oh boy what a messy configfile
you are missing a c:
before the call spire.bat

btw. that link you provided tells stuff about creating a
C:\VIDEOS or D:\VIDEOS
Where did you create those and how do they show inside dosbox ?

I installed the game on my harddisk D:
The game itself in D:\BATSPIRE
and then copied the videos into D:\VIDEOS
and edited the cfg of battlespire with the patchcd to the videos directory:

path D:\BATSPIRE\
pathcd D:\Videos\
bypass 1
captions 1
video NVIDIA

according to the instructions on the UESP webpage how to run the game fully from harddisk.

And not to forget: I updated Battlespire with the patch 1.5 (the latest as far as I know) before I even tried to run the game.

Hi ConjurerDragon,

There seems to be something wrong with your configuration:
You said you installed the game on the physical drive D in the folder D:\BATSPIRE but you are mounting H:\DOSBOX\D-FEND~1\VIRTUA~1\ which probabily comes from "H:\DOSBox\D-Fend Reloaded\VirtualHD" as drive C in DOSBox and then you setup the game to look for the videos on a drive D not even configurated in DOSBox.

For QBix: When running a game (not only DOSBox command line like in the other thread) D-Fend Reloaded does something like:

1[autoexec]
2@echo off
3SET PATH=Z:\
4mount C "C:\Users\ALEXAN~1\D-FEND~1\VIRTUA~1"
5
6C:
7cd\
8cd \ALONE2\
9call aitd2.bat
10exit

So there will always be a "C:" and D-Fend Reloaded will always make the directory the program file is in the currenct directory before running the game. But it only can do this if there is any DOSBox available path leading to the game. ConjurerDragon has setup "H:\DOSBox\D-Fend Reloaded\VirtualHD" as drive C and then defined to run "D:\BATSPIRE\SPIRE.BAT" (at least I guess this). So D-Fend Reloaded cannot make any autoexec commands to change to this path.

Ok for ConjurerDragon as practical help: You have to mount the folder the game is in as a drive in DOSBox. The DOSBox drives and the physical drives are not the same. Go to the "Drives" section in the profile editor and add a drive "D" connected to the physical path "D:\". Then D-Fend Reloaded knows how to change to the game directory and you can leave the game settings ("path D:\BATSPIRE\" and "pathcd D:\Videos\").

But one little warning: Normally it is not a good idea to mount the root directory of a drive. DOSBox can not damage your harddisk but if you give the programs running in DOSBox full access to a complete drive they can do a "del *.*" or other not so nice things. It would be better if you create folders named "D:\Battlespire\BATSPIRE" and "D:\Battlespire\Videos" for the game data and the videos and then mount "D:\Battlespire" as drive D in DOSBox.

The only thing you need to change in the config file is to give DOSBox 63mb of RAM with memsize=63 (which you already have).

Then rip the CD to bin/cue (so you get the music) and mount it with the IMGMOUNT command.

The install the game as normal, install the patch, and play.

Alexander wrote:

...
You said you installed the game on the physical drive D in the folder D:\BATSPIRE

Right. Normally I would have installed Battlespire in D:\Bethesda\Battlespire like the other games I have from that firm (e.g. Daggerfall) but I followed the instructions on how to be able to play Battlespire from the harddisk and they said so as far as I understood them.

but you are mounting H:\DOSBOX\D-FEND~1\VIRTUA~1\ which probabily comes from "H:\DOSBox\D-Fend Reloaded\VirtualHD" as drive C in DOSBox and then you setup the game to look for the videos on a drive D not even configurated in DOSBox.

The H: part comes from DfendReloaded and DOSBOX being installed on my drive H:\DOXBOX\ I did not set anything to H: that was automatic by the Profile Wizard.

Ok for ConjurerDragon as practical help: You have to mount the folder the game is in as a drive in DOSBox. The DOSBox drives and the physical drives are not the same. Go to the "Drives" section in the profile editor and add a drive "D" connected to the physical path "D:". Then D-Fend Reloaded knows how to change to the game directory and you can leave the game settings ("path D:\BATSPIRE" and "pathcd D:\Videos").

But one little warning: Normally it is not a good idea to mount the root directory of a drive. DOSBox can not damage your harddisk but if you give the programs running in DOSBox full access to a complete drive they can do a "del *.*" or other not so nice things. It would be better if you create folders named "D:\Battlespire\BATSPIRE" and "D:\Battlespire\Videos" for the game data and the videos and then mount "D:\Battlespire" as drive D in DOSBox.

That would be no problem. My drive D: contains only games - the worst thing would be that I would have to reinstall them but nothing would be lost.

Alexander wrote:

Hi ConjurerDragon, ... Ok for ConjurerDragon as practical help: You have to mount the folder the game is in as a drive in DOSBox […]
Show full quote

Hi ConjurerDragon,
...
Ok for ConjurerDragon as practical help: You have to mount the folder the game is in as a drive in DOSBox. The DOSBox drives and the physical drives are not the same. Go to the "Drives" section in the profile editor and add a drive "D" connected to the physical path "D:". Then D-Fend Reloaded knows how to change to the game directory and you can leave the game settings ("path D:\BATSPIRE" and "pathcd D:\Videos").
...

I did now mount drive D and the game at least starts. However it starts with an ingame-error message and runs painfully slow even on the character generation screen 😢

The ingame-error says:
"Starting Battlespire...

Warning: 31M RAM+Swap detected.

Battlespire has detected less than the desired amount of memory
available to the game. The is ost likely due to the DPI memory
setting of your DOS box. Please read the 'patch.txt' file and pay
close attention to the 'Random Crashes' section.

It is also likely that you may be low on disk space. We recommend
that you have at least 40 megabytes of free space on your hard disk
before running Battlespire.

If you decide to continue playing the game, there is a *VERY* good
chance that it *WILL* crash."

Battlespire tries to detect the PC´s resources at the start and should come with a "55+ blabla detected" as status report so that it runs without the gamecrashwarning.

Now I know that both my RAM and my D: drivespace are well beyond 55+ MB. So what could be the limiting factor that the game does not recognize it?

Probably due to:

[dos]
xms=false
ems=false

Default for DOSBox 0.72 is for these to be true. So why did you change them?

As Qbix noted: "oh boy what a messy configfile". You would be well adviced to start with a completely fresh profile, using the defaults values. The DOSBox developers has gone to great lengths to ensure that DOSBox works well for most games with its default settings. If something needs to be changed, at least make sure that you know what you changed, and why you changed it. And discuss it with the people here - your reasoning might be wrong.

I get the "Warning: 31M RAM+Swap detected" error too, but there's no way to avoid it as far as I know. I've tried all sorts of things, althought that was with 0.70 and not 0.72. I've made posts about it here before too, such as here.

But the game worked fine for me anyway. With MAX cycles on the dynamic core the game is quite playable on my 3+ year old AMD 3500+.

MiniMax wrote:

Probably due to:

[dos]
xms=false
ems=false

Default for DOSBox 0.72 is for these to be true. So why did you change them?

Because another poster in a different thread on these boards mentioned that it runs for him with no xms and no ems.

As Qbix noted: "oh boy what a messy configfile". You would be well adviced to start with a completely fresh profile, using the defaults values. The DOSBox developers has gone to great lengths to ensure that DOSBox works well for most games with its default settings. If something needs to be changed, at least make sure that you know what you changed, and why you changed it. And discuss it with the people here - your reasoning might be wrong.

Well, I deleted the old profile for Battlespire and went using "Profile" "add from template" "complex DOS games with 3D graphics" in Dfend Reloaded and the result is the same. The game only recognizes part of the PC´s resources and gives the "31 MB blabla" ingame error.

The new profile from the template now looks like this:

# This DOSBox configuration file was automatically created by D-Fend Reloaded.
# Changes made to this file will NOT be transfered to D-Rend Reloaded profiles list.
# D-Fend Reloaded will delete this file from temp directory on program close.

# Config file for profile "Battlespire"

[sdl]
fullscreen=true
fulldouble=true
fullresolution=original
windowresolution=original
output=overlay
autolock=false
sensitivity=100
waitonerror=true
usecancodes=true
priority=higher,normal
mapperfile=H:\DOSBOX\D-FEND RELOADED\mapper.txt

[dosbox]
language=H:\DOSBOX\D-FEND RELOADED\DosBox\Deutsch.lng
machine=vga
captures=H:\DOSBOX\D-Fend Reloaded\Capture\
memsize=63

[render]
frameskip=0
aspect=false
scaler=normal2x

[cpu]
core=dynamic
cycles=45000
cycleup=500
cycledown=20

[mixer]
nosound=false
rate=22050
blocksize=2048
prebuffer=2048

[midi]
mpu401=intelligent
device=default
config=

[sblaster]
sbtype=sb16
sbbase=220
irq=7
dma=1
hdma=5
mixer=true
oplmode=auto
oplrate=22050

[gus]
gus=true
gusrate=22050
gusbase=240
irq1=5
irq2=5
dma1=1
dma2=1
ultradir=C:\ULTRASND

[speaker]
pcspeaker=true
pcrate=22050
tandy=auto
tandyrate=22050
disney=true

[dos]
xms=true
ems=true
umb=true
keyboardlayout=GR

[joystick]
joysticktype=none
timed=true
autofire=false
swap34=false
buttonwrap=true

[serial]
Serial1=Dummy
Serial2=dummy
Serial3=disabled
Serial4=disabled

[autoexec]
@echo off
SET PATH=Z:\
mount C "H:\DOSBOX\D-FEND~1\VIRTUA~1"
mount D "D:"
D:
cd\
cd \BATSPIRE\
call SPIRE.BAT
exit

So your still trying to run the game from the emulate "D:\" drive and not the emulated "C:\" drive?

and if the game is complaining about freespace it's because you didn't specify the command to increase the amount of disk space that DosBox reports as free. It's in the README included with DosBox.

DosFreak wrote:

So your still trying to run the game from the emulate "D:" drive and not the emulated "C:" drive?

Would that make a difference?

I thought that as the game is installed on D: and the games .cfg file refers to directories on D:/Batspire and D:/Videos that the game would not find it´s own files if I simulate a drice C:

and if the game is complaining about freespace it's because you didn't specify the command to increase the amount of disk space that DosBox reports as free. It's in the README included with DosBox.

I looked in the readme file that came with dosbox and it mentions the -freesize command. However I did not find there how much dosbox uses as standard size. Is that less than 55 MB so that increasing that amount would change something?

well according to freddo the game works regardless of that warning/error
What doesn't work exactly for you ?

ConjurerDragon wrote:

DosFreak wrote:

So your still trying to run the game from the emulate "D:" drive and not the emulated "C:" drive?

Would that make a difference?

I thought that as the game is installed on D: and the games .cfg file refers to directories on D:/Batspire and D:/Videos that the game would not find it´s own files if I simulate a drice C:

We don't know if it will make any difference. But we DO know, that playing most DOS games required a couple of simple steps:

1) Insert the CD - which back then in 99% of the cases was D:.
2) Run the installer on the CD.
3) The installer copies the relevant files to the HD - which back then in 99.999% of the cases was C:
4) The installer launches the setup-utility from C:
5) You select your sound hardware.
6) Installer exits.

7) You go to C:
8) You run the game from C:

I might be stupid and simple minded, but I try to follow this model with all the DOS games I play. At no time have I encountered situations where the Game-on-C & CD-on-D setup has not worked.

For you to insist on running the game from D, that is just another unknown thrown into the problem, an unknown that we don't need.

If you are experienced with DOSBox, by all means install your games on drive Q if that makes you happy, but why do newbies insists on the added complication?

Qbix wrote:

well according to freddo the game works regardless of that warning/error
What doesn't work exactly for you ?

First it´s painfully slow. When I click the profile in Dfend Reloaded the screen turns black and it takes 10 full seconds before Battlespires starting screen appears. And then I can watch how the starting screen is written on the monitor in three steps instead of simply appearing at once...

And then the readme of the patch 1.5 of Battlespire itself warns against it:
"Detecting Available Memory
--------------------------
Battlespire now detects the amount of available
memory, counting actual physical RAM and swap file
space. If it detects an insufficent amount, then
it will print out a warning message. Check under
the "Random Crashes" section in this file for more
details if you get this warning message."

If the game detects enough RAM and HD space it should display:
"Presuming you DO have enough free space on drive C [40
megs], AND presuming you have your DPMI memory settings correct, you should get the following DOS message as Battlespire is launched:
"Good: 55+ RAM and swap detected"
Now you are Happy, and will not have Bad Crashes."

well if you want dpmi inside dosbox you can load a dpmi client. cwsdpmi for example.

The speed has probably nothing to do with the amount of memory at least not in dosbox. In dosbox somethings are lightning fast compared to a real pc.

What could make it slow are the settings in the configfile of dosbox.
Are you sure that your pc can handle 45000 cycles ?
Why change it from the default value of auto ? auto is a far superior setting compared to 45000

Qbix wrote:

What could make it slow are the settings in the configfile of dosbox.
Are you sure that your pc can handle 45000 cycles ?
Why change it from the default value of auto ? auto is a far superior setting compared to 45000

He is using some weird template that came with the silly frontend:
"complex DOS games with 3D graphics"

I don't like to repeat myself, but I will do it anyway:

MiniMax wrote:

You would be well adviced to start with a completely fresh profile, using the defaults values. The DOSBox developers has gone to great lengths to ensure that DOSBox works well for most games with its default settings. If something needs to be changed, at least make sure that you know what you changed, and why you changed it. And discuss it with the people here - your reasoning might be wrong.

🙁
I didn't know D-Fend had those templates or is it new feature of the reloaded variant ?

DBGL has them too. Never used them. Defaults are fine in 99% of the cases.