DOS Games Discussion

I never thought I'd post in one of these places, me, a self-professed Dos god. However, I have a problem that I think has an easy solution...I just haven't ran into it yet. You see, I have a pure DOS machine downstairs...there is nothing it cannot run...but it is made with frankenstiened parts and has a crappy keyboard and an equally nasty looking (and nasty feeling) mouse. If I weren't so cheap, I'd buy new ones, but I am very very cheap. So, I decided that I should try and install Daggerfall on my "Real" PC upstairs in my bedroom...since the family room, where the DOS machine sits, is usually filled with noisy distractions...if you catch my drift.

Now, using VDMS, I managed to get the sound in Daggerfall to work perfectly, and everything runs smooth as silk...the speed isn't even an issue. However, there is one HUGE glitch that makes the game hard to play:

The Quest monsters do not show up on screen, but yet, you can hear them, hit them, and even get killed by them.

I have done some creative google searches http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=I ... daggerfall and notice that it isn't just me. The guy who had this problem simply installed 98 and went about his business.

I thought it was a graphics problem at first, so I tinkered with my card's settings. I tried every possible combination of resolution and desktop color depth, and still, the enemies appeared invisible. The sprites simply would not load. I tried cleaning my Cd, trying different install sizes, and even messed around with the autoexec and config.sys files in VDMS sound...but nothing helped resolve the problem.

System: (Self-built)

1.4ghz AMD Athlon
Win 2000 pro
512 RAM
Nvidia Geforce 3 (41.09 Detonator Drivers)
SB Live 5.1 (Works fine with VDMS and Daggerfall)

I can, of course, play Daggerfall perfectly on my PC downstairs, however, there are too many distractions there, and the system is just an eye sore. (Although it has served me well for 5 years)

Any ideas on what this graphics bug in DF is caused by?

Shoot me a theory and I'll try it.

I cant seem to get Daggerfall to work on my windows NT. Do you know if it is even possible? It doesnt let me install or run it. I have a nocd crack but it says it experiences error 0 and hit return to quit. Plz help

look around on the internet, there's a 2000/xp/nt installer that worked for me. make sure you have the cd path right in the z.cfg file for the arena2 dirctory.

Yeah, but that's just the installer. Almost every search I've made deals with installing Daggerfall (which I succesfully managed to do - I've got an official 41 MB installer which was said to be sent to some guy by a Bethesda employee - really hard to get, at least at that time) but there are really a few that mention (not solve) those problems with disappearing quest monsters AND items AND unability to climb walls AND... something more but I can't remember =]. Really, could *anyone* help us, hardcore RPG gamers? It really is a matter of life and death. Studying can be sooo boring and I'm fed up with all those new hack&slash "RPGs" (not that Daggerfall wasn't one but at least you could pretend to be living in an interactive world, not just hack through it).

...Yeah, I've done a lot of ranting and gave basically no info =]. So, replying to the first post - this is not a graphics bug. This has something to do with 16 bit kernel, or, more specifically, its total absence in Win XP. After doing some search I can say that it is impossible to overcome those inconveniences and I'm so desperate that I think I'll use System Commander and install Windows '98 on my machine right next to Win XP. It's said to run just fine with such a configuration and if You really wan't to play Daggerfall on a distraction-free PC I advise You to do the same.

all my problems ended when i went back to win98,my sytem is a selfbuilt monster too.since i had win98.i played alot of the dos games,with the new soundblaster card system.
0 download patch needed
0 system configuration needed

but the 386 sometimes fun,it has win95...........but it can't play subwar2050 fast....so i play that on the monster sytem,play just fine....

I think your problem is the OS itself. There may not be a workaround for running Daggerfall in Win2K.

See, Win2K is a designed to be a corporate (networking) OS. You shouldn't expect it to be really forgiving about running games and stuff like that. For one thing, Win2K doesn't include most of the PnP drivers that come with WinXP, and it's DOS window is geared toward running scripts and stuff.

WinXP uses the same 32 bit kernel that Win2K does, but it is intended for home use, and is by design more accommodating of multimedia apps and games. Your best bet, is to run pure MS-DOS though.

You should always try to run the OS that your app/game was natively designed for. I stongly reccomend System Commander to anyone who doesn't want to run more than one PC.

Try changing the Video Acceleration in System Properties.