Daggerfall:Running Under DOSBox

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NOTE: currently the tips on this page are mostly aimed at Daggerfall, but some also apply to Arena.

Contents 1 Finding and installing DOSBox 2 Setup DOSBox 3 Tips 4 Arena CD-Version

[edit] Finding and installing DOSBox

The DOSBox homepage has compiled downloads for most platforms. Simply download the latest stable build and run the installer.

[edit] Setup DOSBox

1. Copy your old game directory to the directory you'll use for DosBox. In the following examples I'll use /opt/MSDOS, which is like E:/MSDOS for you Windows users. You can use any directory you want. If you no longer have the game directory, then you'll have to install the game from inside DosBox -- go ahead and make your DosBox directory now.
2. Run DOSBox
3. You're now in an emulated MS-DOS enviroment. You can install or play the game exactly like on a genuine DOS system.
4. Use the mount command to bind a local directory as a virtual drive letter. For example, if your game is located at C:\Games\Dagger use mount C: C:\Games\Dagger. Note that the games by default install themselves into a subdirectory, so when installing either mount a higher-level directory first or else change the path when prompted by the installer.

[edit] Tips

• The faster the system the better it will run (unlike when running under Windows, where slower PCs do better). Something around an Athlon XP or better should be fine.
• You can make a shortcut to mount and run a game of your choice without using the DOS interface once, for example:
  dosbox -c "mount C: C:\Games" -c "c:" -c "cd Dagger~1" -c "dagger.exe"
• Another method of making a shortcut is to target the dosbox executable, then by adding the game of choice following it. Example:
  "C:\Program Files\DOSBox-0.72\dosbox.exe" "C:\Games\Daggerfall\dagger.exe"
• You can enter or exit fullscreen mode with Alt+Enter (on Windows) or the equivalent.
• You can speed up and slow down the emulation to your liking by using Ctrl+F12 and Ctrl+F11. In windowed mode the title bar displays the current speed. Somewhere between 15000 and 20000 has the best performance.
• You can unbind/bind your mouse to DosBox using Ctrl+F10.
• Pressing Ctrl+F5 will take a snapshot of the current game screen. The file is saved as a PNG file in the capture subdirectory of DosBox.
• If you have performance problems and games are running to slow under DosBox, you might want to try running a CVS build of the program. These are work-in-progress versions of the program, including changes that are to be featured in the next official DosBox release. Current CVS builds include an autocycle feature, which can greatly improve performance. Replace the files in your DosBox directory with those you can download from CVS-Compile, a site offering builds of the official DosBox sourcecode, and change the cycles option in your DosBox.conf file to "cycles=auto". This will allow DosBox to set emulation speed automatically, giving the best possible performance on every system. Remember that using CVS builds is your own responsibility, and that they may have bugs official releases don't have.
• DOSBoxWiki has further tips (some of which might not apply to more recent versions).
• Another very simple way to execute the game in dosbox is to install doxbox, extract the game you want to run in a folder, and then drag the game.exe file ontop of the dosbox.exe file and it will automatically run the game.

[edit] Arena CD-Version

Certain old versions of DosBox were not able to run the Deluxe CD version of Arena. Up to DosBox 0.61, running the game was possible, although saving crashed the program. Version 0.63 stopped supporting Arena CD altogether, by freezing right after A.EXE was run.

As of DosBox version 0.65, these problems have been resolved and Arena Deluxe CD is fully supported.