***BEFORE YOU GO THROUGH THESE INSTRUCTIONS: JKing has made a series of scripts to automate the process of installing and running Arena and Daggerfall. I have not personally tested them, but everyone else seems to be having success with them. You may want to try this instead of going through these instructions. You can find his scripts and instructions http://www.uesp.net/wiki/General%3a%44OSBox_helper.***

Disclaimer: These instructions were written for Windows (XP/Vista/7). I gleaned much of this from Bethesda's instructions, and they are simply offered as an alternative to those who find the original instructions hard to follow or otherwise non-functional. If you've followed Bethesda's instructions but are getting a "Looks like you have inserted the wrong CD. Please insert your Daggerfall CD in your CD rom and try again." error, skip directly to step 5.

1.) Download Daggerfall from http://www.filefront.com/14005983/The-Elder-Scrolls-Daggerfall-Full-Free-Game or another site of your choosing. Bethesda's servers are probably getting hammered, as I've had consistently poor download speeds for the past few hours. You'll be getting a file called "DFInstall.zip" which contains Daggerfall and the latest patch. Keep track of where this file is going, as we'll obviously be needing it later.

2.) Download and install http://www.7-zip.org/, since it's free and generally awesome at extracting compressed files. Once this is done, right-click "DFInstall.zip" and choose "Extract files." It will ask where you want them extracted; type in:

c:\dosgames\

This extracts the CD directory and patch to the "dosgames" directory.

3.) Download and install http://www.dosbox.com/download.php?main=1. Launch it and you'll come up with a black screen and a prompt that simply says "Z:\". Type this in:

mount d c:\dosgames\dfcd -t cdrommount c c:\dosgames -freesize 1000d:install

This will mount a virtual CD drive with the Daggerfall install directory, a C drive with appropriate space, then switch to the virtual D drive, and launch the install program, in that order. You'll want to select the "huge" install option. All of the other default settings are fine. Proceed with installing the game. I'd write more specific instructions out but it should be pretty straightforward.

Once this is done, you'll go into the sound setup program. Select "Auto Detect". If it gives you a SCSI-drive warning, ignore it and proceed (unless you are using an actual SCSI drive, which I highly doubt; if you are, you know what it is and how to proceed). It will probably come up with Soundblaster 16; this is fine as long as your IRQ is 7 and DMA is 1. These are default DOSBox settings and they shouldn't be anything else unless you've tampered with the configuration file. Soundblaster 16 is also fine for the MIDI settings. Daggerfall has different music output depending on what MIDI card you have selected; once you feel comfortable with editing this then you can come back and find the one you like the best. Personally, I prefer ESS AudioDrive for MIDI output, but it is ultimately up to you.

Once everything is set up, exit the program. The prompt should read "C:\DAGGER\"

4.) Install the patch by typing

dag213

Answer "yes" to any prompts it may give you. We're getting close, but not out of the water yet.

5.) Actually launching the game is where most people seem to get tripped up, so I'm going to offer an alternative solution. Instead of mounting the Daggerfall CD, we're going to change one character in the "z.cfg" file to point Daggerfall to its own directory. Close DOSBox and go to the directory where Daggerfall is installed; assuming you followed this guide, that directory would be "C:\dosgames\dagger\"

Double-click "z.cfg". If it asks you what program to open this file with, choose Notepad.

Find where it says pathcd d:\dagger\arena2 and change it to pathcd c:\dagger\arena2

This is a cheap but effective way of getting the game to run. DOSBox has come a long way but Daggerfall is a finicky game and CD emulation is still not perfect. This will not display movies. To get movie output, you'll have to copy the *.VID files of the "dfcd\dagger\arena2" folder to the "c:\dosgames\dagger\arena2" folder.

6.) Start up DOSBox, type in

mount c c:\dosgames -freesize 1000c:cd daggerfall z.cfg

...and you should be running Daggerfall.


7.) This step is totally optional but highly recommended, and for people new to DOS it is very easy and effective. If you want DOSBox to start Daggerfall automatically this is the way to go. Go to Start->Programs->DOSBox .73->Edit Configuration. This should pull up "dosbox.conf" in Notepad. If it asks what program to open this file in, choose Notepad.

Most default settings are fine, but if you'd like Daggerfall to start automatically, scroll down to the very bottom of dosbox.conf. Copy the code in step above and paste it in the section that says "[autoexec]". Save the file.

DOSBox is now set up to run Daggerfall automatically, assuming you followed the rest of the directions to the letter.


I took this from another thread; thanks to Kextra for posting the links. These include more quests and bugfixes that don't come with the final patch. Optional but highly recommended.



If anyone has any questions feel free to ask in this thread. If I don't get to them someone else who knows what they're doing will.

Last but not least, thanks to Bethesda for finally releasing one of the greatest games of all time.

How to i get the curser to move in the game its stuck

Are you running in windowed mode?

ya how do i do fullscreen

Alt-enter to go to full-screen, which will probably fix your problem. If not, Ctrl-F10 will lock the mouse to the screen.

is there a way to quick load and quick save?

Nope.

So remember to save manually and save often.

When I try to extract the files to c:\dosgames\ I get the following error:

0 Can not open the file 'C:\Users\\Downloads\DFinstall.zip' as archive.

I run Vista, I'm extracting with 7zip.

Maybe your download got truncated by the server being overloaded. That's been happening to a lot of people today, because everyone's trying to download at once. Check the size of the file and compare it to whatever it's supposed to be. If it's off, try re-downloading or try a mirror.

That's extremely likely, thanks a lot!

I didnt use DOSbox for awhile and forgot how to use it,but for some reason I follow all the steps (both yours and the one at Elder Scrolls home) up untill "install" and typed install and it says invalid command.Any help would be appreciated because I want to play Daggerfall again.

i dont want the dosbox configuration file edited to auto run daggerfall because i use dosbox to run other games.

how do i create a standalone config file that autoruns daggerfall at a double click of a desktop icon?

i have a feeling its something like drag dosbox into daggerfall directory, create new config file (cannot find the default dosbox conf file - certainly not in the dosbox 0.7.3 folder) and then run dosbox from the game directory.
need instructions and/or clarification please.

I get to here and it says illegal command This will map the files in C:\dosgames\dfcd to to virtual D:\, I type it in exactly as seen here.

Thanks a lot! My Daggerfall game is finally working

Regarding this step:



I did this, but there were many name conflicts so I simply put them all to replace one another. Was this what I should have done? Or have I screwed it up?

No this is fine. The folders are identical save for a few video files the original arena2 directory has that installed directory doesn't.

For people who are getting errors launching or mounting the game, take a screenshot while DOSBox is running. Press "PrtScr", go to MSPaint, copy/paste, and upload it somewhere like imageshack. Once this is done, post the link in here. I get the feeling people are typing things in incorrectly or in the wrong directory.

I copied these instructions from somewhere else, but they should work fine. Open up the "dosbox.conf" file by going to Edit Configuration, and save the file in the "c:\dosgames\dagger\" directory with the name "daggerfall.conf". Then, make a copy of the DOSBox shortcut and place it on the desktop.

"Edit the properties of the shortcut and add the following to the end of the "target" field:
code:
-conf "\Daggerfall.conf"
Then you can just run that shortcut whenever you want to play."

So if you've followed the rest of the instructions, the amendment to the target field should say "-conf c:\dosgames\dagger\daggerfall.conf"

I haven't tested this but I see no reason why it shouldn't work.

I cant get the first line in step three to work.

Am I missing a file or something?

nevermind

Thanks for this.

Here's a complete transcrept of my promblem;Couldnt take a photo.Using Elder Scrolls home guide.

mount c c:\dosgames -freesize 1000
Drive C is mounted as local directory c:\dosgames\

mount d c:\dosgames\dfcd -t cdrom -label Daggerfall
Directory c:\dosgames\dfcd doesn't exist
mount d c:\dosgames \dfcd -t cdrom -label Daggerfall
MSCDEX: Mounted subdirectory: limited support
Drive D is mounted as CDRom c:\dosgames\

D:
D:\>INSTALL
Illegal command: INSTALL

Do this first, before mounting the virtual C drive.

mount d c:\dosgames\dfcd -t cdrom

Don't worry about the label as it doesn't make a difference with this method. Once this has been mounted, then do

mount c c:\dosgames -freesize 1000

You're quite welcome. Thanks for saying thanks.

Also, for those that wish to run DF on your Mac, make these changes:

Instead of mount c c:\dosgames -freesize 1000 use the file path.

So this: mount c /Users/YOURUSERNAME/Documents/ -freesize 1000

I placed mine in the documents folder for quick an easy access. I would not recommend using it under your username as I had problems.

This should be used whenever you are forced to mount c or d. Everything should work okay! :goodjob:

[quote name='Taemos' date='Jul 10 2009, 02:18 PM' post='14654416']
Do this first, before mounting the virtual C drive.

mount d c:\dosgames\dfcd -t cdrom

Don't worry about the label as it doesn't make a difference with this method. Once this has been mounted, then do

mount c c:\dosgames -freesize 1000

I did that and still not launching the install window.Also for mount d c:\dosgames\dfcd -t cdrom,it wont mount unless I put a space between dosgames and \dfcd.

I've followed all of the instructions but I still have a few problems:

First, when I tried to install the 'Huge' installation, it said there wasn't enough free space on the disk, while this isn't true because I've got enough free space. Then I did the medium installation, and I installed the patch wich went ok. I also changed the line in "z.cfg". After that I launched DOSBOX and typed these lines:

mount c c:\dosgames -freesize 1000
c:
cd dagger
fall z.cfg

But when I hit enter, DOSBOX doens't start Daggerfall but DOSBOX just shuts down. I hope someone can help me solve my problem, because I really want to play daggerfall.