Can You Use Community Made Mods on Daggerfall Using DOSBox?

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DOS Wolf
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Can You Use Community Made Mods on Daggerfall Using DOSBox?

Post by DOS Wolf »

I downloaded Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall. I have heard that there are many mods made by the community that adds to the longevity of the already huge game. Does this free version, as well as using DOSBox, allow for community made projects and patches, as well as patches from the original creators? If so, how would I go about getting them to work using DOSBox? I do not plan on using any right now, since I need to start playing the original Daggerfall first, but maybe some helpful patches, since I read it was somewhat broken upon it's initial release would be good. Thank you.

Edit: Also how do I get this game to even run in DOSBox to begin with? This particular game has folders with in folders and I am not sure how to mount or how to get to the one I need. I have it

mount c c:\oldgames

c:

cd dagger

But after that I am lost. I know there is a DAGGER folder with in my initial dagger folder (You can only have a folder with 8 letters or less? Daggerfall wont fit.) and with in that is DAG213 which looking at properties shows .exe, so I assume that is what I need to use to get it to work. But I am completely lost on how to get to that sub folder using DOSBox. Also I saw something that showed an auto run, but I am not sure how to get that to work either. Thank you.
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MrFlibble
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Post by MrFlibble »

Yes, it is perfectly possible to install community-made patches, fixes, mods and add-ons to Daggerfall (or any other game for that matter).

DOSBox just emulates a DOS machine. Third-party mods may only not work if a modified game executable is used that conflicts somehow with DOSBox. However, I am not aware of any patch or modification for Daggerfall which would have such an issue.

You might be interested in the DaggerfallSetup compilation which comes with the original game as well as all the essential community patches. It will configure DOSBox for you and allow to install whatever components you wish.
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Quadko
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Post by Quadko »

At the top of the forum "Getting Games to Work" are some sticky threads about getting dosbox up and running on different OSs, like this one for Win7&8: http://dosgames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13511

And installing Daggerfall is notoriously tricky, even using the original CD, so I second the DagerfallSetup link - it saves lots of time and hassle.

As for the dos commands, keep using 'cd' (change directory) to go to new directories, and then type the name of the exe, like 'dagger' (no quotes, of course) to run it. But, DAG213 sounds suspicious more as an install / update package than the actual game...

My Daggerfall directory has 30+ items, including directories like Arena2, Data, Save0...5, and files like Dagger.exe, caster.cfg, fall.exe, hmidrv.386 and more.
DOS Wolf
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Post by DOS Wolf »

Alright, I got the game working, but it is having horrible sound problems. Is there a way to fix that? Someone mentioned DOS sounds are set up differently from PC sounds or something. Actually it seems to lag. When I was asking questions it seemed to go slow and the sounds appear not right. And when I was clicking on different countries to choose my character the clicks would sound strange as well. And the intro seemed to lag as well, so I simply skipped it. However the game seems to run fine, although I am walking slow, assuming I just need to find out how to run which I will, if I can get the game to work properly. But during the gameplay the game's sound still seems to lag. I have not changed any of DosBox's settings since I began playing games on it.
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Post by tienkhoanguyen »

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In your DOSBox configuration settings, there is a setting where it says which mode to emulate. You can either set it to emulate a 386, 486, ect. Try one of the faster old computers and see if that helps your lag.

Also if that is still not fast enough, you can now seem to set your cycles too. So DOSBox might be able to run 12000 cycles in a modern computer instead of only 5000 in an old computer. So that might make your sound go too fast in that case. haha
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MrFlibble
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Post by MrFlibble »

DOS Wolf wrote:Alright, I got the game working, but it is having horrible sound problems. Is there a way to fix that? Someone mentioned DOS sounds are set up differently from PC sounds or something.
The sound is configured via a separate setup utility which must be run from inside DOSBox. IIRC in case of Daggerfall it's just a regular SETSOUND programme.

The sound setup programme should have run when you were first installing the game.

Here's a small guide for game configuration from the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages Wiki:
  • Configure sound:
    • Choose "Select digital" and choose "SoundBlaster 16/AWE32"; set port to 220, DMA to 1 and IRQ to 7. Test if desired, then choose "OK".
    • Choose "Select MIDI" and choose "MPU-401" at port 330. Test if desired,
    • Choose "OK" to quit the sound configuration utility.
DOS Wolf wrote:Actually it seems to lag. When I was asking questions it seemed to go slow and the sounds appear not right. And when I was clicking on different countries to choose my character the clicks would sound strange as well. And the intro seemed to lag as well, so I simply skipped it.
This is probably because DOSBox is either set to minimal performance, or overclocked (set to emulate more cycles than your host system can handle). You can try running DOSBox with maximum CPU cycles emulation (as much as your PC's resources allow). To do so, open the DOSBox configuration file (with the .conf extension), find the [cpu] section and change "cycles=auto" to "cycles=max" (without quotes). NOTE: On a modern powerful PC this might be too fast, so you might consider running DOSBox with fixed cycles emulation instead (e.g. "cycles= fixed 20000").

For more tips on DOSBox performance, check the UESP Wiki guide:
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/General:Playin ... nce_tuning
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