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Yet another request for help regarding the game ¨Daggerfall¨

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First post, by Jasede

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Greetings!
First off, do know that I would not be asking you for help if a search on this forum would not already have revealed a solution to my problem.
While I am new to this forum, I would still be very grateful if you could extend a helping hand to a fellow friend of old games.
The game is Daggerfall, and the problem not unknown: After installing it and setting up the correct paths in the z.cfg file, the game runs properly. The introduction can be watched and the main menu can be accessed. However, when I select a province, the game crashes, informing me that the internal error 0 has occured and that a certain instruction (2??, it depends on the selected province) in the dagger.snd file could not be found. This was rather astonishing, since I have disabled sound by means of the setup executable.
Well now, I have already conducted some internet research: The problem is not unknown, but no solution has been published on the internet - or I was unable to find one. I myself checked all the files and even used some ripped dagger.snd files, but to no avail. I thought the problem might be the result of some wrong paths, but this does not appear to be the case.
If it helps, my OS is Suse Linux 9.3, my FS is ReiserFS and Daggerfall is being run with the help of Dosbox.
Anyway, I think the reason of this crash might be the ReiserFS I am using, so I was considering to reinstall the game on a FAT16/32 partition. Still, I would be really happy if one would find a solution that does not require this measure.
Please try to help me, if you can!

--edit
Nevermind, I solved the problem myself! I changed the string ¨dagger.snd¨ in the FALL.EXE to ¨DAGGER.SND¨ by altering some bytes. Then I made sure that all paths in the Z.CFG were in upper case too, although they already were. And lastly, I downloaded the latest CVS, updated my old version and - lo and behold! - it ran! Now I only have to get it to run a little faster, but there has already been written a lot on that issue.

So, I hope I was not bothering you too much with my petty problem. Fare thee well!

Reply 1 of 3, by HunterZ

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Cool, glad you got it working, and thanks for updating to let us know how you got it working.

Also, make sure you've got the latest Daggerfall patch installed as the game is quite buggy.

Lastly, don't expect it to run really well unless you have a very very fast computer.

Reply 2 of 3, by Jasede

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Well, thank you!
Anyway, I got it to run smoothly now by fiddling with the frame skip setting. It is quite ironic that my Athlon 3400+ is unable to run the game as fast as my old Pentium could... Oh well!

So, I figure that it might help to summarize the steps I have taken:

1. Either mount your DVD-drive under Dosbox or copy the whole content of the Daggerfall-CD onto the harddrive. Then install by running the install.exe under Dosbox. Use the huge size! Make sure that you have ordered Dosbox to grant your selected target partition enough free diskspace (I would recommend 600 MB) using the ¨-freesize n¨ parameter when mounting a drive, where n is the amount of MB to reserve.
Example:
mount c /home/jdoe/dos -freesize 600
or, under windows (shame on you!)
mount c C:\somewhere\anywhere\ -freesize 600
2. Copy the files from the ARENA2 folder of the CD to your installed ARENA2 folder, eg. C:\DAGGER\ARENA2, you do not need to overwrite existing files, just merge the directories.
3. If you have not yet done so, run the setup.exe in the daggerfall directory and configure your soundcard, of course under dosbox.
4. Change the settings of each and every file and folder of your freshly installed game to readable and writeable.
5. Now it comes: Make sure that each and every file- and foldername is written in CAPITAL LETTERS, including the extensions.
6. Adjust the Z.CFG in the Daggerfall directory in such a way, that the two paths at the top of the file point to your ARENA2 folder on the harddrive. The paths should be written in CAPS.
7. Install mods and patches ad libitum; DO install the update to version 213!
(7a. This step might not be needed, but it helped me anyway: Use a hexeditor to open the FALL.EXE. Change the string ¨dagger.snd¨ to ¨DAGGER.SND¨.)
8. Set up a batch file with the command ¨fall.exe z.cfg¨. Rumor has it that it might help to supply the command ¨set dos4gwm=@dagger.vmc¨; so the file, if you call it dagg. bat should read:
---
@echo off
set dos4gwm=@dagger.vmc
fall.exe z.cfg
---
It should work now. If it does not, try updating Dosbox using the cvs and try again.
If the game is too slow, you should try increasing the cycles or the rate of frame skipping. Note that, due to the nature of some video routines, movies will not run quickly unless you use a slow cycle-setting, while the 3D-view needs a high one. Alter them using CTRL-F11/-F12.
Oh, and I know that most of the steps I have described are not actually needed, but they worked for me and it is the only method I have found that gets rid of the ¨internal error 0, bla not found in dagger.snd¨ error.
I hope this helps some poor souls in need of a classical CRPG.
Oh, and I apologize for my horrible English... I really need to practice the language more, but I hardly ever get to.

Reply 3 of 3, by HunterZ

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I think I'm going to pull out my Daggerfall CD and give your guide a try.

Also, I wouldn't have guessed that English isn't your first language.

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