How do I install and run daggerfall on recalbox?

[rummy1]

Hello, I’m new to dos games and have never played one before. I’ve tried looking up videos on this subject but none have seemed to help when it comes to daggerfall or recalbox.

Okay so I’ve heard that I may have to install this on my computer before transferring it over to my raspberry pi. Is there anyone here who could help guide me through this process? Any help would be very much appreciated!

[voljega]

@rummy1 are you using recalbox with a pi ? because if I remember well, it is far from beeing powerfull enough to run Daggerfall at a playable speed

[rummy1]

@voljega Is the raspberry pi 3 model B not capable enough to handle this? Even at sub 30 FPS I’d like to try it.

[voljega]

@rummy1 it's capable to launch it sure, but to run correctly, far from sure

[rummy1]

@voljega yeah you’re probably right. Well if nothing else I’ll just use my pc. I thought it’d be really cool to be able to have it on my pi with my other classic games. I like most of them being all in one spot and for the simplicity. Thanks for the information as far as how it would run.

[voljega]

@rummy1 when I have a little time, I'll launch it from my pi and tell you how it run

[voljega]

@rummy1 seems I was pessimistic or mistook my memory of it with the one for another game, Daggerfall seems to run fine, without lag in video nor sound ! Well at least the very first dungeon without any monster, and the introduction video and everything I tried in the first 5 mn of the game.

I assume you are familiar with DOS and DOSbox ?

In that case you can also directly install the game on your recalbox, just tweak your dosbox.bat file to mount the cdrom and run the install file, and when done, redo your dosbow.bat to launch the game.

For reference, you can find a doc on the wifi :
https://github.com/recalbox/recalbox-os/wiki/How-to-use-DOSBox-to-emulate-DOS-games

[martymcfly7]

@voljega I too have been having trouble getting this game to run using recalbox on the pi. I've gotten about 30 dos games running so I'm a little familiar with the procedure. I currently have Daggerfall running on my pc using dosbox 0.74. So hopefully this can help @rummy1 as well.
The bat file I'm using on the pc dosbox is like this:
mount C "\DOSBox\ADD\dagger.pc\DISK"
mount D "\DOSBox\ADD\dagger.pc\DFCD" -t cdrom -label Daggerfall

CD \DAGGER
DAGGER.EXE
The problem is when on the pi, it doesn't like the second mount. I forget what the error is but I've tried creating the DFCD directory as an iso and using imgmount but that still doesn't work.

[voljega]

@martymcfly7 on Recalbox, you shouldn't do the first mount at all

The path for both your mounts is totally false regarding recalbox, either use a real full path or a relative one to the game *.pc folder

After that there might be some issue regarding path to the exec of the game, for me I had an error appear when selecting the birth region of the character, but after correcting that it seems to work fine

[Baude]

Daggerfall run well on recalbox rpi3b, I frequently play this game. I advise yout to use Daggerfall setup on your pc and then put the files in recalbox. It works with me.
Here the link to Daggerfall setup(very easy to use):http://theelderscrolls.wiwiland.net/Fichiers/DaggerfallSetup-2.15.0.exe

[voljega]

@baude said in How do I install and run daggerfall on recalbox?:

Daggerfall run well on recalbox rpi3b, I frequently play this game. I advise yout to use Daggerfall setup on your pc and then put the files in recalbox. It works with me.
Here the link to Daggerfall setup(very easy to use):http://theelderscrolls.wiwiland.net/Fichiers/DaggerfallSetup-2.15.0.exe

Please read forum rules, posting copyrighted stuff or asking for it is forbidden.

[martymcfly7]

@voljega From my understanding, the game is looking for the disc in the cd-rom drive. So that is why the DFCD directory is needed as well as the -label Daggerfall. I haven't been able to figure out how to make recalbox work when mounting a secondary directory like this.
I've tried the following:
imgmount d "c:\DFCD\dagger.iso" -t iso -fs iso -label Daggerfall

cd DISK\DAGGER
But this gave me an error that I had inserted the wrong CD. The only thing I can think of causing this is that it doesn't like the label I used when I created the iso. I've gotten a few other games too work this way except I haven't had to specify the -label before. When I created the iso the label had to be in all uppercase: DAGGERFALL.

[rummy1]

@voljega Thanks for your help and testing to make sure it runs correctly! Sorry about the late reply.

To answer your question... no I have not really used dosbox before. The only thing I was ever able to launch was the installer. I could not get any further than this. Could you perhaps give me a step by step guide on installing this game specifically? Explain it like I’m 5 please haha. Dos has went over my head on installing this game since it tells me I need a disc. And yes I’ve tried reading through that guide but it went over my head

@Baude Thank you for your suggestion! I do not own a windows computer to use for that specific installer. I have Mac and Linux computers. If I use wine do you think this would work?

Also isn’t what @Baude linked me to okay since Bethesda made the game f2p? It’s only being sold on sites like gog since they’ve included extra stuff with it, correct? Just curious I honestly don’t know.

[voljega]

@rummy1 afaik no it's not a game released from its copyright.

[rummy1]

@voljega Oh okay I gotcha. Is there a way you could give me a step by step guide as far as the installation goes? I’m still a bit lost. Thanks again for your help!

[martymcfly7]

@rummy1 Ok, I finally figured out how to run this on recalbox! It's took a lot to get it work but here goes. First create a folder, I named my dagger.pc. In the dagger.pc folder create a new folder named DAGGER, this where you will copy all the game files. You will also need a dosbox.bat for run the game. To create the dosbox.bat file, I'm assuming you are using a mac so you would use TextEdit program to create a text file. In this text file, copy this code:

c:
cd DAGGER
FALL.EXE Z.CFG

Save this file as dosbox.bat, you might need to remove the file extension at the end if it saves as dosbox.bat.txt. You will also need the dosbox.cfg, you can copy the code for this file from the following link: https://pastebin.com/13xrJdkw. Using TextEdit, you'll need to change the line that says mapperfile= to mapperfile=dagger. Also, the only way this would game would run was to increase the memsize= to memsize=48.
You'll need to edit the Z.CFG file too. Using TextEdit, edit the second line: path and the third line: pathCD to read like this:

path C:\DAGGER\arena2\
pathCD C:\DAGGER\arena2\

Out of all the dos games I've gotten to run on dosbox this one is the most complicated. I'm pretty sure there are many different ways to run the game. This is just one way that worked for me.

[voljega]

@martymcfly7 hmmm it seems my version is not the same as you, so in case rummy needs another conf, here is mine
the dosbox.cfg :
https://pastebin.com/Cuu3JzKj

my dosbox.bat :

imgmount d .\ESdagger\cd\daggerf.iso -t cdrom
@c:
cd ESdagger
@dagger

So basically my game folder is named ESdagger.pc and I have inside that one the dosbox.bat, dosbox.cfg and another ESdagger folder containing all the data for the game

This is already installed, so @rummy1 if you need to install it, you can do it directly on your recalbox.
Change the doscbox.bat to

imgmount d .\ESdagger\cd\daggerf.iso -t cdrom
d:
dir /p

and look at the files to find setup.exe or install.exe or any other exe name which looks like installer

when found, change dosbox.bat to

imgmount d .\ESdagger\cd\daggerf.iso -t cdrom
@d:
install.exe

(or setup.exe or the installer exe on the last line)

when install is finished put back first version of dosbox.bat

imgmount d .\ESdagger\cd\daggerf.iso -t cdrom
@c:
cd ESdagger
@dagger

the last two lines should correspond to your installation so your ESdagger.pc rom folder is C:, the next two before lines need to provide path to your main game launcher, basically change the next to last line to your local install path

[rummy1]

@martymcfly7, @voljega Thank you guys for all the help here! I will use your instructions and get daggerfall to finally run on my pi! Sorry for the late replies. I’ve been a bit busy lately.

Will these instructions translate over to daggerfallsetup? I would like the modified version if possible but the original will be fine as well. I was so lost but you guys explained this very well! Thanks again for everything!

[voljega]

@rummy1 said in How do I install and run daggerfall on recalbox?:

Will these instructions translate over to daggerfallsetup? I would like the modified version if possible but the original will be fine as well.

I'm not aware of this version ? Is it a modded one or somethign ? Anyway if it's running on DOS originally you should be able to run it on recalbox with DosBox

[rummy1]

@voljega it is the one that @Baude linked me to earlier. I believe it comes with dosbox and it’s preconfigured. It has extra bug fixes and content.
Here is a link to the unofficial wiki page: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Files

Edit: the only thing is that it’s made for newer versions of windows. Still uses dosbox though