Daggerfall on XP

The batch/no CD technique avoided the initial error, but there's a problem with the cinematics in the start: It shows multicolored pixels on a black background with the background DB window spamming "illegal opcode". My computer (which is pretty dang fast, custom built dual processor (3ghz total)) slows down to a crawl, maybe going just fast enough to see where my cursor jumped after waiting 10 seconds. Another time it just freezes on a black screen. I put the vid files in and it didn't spam about the Illegal error anymore, it just hangs on a black screen.

I've been messing around with it, and all i can come up with are 4 types of errors that i keep getting.
1) It sits in the black screen of death
2) it sits in the black screen of death with colored dots littering it (it seems random, like maybe a cinematic screwing up before it shows something beyond 2-4 frames).
3) The "Illegal opcode" error
4) The " Illegal read from c#######" (in hex, scrolling up)

My Computer:
Win XP (SP2)
NVidia GeForce 4 Ti4200 with AGPX (128mb)
Sony CD-RW CRX220E1
No idea what my motherboard is, but the processors are Dual AMD Athlon 1.5ghz (total 3ghz for both).

You might try one or more of the following:
- Make sure you have the latest patched version of Daggerfall (including the fixmaps thing) - it's buggy as all hell
- Changing CPU cores in DOSbox
- Changing memory and/or DPMI/XMS/EMS settings in DOSbox
- Trying a recent CVS build of DOSbox

On a side note: I wouldn't really consider a dual-1.5GHz system to be equivalent to a single 3GHz one, mostly because a single-process program can only be run on one CPU and would thus be limited by the 1.5GHz clock speed. On the other hand, other processes (such as the OS) can run on the other CPU. On the first (or third) hand, performance is not linear with respect to clock speed.

Even with the patch it doesnt seem to work. I'm not sure what you mean about CPU cores though, do you mean the OS type or just a completely different system configuration? Or maybe something else...

I'm only using the dual processors so windows has one it can bloat on, and the other is for my stuff so i don't get lag while playing high-graphic games (a program tells which processor what it can do, and what programs it isn't allowed. Or maybe it's just a piece of junk that came with my MB to make me feel better that i have control over my computer... harhar).

I've played around with it and completely reinstalled the game using a third party installer (because the normal one crashes my computer). I've re-patched it and tried playing it on DOSBox, still not working. Though it likes to complain more than before, with "Illegal read from ########" and "Write 2 error"s spamming the screen...

EDIT: I've installed Daggerfall using DOSBox by copying the CD to my main disk and installing it to my secondary, it still doesnt work / comlains the same way, and when i set the CD path to my main HD or CD drive, it says i dont have the right CD inserted.

The only problem I have with Daggerfall in DOSBox is that it's running too slow on my old comp.

That was with 0.62, though. Never tried it with 0.63.

Overload: By cores I meant to edit your dosbox configuration file:

1[cpu]
2# core -- CPU Core used in emulation: simple,normal,full,dynamic.

Dynamic is fastest, but can be unstable. Normal is the default.

If it's giving you CD errors then it's definitely an installation issue, as you can edit your z.cfg so that you don't need the CD (the game doesn't use it for copy protection)

Freddo: Try getting 0.63 (or even better, a recent CVS build) and using the dynamic core (if it's stable enough)

Set to dynamic and i've installed the game in 3 different ways (hard copy: just taking the files from the cd and putting them on the HD, Normal DOS install through DOSBox, and the 3rd party install.) all of them give the same message unless i edit the z.cfg and use a custom made DAG.bat batch file with "@FALL.exe Z.cfg" in it. Otheriwse it complains about no CD or wrong CD. When i use the batch, it looks like it's goind to work, then it just shows one of many RGB light shows (one that's animated and takes up the full screen (scrolls diagnally up constaly), one that coats the screen in static pixels, and the others are either a blank screen or a lightly dotted one).
I've been "debugging" for the past hour and there appears to be no way to get it to work on this computer 😵 (i already did the dynamic setting before, and then experimented with other formulae in the config file). Funny thing though, it works without DB, but it's really lousy sound/graphic quality and the gamma needs to be adjusted (too dang dark). Heck i've run the game over 100 times with a different setting each and it just spazzes in a different way.
Maybe i'm doing something completely wrong, and maybe it shoudl work just fine and im screwing it up by messing with options (i kept a backup, just in case 😜 ). I've tried other versions of DB, and, like i said before, they just give similar errors different names. 🤐

What version of Daggerfall are you using?

I'll whip out my Daggerfall CD and check it out again. I suppose it's possible that DosBox may have broken DaggerFall compatibility but I doubt it. I tested Daggerfall again when the official 0.63 came out and it worked fine. I had to create an .ISO and use Imagemount to get it to recognize the CD (it didn't like mount)...I could have used z.cfg for a NOCD but I didn't feel like it. Other than that it worked just fine.

I don't remember there being any video related problems with DosBox except for the install program which was incompatible with NT4/2K/XP's NTVDM video access....AFAIK, Daggerfall uses 320x200 Banked (which works well under DosBox). So I don't believe it's a DosBox video problem.

Well works here.

Tried Daggerfall straight off the CD and patched to v1.07.213.

Also Mount seems to work with the Daggerfal CD just fine. I probably screwed up z.cfg or something when I tried it last. I also had to use "fall.exe z.cfg".

Game works in Normal/Dynamic core but obviously you'd want to use Dynamic.

Tried with DosBox v0.63 and CVS as of 2/7/2005.

Can you just skip past the intro movie? That's what it plays first so hit ESC or something and you should hit the menu.

So if I am getting this all right to make the game work you need to:
Set core to dynamic
Mount the CD rom
Add the type in z.cfg to dfall_huge
and fiddle with the framerate or something in the game with Ctrl-12? (is that right?)
What about installing? Install from Dosbox or Win XP?

Now do you also need to copy all of the .vid files to the /Arena folder or will mounting the CD Rom correct that problem?

Install from inside DOSBox if you can, so that you don't have to worry about the game getting confused about paths.

Also, I think you can have the game to a full install. Be SURE to install the latest patch - the game is VERY buggy!

Read the readme that comes with DOSBox for a list of hotkeys. See the DOSBox Guides forum for info on how to speed up DOSBox.

Lastly, there have been some CD mounting fixes in CVS recently. See the DOSBox Development forum for info on getting and using a recent CVS build of DOSBox.

I haven't got up the courage to try Daggerfall in DOSBox yet. I doubt that it will run fast enough to be enjoyable, so I might wait until I build my next computer.

HunterZ wrote:

Also, I think you can have the game to a full install. Be SURE to install the latest patch - the game is VERY buggy!

.

yeah I know. 😀 I assisted the lead programmer post release for about 2 months generating error logs for him. :)Would have kept working but he got pulled away on another project. That was about the 187 patch, it is nice to see they continued working on it and are up to like 213 for patches. 😀
As for the speed thing, isnt there some key combo to press inside Dosbox to increase the speed? Thought I saw it in another thread where they said to press Ctrl-12 or something to insrease the speed.
Here we go:

You probably know these already, but they're vitally important for 3D games like this: *1* Do NOT use "output=surface". Any othe […]
Show full quote

You probably know these already, but they're vitally important for 3D games like this:
*1* Do NOT use "output=surface". Any other output willl get you a 2X speed increase.
*2* Make sure you're running the newest DOSbox (of course)
*3* Try out the "cpu=dynamic" for another roughly 2X speed increase.
*4* Make sure you tune the cycles to work with your machine. Run in a window and have a CPU load monitor active. Try to hover around 95%, so that you can handle unusual circumstances. Do NOT just accept the default 3000, and do NOT just keep cranking it higher. Use CTRL-F12 and CTRL-F11 to adjust while the game is running, and when you find a good setting (in console window or main window's title bar), store that permanently in your dosbox.conf file.

Pulled this from the Daggerfall page on the Dosbox web page.
Would you recommend playing in a windowed mode or fullscreen?

Ctrl+F12 yes. You'll need Ctrl+F11 when you get it too high. You can also set the starting cycles value in your dosbox.conf once you find a good value so that you don't have to manually set it every time. More details in the readme...

Windowed vs. full-screen and which output mode to use depend on your system, so I'd recommend trying various settings and see what works best for you. Windowed shouldn't be slower on a modern machine, and has the added advantage of letting you monitor CPU usage in another window (as someone already mentioned) so that you can adjust your cycles optimally.

You have been very helpful. 😀 I've been wanting to get back into this game because I loved the open ended nature of it. 😀 Can start as one type of character and modify yourself to become so much more. 😀 I dont think I did very many of the plot missions when I was first playing this game. Just did side missions and had fun breaking into shops at night then selling everything back to the store owner the next morning. 😀

I spent hours and hours playing Daggerfall and never got very far in the main plot. I got farther in Arena but never beat it either. I've played all of the Elder Scrolls games for PC except for Redguard but haven't finished any of them.

I think the problem (if you can call it that) is that Bethesda is way better at making gigantic, open worlds for people to explore than they are at making compelling stories for players to follow in those worlds.

It also didn't help that it wouldn't run well on my PII-450, when DF was one of the reasons I upgraded from a 486DX4-120.

HunterZ wrote:

I think the problem (if you can call it that) is that Bethesda is way better at making gigantic, open worlds for people to explore than they are at making compelling stories for players to follow in those worlds.

They should make a game like EQ or WoW then. 😀 Would probably be good at it if they can get past their buggy code. 😀

Yeah, everyone has been clamoring for Bethesda to make a TES-style MMORPG. I almost wonder if they're afraid to though, since they haven't made many multiplayer games that I know of.

I'm excited to see how they do with Fallout 3, which is coming out sometime after they release TES 4: Oblivion (and will be using the same engine).

Ok ran into a snag. I was unable to install the game from either Win XP or from Dosbox. When I tried from Win XP (doing the auto run) it would just go to a black screen and hang. If I did it from DosBox using the Install.exe it would give me file transfer errors in the background box of Dosbox for every file it tried to copy.
So like someone in one of these posts mentioned I just copied everything from the Dagger folder on the CD to a Dagger folder I made on my computer (then made sure to make everything not read only). But now I dont have a z.cfg file, I ran setup thinking that would create it but it didnt. I have not yet tried to play the game so dont know if it works or not, but would really like to be able to install the game "correctly", can anyone tell me what I did wrong??

edit:
BLAH I am trying to do the patch now and from both windows and dosbox it tells me in order to do such and such the Daggerfall CD must be in the CD-ROM and to press any key. Well no matter what it doesnt seem to see it in there.
HELP! 😀

edit again:
OK I figured out one problem, I was not using the right comment to mount the CD drive as a CD drive. So I am able to run the install from Dosbox however I am unable to install it because it does not think I have any space left on my hard drive!!
This is the command I am using to launch Dosbox
C:\DOSBox-0.63\dosbox.exe -c "MOUNT C C:\ -freesize size_in_mb" -c "MOUNT D D:\ -t cdrom usecd 0"

I put in the freesize one thinking it could not read Gigs and thought they were Megs but I still get t he message that I have not enough room on my drive to install. Even at the Min install..