Doesn't Steam use dosbox for Doom and Hexen. Actually, I wish Arena and DF was on Steam, but that's besides the point. Why isn't there an .exe out somewhere for these games by now? If Steam can do it for old id games, why can't it be done for old ES games.

last I checked DOOM was ported to windows a long time back (aka DOOM95) so making it work on later versions wouldnt have been too hard.

Arena/DF were both made only for DOS...so it would have to be ported to windows which is where it gets hard.



Also, Steam wouldnt use dosbox, but if they did want to run DOS games(which i doubt as they would prefer to port them), they would use a similar DOS emulation program of their own.


It all boils down to this, why wold bethesda want to spend more resources on a game that is now released for free?

I was thinking more along the lines of the efforts of a dedicated modder. Considering the size of some of the projects they undertake, this couldn't be anywhere near the biggest thing to do in comparison to the likes of OOO, Tamriel Rebuilt or DaggerfallXL.

I think dedicated modders would really rather mod the game itself. A .exe for arena and Daggerfall would kind of be useless since anyone can play the game on a modern system with DosBox.

What's keeping you from getting dosbox?

It may look intimidating, but it's actually really simple. I don't know crap about computers, and I had no trouble installing the games. Bethesda has written some really good instructions http://www.elderscrolls.com/tenth_anniv/Arena106%20Setup.pdf and http://static.gamesas.com/downloads/games/daggerfall_legal_and_installation.pdf

Yes, it does.


I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this? Daggerfall got an .exe file already, FALL.EXE.

I meant a one-click program with dosbox preset.

Somebody posted something similar in a thread here last week. It was a tool to help install Daggerfall. I've never tried it and I forget which of these threads had it.

Anyway, using DOSbox isn't hard. The instructions tell you exactly what to type. I suppose it might be simpler with pictures, but the little bit of challenge is interesting.

EDIT: Maybe http://www.uesp.net/wiki/General:DOSBox_helper will work. I've never tried it.

Perhaps what you need is a dosbox frontend. You can configure dosbox with a ui. http://dfendreloaded.sourceforge.net/ Its saves a profile for each dos game's settings.

Ah, ok. You can make a shortcut so there is only one-click to launch and play Daggerfall thru DOSBox.

Pretty handy indeed.

I think things will be easier once the complete version of DaggerXL comes out and people start using that.

http://theelderscrolls.wiwiland.net/?title=Daggerfall_:_DaggerfallSetup_EN
Try this.

dbgl (a front-end) also works well... The Dosbox Wiki has quite a few options for front-end programs.

JimC

That is exactly what I was looking for. All was good, but my sword wouldn't swing.

Do you know how to swing it? Right click and drag.

Yes, but I changed the setting to make the mouse move the camera.

1-What's a convenient reconfig of the controls where I can use WSAD and the mouse and make it generally akin to Morrowind controls?
2-I also see controller support, does a 360 controller have a chance in hell of working?
3-CHEATS. What do I have to open z.cfg with to save it as a .cfg? I used notepad, but it wants to save as txt.

You shouldn't have to change anything. Just open the file with notepad, make the change for the cheats, close and choose yes when it asks to save.

You can set the controls to use WASD in the game. Go in the mouse controls and set it to "View" mode. That will give you proper mouselook, though you still get to fight by swinging with the mouse, so it sort of negates any mouselook while using melee weapons.

Making Daggerfall work with a controller sounds like an absolute nightmare. You need too many keys to play the game efficiently.

All of the old DOS games that they sell on Steam download to your computer with their own instances of DOSBox, which is the executable run when you launch the game from Steam.

I would assume that these copies of DOSBox merely have autoexec lines in their config, meaning that they basically run all the necessary commands to start the game as soon as the command line is brought up. You could theoretically do the same thing, although I'm not sure if you can choose separate configurations through a shortcut parameter or something. But for example, you could just add these lines to your configuration's autoexec section (it's at the bottom) to automatically run Daggerfall once DOSBox starts up:

[autoexec]# Lines in this section will be run at startup.mount C C:\DOSGAMESDIRECTORY\C:cd daggerfall z.cfg

If notepad won't let you save with a "funny" file extension just save it as .txt and rename the file properly after it's saved.

:facepalm:

That's so simple, it's BRILLIANT!!!