Prepackaged Daggerfall Betony Demo

[Mr Happy]

http://files.filefront.com/DagDemo7exe/;6951065;/fileinfo.html

From Jormungandr at the TES forums or whatever they are now.

Tried it out yesterday, and it works great. You dont have to do any tweaking, as it comes preconfigured with DOSbox 0.7. The only minor problem I had was that it quit out after the live action cutscene, so you just have to skip that before it ends. I havent had any luck with daggerall and DOSbox, so this was good for nostalgia. Great with a bowl of cereal. Basically you get to go through the best character creation ever made, then wander around Betony Isle, which has a few towns and dungeons. Great if you've ever wanted to try daggerfall without spending 50 bucks on ebay or something. I'll probably try the full game on it later (if I can find it), but right now I'm not sure how it works with other DOSbox games. Coolio.

 

[Globbi]

Is the speed ok? Don't know how it is on DOSbox 0.7 but on previous versions when you speeded up NPC would move worse and start to walk in one place. I'll probably try it when i have some time.

 

[Mr Happy]

On my computer, the speed was fine, and my computer isnt all that good. I didnt do any tweaking or anything. Looks great too. It was all very easy, you just install and run DOSbox 0.7 and it starts automatically. I'm not sure how this would work with other DOS games though.

 

[Elwro]

I tried to play Daggerfall on Dosbox since 0.63 and with 0.7 I still get the same problems. Namely: I can't jump, which is significant, and I cant walk backwards and turn simultanously.
Does anyone know how to enable jumping?

 

[JarlFrank]

I tried to play Daggerfall on Dosbox since 0.63 and with 0.7 I still get the same problems. Namely: I can't jump, which is significant, and I cant walk backwards and turn simultanously.
Does anyone know how to enable jumping?

Read the UESP [unofficial elder scrolls pages], they got a complete guide how to run DF on DOS Box properly on there. It worked very well for me, and with no problems.

 

[Elwro]

Already did everything written there. I mean, I can jump, but the jump itself is really miniscule, truly nothing compared to what my characters could do when I played DF in DOS mode in 1997. As a result, I can't e.g. jump over small hedges on a horse (e.g. near the castle in Wayrest). Are you 100% sure it worked correctly on your machine?

 

[JarlFrank]

Already did everything written there. I mean, I can jump, but the jump itself is really miniscule, truly nothing compared to what my characters could do when I played DF in DOS mode in 1997. As a result, I can't e.g. jump over small hedges on a horse (e.g. near the castle in Wayrest). Are you 100% sure it worked correctly on your machine?

It's been quite a while since I played it, and I can't remember all, but I don't think I had any problems. I guess I could check again this week and tell you if it all worked well.

 

[Amateur]

I'm Playing daggerfall with dosbox for quite sometime now.

Dosbox 0.7 is the charm. The game works nearly flawless with no slowdowns or etc.

Older versions of dosbox including 0.63 is really problematic so get the 0.7 rightaway.


BTW I don't have any problems in jumping etc.

 

[Elwro]

@JarlFrank: Well, I'd be grateful, if it's not too much of a hassle. Better still, I'll try this Betony demo and see if the problems persist.

edit: Nah. The controls DO NOT work the way they should. For example, I can't run and jump - at first, nothing happens (I just continue running) and then my computer BEEPs.
I'm asking because I'm pretty sure jumping can be a life-saver in some dungeons; I also think one of the quests from the main plotline (The Wayrest Painting) demands being able to jump, but I'm not sure.

 

[JrK]

I noticed the same major increase in speed with BLOOD, a game that first wouldn't work with DOSbox at decent speeds. I figured DF might be better so I'll install it again at one point.

 

[Mr Happy]

edit: Nah. The controls DO NOT work the way they should. For example, I can't run and jump - at first, nothing happens (I just continue running) and then my computer BEEPs.
I'm asking because I'm pretty sure jumping can be a life-saver in some dungeons; I also think one of the quests from the main plotline (The Wayrest Painting) demands being able to jump, but I'm not sure.

On the demo? I could run and jump fine. For some reason I couldnt turn left while running (I got a BEEP too), but that wasnt all that bothersome. Also if I clicked during the "Bethesda Softworks presents" part, the game was like HOHO MOTHERFUCKER and then crashed.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

edit: Nah. The controls DO NOT work the way they should. For example, I can't run and jump - at first, nothing happens (I just continue running) and then my computer BEEPs.

I got that when I set CPU cycles to high on the old version - I believe it was caused by overheating. Morrowind did it too, if I set the priority to Above Normal or High in task manager.

 

[Elwro]

Whoa, OK, I'll see what's with the cycles; although the 0.70 version tries to calculate the proper value itself, it seems.

 

[denizsi]

If cycles fail as well, try setting up W98 in a virtual machine, preferrably using VMWare.

 

[elander_]

Don't even bother trying to play Daggerfall with anything else besides Dosbox. I usually copy dosbox inside each game dir and keep that copy exclusively to play that game.

This is the dir where i have installed Daggerfall:

CDrive/
screenshots/
dosbox.exe
*.dll
misc files
mapper.txt
dosbox.conf

CDrive contains Daggerfall directory and is mapped inside dosbox.conf to the C drive using a relative pathname "". This way the entire thing is self-contained. You can zip everything or move it to another dir and it will still run without having to mess with any conf files.

The last part of dosbox.conf. Notice that .\cdrive is a relative pathname:

mount c .\cdrive
c:
cd dagger
nocd.bat

The only problem you get with dosbox is that when you activate Daggerfall cheat keys the Ctrl-FN keys are taken by dosbox so we can't use Ctrl-F4 that will give us god mode in Daggerfall.

The trick is to use the mapper dialog inside dosbox to remap the Ctrl-F4 key to something else and then save it to the mapper.txt file.

You shouldn't have any problem playing Daggerfall or the Betony demo this way.

I have already played a bunch of old games always with the svn version of dosbox that let's us use pixel shaders and allways with the same trick: create a dir with a copy of dosbox and the game files and use relative pathnames. It simplifies things a lot.

 

[elander_]

If cycles fail as well, try setting up W98 in a virtual machine, preferrably using VMWare.

I never tried it myself but microsoft has a free virtual machine you can download here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/produc ... fault.mspx

 

[Jim Kata]

You either don't have enough cpu, or you are trying to give daggerfall too many cycles.

I *almost* have enough cpu to play fallout, but can't quite tune it. It's the only thing that's made me consider a new cpu since by and large cpu power is totally worthless these days.

 

[Elwro]

Hm. I have an AMD 3600+, I'd think that's enough. I'll check later (at work now).

 

[Fez]

Why would you need Dosbox for Fallout? It works fine for me with XP.

 

[mirrorshades]

I tried to play Daggerfall on Dosbox since 0.63 and with 0.7 I still get the same problems.

You might try using a CVS build of DOSBox instead of the official version. In particular, I found that this guy's CVS versions of DOSBox 0.65 ran Daggerfall better than the regular version.

Listing of CVS builds and their various features can be found here: http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=9306

 

[Top Hat]

Don't even bother trying to play Daggerfall with anything else besides Dosbox. I usually copy dosbox inside each game dir and keep that copy exclusively to play that game.

Isn't it easier to just make a different .conf file for each game?

That works fine for me.

 

[mirrorshades]

Isn't it easier to just make a different .conf file for each game?

That works fine for me.

You can also use a front-end program to manage all the game directories and config settings. In fact, if you're in a position to use DOSBox for more than a few games, a front-end will make your life much easier. Most of them also have enumerated options for the various config settings, so you don't need to be specifically familiar with the dosbox.conf file syntax.

There are a bunch of front-end programs out there; you can find a list of them on the DOSBox site. The one I like is DBGL, but ymmv.

 

[elander_]

Isn't it easier to just make a different .conf file for each game?
That works fine for me.

There are some advantages on packing dosbox with your game. I have a very big list of old games packed this way. I sometimes replay these games (in the lack of anything better) and i can just unzip and play them anywhere i want and just click on the dosbox executable.

There's no need to remenber dosbox config params or to fix pathnames and no need to remenber if the game needs normal version or a CVS version of dosbox. It's just like if dosbox is part of the game and you can also send everything to a friend and he won't have to worry with configuration details, just click on dosbox and run the game. It's only an extra of around 2MB anyway.

 

[aries202]

I tried playing Daggerfall using this demo. And I must admit that the opening scene (the FMV scene) is just so much better than both Morrowind's and Oblivion's.

The story seems to be better, too. For some odd reason everything was kind of greyish white when I entered the first town in the demo. And for some reason the tow's gates are shut or closed during the night ?? Or it just me that hasn't really figured out how the controls work ?

And when I wanted to do combat, I got killed -- probably because I wasn't paying that much attention to the in-game-tutorial.

 

[mirrorshades]

For some odd reason everything was kind of greyish white when I entered the first town in the demo. And for some reason the tow's gates are shut or closed during the night ??

My guess is (1) snow, and (2) yes, some towns lock up the gates at night. If you have the Climbing skill, you can scale the town walls and get it. Alternately, you could try picking the locks (at the risk of being accosted by the guards) or just wait until morning.

And when I wanted to do combat, I got killed -- probably because I wasn't paying that much attention to the in-game-tutorial.

Combat is kind of goofy, you have to hold the right mouse button down while swinging the mouse back and forth. The way you move the mouse is supposed to correspond (more or less) to a different type of attack; probably the best way to figure it out is to practice out in the wilderness somewhere (some towns don't like you wandering around swinging weapons).