
I used dosbox to execute the 2.13 patch.
I downloaded the extra quests and placed them in the arena 2 folder.

then

i changed z.cfg path and pathcd to c:\dagger\arena2\

that was saved

then

i opened dosbox-0.73-conf and saved asdaggerfall.conf with the following changes: memsize=40, frameskip=1, cycles 20000

at the bottomof the file I placed these commands:
mount c c:\dagger
c:
fall.exe z.cfg

this file was saved as daggerfall.conf

i made the shortcut using the appropriate target: "C:\Program Files\DOSBox-0.65\DOSBox.exe" -conf daggerfall.conf -noconsole

for the icon change:C:\DAGGER\DAGGER.ICO
this was saved

the only oddity is that i am using 64 bit vista. i am also using ubuntu, but i am not as far along in figuring out how to do it there.

what do you think i have done wrong?

Thanks again for your help.

frodo

You change z.cfg to c:\dagger\arena2\ but since you mounted the virtual "C" as "C:\dagger" then ere is no "C:\dagger\arena2" there is only \arena2.

Cool. I will try that and see how it works.

Thanks 😀

I am very happy to know that it works somewhere. This game is fantastic!

DosFreak, that totally fixed the issue. daggerfall works. that is great.

the only last issue is to get the daggerfall.conf to work with the short cut.

I am going to look through ans see if i can find any errors and then I will get back to you.

It is nice learning about dos

frodo

this is my shortcut path: "C:\Program Files (x86)\DOSBox-0.73\dosbox.exe" -conf daggerfall.conf -noconsole

these are the changes to dosbox.conf that is now daggerfall.conf. this file is located in the location previously mentioned.

memsize=40
frameskip=1
cycles=20000

and at the very bottom

mount c c:\dagger
c:\
fall.exe z.cfg

my understanding is that these commands tell dos to create a virtual c drive that is the dagger folder. then it changes directory from z to this virtual drive, then execute these two commands.

that seems like it should do the trick. what do you think?

mrfrodo - how many folders do you have on your PC?

Any theories as to why Daggerfall will not detect the MPU-401 as its MIDI-device?

MiniMax wrote:

Any theories as to why Daggerfall will not detect the MPU-401 as its MIDI-device?

It does for me 😐

MiniMax wrote:

Any theories as to why Daggerfall will not detect the MPU-401 as its MIDI-device?

radiation from an exploding star?

MiniMax wrote:

Any theories as to why Daggerfall will not detect the MPU-401 as its MIDI-device?

Not only a theory, but a proof: When MIDI-volume on your Windows PC is turned all the way down, nothing is heard! 😒 😊

So... I have been playing around a bit with new free release, and this is the dosbox.conf file I ended up with.

My setup differs a bit from the official installation guide.

I don't recommend doing the "Huge" install. It might have made sense back in the day when the non-installed parts of the game would have to be pulled of the slow CD. But with the emulated CD-ROM in DOSBox, I don't believe there will be any speed difference, so I suggest you do a "Minimum" install instead.

The official guide also says to use an Sound Blaster 16 for the MIDI device. I like the MPU-401 device better (using port 330), so that is what I chose.

I still have my original CD, but I downloaded the free release just for the heck of it.

I highly recommend not playing at cycles=max because once you reach a certain processing speed the game will start to act flaky. It will become very hard to climb walls, move any direction other than forwards, or to jump (most of these symptoms are more noticeable in large cities). I used to experience this behavior on my 450MHz Pentium II (I even contacted Bethesda and they didn't believe me) and I reproduced it a couple hours ago in DOSBox.

Running with fixed cycles at 30000 or more seems to work well.

Also, MPU-401 definitely works in DOSBox. I've used it with my SC-88 before, and I just used it with Win7's built-in software synth.

As for installation size, it's probably actually best to install huge and use the hack to make it run without mounting the CD, but hey disk space is cheap these days so I followed Bethesda's instructions out of laziness 😀

HunterZ wrote:

Running with fixed cycles at 30000 or more seems to work well.

Thanks. Noted.

HunterZ wrote:

As for installation size, it's probably actually best to install huge and use the hack to make it run without mounting the CD, but hey disk space is cheap these days so I followed Bethesda's instructions out of laziness 😀

Huh? So instead of mounting TWO folders in a standard way, you prefer to hack an internal configuration file and manually copy files?

Minimax,

You want to know how many folders are on my computer? I am not sure I could count them all in my life time. How can this be related to why the daggerfall shortcut and daggerfall.conf are not making the appropriate changes to dosbox when they are executed? If you can give me more information about it I might be able to answer you.

thanks a lot for your time.

MiniMax wrote:

Huh? So instead of mounting TWO folders in a standard way, you prefer to hack an internal configuration file and manually copy files?

Yeah, because it feels better that the game is self-contained in one directory and not needing any special configuration (e.g. mountings).

The main point thought was that I'm not too worried about wasting 0.5% of my hard drive capacity if I choose to be lazy :p

I highly recommend not playing at cycles=max because once you reach a certain processing speed the game will start to act flaky. It will become very hard to climb walls, move any direction other than forwards, or to jump (most of these symptoms are more noticeable in large cities). I used to experience this behavior on my 450MHz Pentium II (I even contacted Bethesda and they didn't believe me) and I reproduced it a couple hours ago in DOSBox.

You can use
cycles=max limit 30000
instead of fixed 30000. This way sound won't stutter if the emulation can't keep up with 30000 cycles.

Daggerfall and Arena came on CDs. Did they have redbook audio tracks?

I think not because Bethesda recently released Daggerfall as freeware and it comes inside a ZIP file.

mrfrodo wrote:

Minimax,

You want to know how many folders are on my computer? I am not sure I could count them all in my life time. How can this be related to why the daggerfall shortcut and daggerfall.conf are not making the appropriate changes to dosbox when they are executed? If you can give me more information about it I might be able to answer you.

thanks a lot for your time.

It is related in this way:

mrfrodo wrote:

this is my shortcut path: "C:\Program Files (x86)\DOSBox-0.73\dosbox.exe" -conf daggerfall.conf -noconsole

If you have so many folders that you can't count them in a life-time, how do you suppose your computer would know which of all those folders that contains your daggerfall.conf file? Maybe help it a bit by telling it the exact path.

ripa wrote:

You can use cycles=max limit 30000 instead of fixed 30000. This way sound won't stutter if the emulation can't keep up with 3000 […]
Show full quote

I highly recommend not playing at cycles=max because once you reach a certain processing speed the game will start to act flaky. It will become very hard to climb walls, move any direction other than forwards, or to jump (most of these symptoms are more noticeable in large cities). I used to experience this behavior on my 450MHz Pentium II (I even contacted Bethesda and they didn't believe me) and I reproduced it a couple hours ago in DOSBox.

You can use
cycles=max limit 30000
instead of fixed 30000. This way sound won't stutter if the emulation can't keep up with 30000 cycles.

Hmm thanks I'll play with that.

Daggerfall and Arena came on CDs. Did they have redbook audio tracks?

Nope. Battlespire does but Arena and Daggerfall both use MIDI music.