UESP Forums

While I'm at it, I think I need a really good rundown on how to open this program.

Everything I read says to open Daghex by opening it similarly to Daggerfall, so I've been trying to figure out simply opening the game with DOSbox before proceeding. Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how to open Daggerfall as opposed to just clicking it's shortcut. I can mount c:/games and it seems to acknowledge this command, and I'm led to believe this is the folder where my game is and the " Df " a lot of other people type in refers to the icon name. Except by that logic, I type " dagger " instead. This doesn't seem to work as itself or if I precede it with " c:/games/daggerfall/dagger " or if I suffix any variation with " -freesize 1000 ".

Am I just misinterpreting the language here, and what am I supposed to look for/type in? I overall feel like the tutorials don't offer a comprehensive breakdown of what's going on.

I have a generic DOSBox shortcut that I originally used for launching Arena. The "Target" field of my shortcut is as follows:

"Program Files (x86)\DOSBox-0.74\DOSBox.exe" -userconf

There's actually a "Cee colon backslash" at the beginning of all that-- although not spelled out, obviously-- but I wasn't sure if including it would cause the forum software to insert a link, so I left it out.

The "Start in" field for the shortcut is "Program Files (x86)\DOSBox-0.74" (again, with a "Cee colon backslash" at the beginning), but that is not where the user configuration file is.

The user configuration file is inside the "Users\myusername\AppData\Local\DOSBox" folder-- again, starting with "Cee colon backslash, and with "myusername" being whatever your user name happens to be. The name of the user configuration file is "dosbox-0.74.conf" (but it will probably be the only thing in that folder, anyway). You can open the user configuration file with Notepad if you want to view or change it.

I won't discuss any of the settings I changed, since you might want or need to use different settings, but I started with the default settings that were in the Arena installation package (which I got from Bethesda's site, not from UESP's site), and then tinkered with those until I had everything (mainly the graphics options) set to my liking. I will say that I like to make any changes in a manner that lets me see what the original setting was, in case I need to revert back to it, so what I do is copy a line before I change it and paste two or three copies of the line one after the other, "pounding out" the original and all but the last copy. Then I add comments to indicate the original setting, and change any of the extra copies (with appropriate comments) to show other settings that I want to try. The final, "unpounded" line is of course where the actual change goes. Here are some examples of what I mean:

# windowresolution=original <-- original
# windowresolution=1088x816 <-- try for Arena, Daggerfall, Battlespire, and Redguard
# windowresolution=1280x800 <-- try for Arena
windowresolution=1280x800
# output=surface <-- original
# output=overlay <-- try for Arena, Daggerfall, Battlespire, and Redguard
output=overlay

# memsize=16 <-- original
# memsize=32 <-- use for Arena and Daggerfall
# memsize=63 <-- use for Battlespire and Redguard
memsize=32

In any case, my user configuration file ends with statements that mount the desired folder as the DOSBox "C" drive, then switch to that "C" drive. I happen to use Dropbox-- along with OneDrive and iCloud, although I use those for specific purposes, and use Dropbox for general purposes-- so I decided to create a "dosgames" folder inside my "Dropbox" folder, and I've installed Arena itself in that "dosgames" folder. That way I can have Arena installed on my desktop computer, laptop, and cheap Windows tablet, play it on any of them, and my game will be saved to all of them via the Dropbox service. Therefore the last section of my user configuration file is as follows:

[autoexec]
# Lines in this section will be run at startup.
# You can put your MOUNT lines here.

# MOUNT C "driveletter:\Users\myusername\Dropbox\dosgames" -freesize 1000 <-- add for Arena, Daggerfall, Battlespire, and Redguard
MOUNT C "driveletter:\Users\myusername\Dropbox\dosgames" -freesize 1000 <-- add for Arena, Daggerfall, Battlespire, and Redguard
# C: <-- add for Arena, Daggerfall, Battlespire, and Redguard
C: <-- add for Arena, Daggerfall, Battlespire, and Redguard

Clicking on my DOSBox shortcut doesn't actually launch Arena, it just leaves me sitting at a "C" prompt. Then I have an "arena.bat" file set up in my "dosgames" folder so that I can launch Arena by entering "arena" at the "C" prompt.

I don't know how you've got everything set up on your system-- I haven't tried to install Daggerfall yet, either from Bethesda or from UESP-- and I'm not familiar with the "daghex" utility program. But if you configure DOSBox to start up at a "C" prompt, you might need to have a batch file in whatever folder is being mounted as "C"-- or possibly just place the "daghex" executable there-- so you can launch it from the "C" prompt. If the "daghex" utility has any command line switches that it recognizes, then you might want to go the batch file route so you can start up "daghex" without having to type in all of the command line switches each time.

This response took a while to work out, but it was a lot of trying to see what matched up to where. This is clearly what happens when someone whose not DOS savvy tries to use editors made for old games.



If it's a batch file I need... that may be an issue. Daggerfall doesn't seem to have that in its folder. And Daghex doesn't have that either, or even much in the way of other files to work with other than the executable, which doesn't, well, execute by itself.

Though dfhack seems to finally be reading my save files (initial issues with dfhack were what prompted me to start trying to figure out Daghex since I've been told these two were pretty good save editors). Except the fifth one for whatever reason. DDFQL has remained as refusing to acknowledge I even have save files though, which means I'm down a quest item detection add-on and up in hours of finding out I generated a bogus dungeon for a particular quest.

I'm hesitant to say this wasn't helpful. I might have a look at using Arena through this method just to go ahead and figure out loading through the DOSBOX command.

Hey Miskunn~

You can make a batch file yourself if necessary.
But first: what does your dosbox.conf file say at the end under [autoexec]?
And what commands do you enter to play Daggerfall?

We can work from there!

If you have an icon/shortcut that launches Daggerfall for you, I'd start by looking at its properties to see what its start-in folder is and what its target command line is. You might have go look at a batch file from there, but eventually you should be able to find out what folder Daggerfall is installed in.

I'm not familiar with the DagHex utility, but I had a look at one or two of the Arena utilities and they didn't seem to have much in the way of "how to for dummies" instructions, so I gave up on them for the time being.

But first: what does your dosbox.conf file say at the end under [autoexec]?
And what commands do you enter to play Daggerfall?

@ECHO OFF
mount C "."
c:
cls
fall.exe z.cfg
Exit

I'm presuming this is the text that goes in the .bat file?

A line-by-line explanation:

@ECHO OFF -- Don't display the following commands in DOSBox's "DOS" window.
mount C "." -- Mount the current directory as DOSBox's "C" drive. (But what is the current directory? I guess it's whatever directory DOSBox was installed in.)
c: -- Switch to DOSBox's "C" drive.
cls -- Clear DOSBox's "DOS" window.
fall.exe z.cfg -- Launch the "fall.exe" program, which I presume is the name of Daggerfall's executable file. Use the settings in the "z.cfg" file.
Exit -- After the player quits the Daggerfall game, close DOSBox's "DOS" window and shut down DOSBox.

If you want to have DOSBox start up at a "C" prompt so you can launch Daggerfall manually, or launch some other program such as DagHex, you could pound out the last two lines, as follows:

@ECHO OFF
mount C "."
c:
cls
# fall.exe z.cfg
# Exit

Then you could use Notepad or a similar text editor to create a batch file for launching Daggerfall, so you don't have to type the entire command line. For instance, if you were to name the batch file "Dagger.bat" then you could launch Daggerfall by simply typing "Dagger" at the "C" prompt and pressing Enter. Or if you were to name it "df.bat" then you could just type "df." The contents of the batch file would be as follows:

call fall.exe z.cfg
Exit

Adding the "call" keyword in front of the "fall.exe z.cfg" command line will ensure that the following "Exit" statement gets executed after you quit Daggerfall; otherwise you'll find yourself sitting at DOSBox's "C" prompt after quitting Daggerfall. (Of course, maybe that's what you want to happen?)

If you install the DagHex utility in the same folder that Daggerfall is in, then you should be able to launch it by typing the appropriate command line at the "C" prompt, rather than launching Daggerfall. I don't know what the command line for launching DagHex is, or if it can take any arguments or command line switches, so it might not be necessary to make a batch file for launching DagHex if the command line for launching it is simple enough.

Yep, Daghex doesn't have any arguments, just type "daghex" and hit enter.

A line-by-line explanation:

@ECHO OFF -- Don't display the following commands in DOSBox's "DOS" window.
mount C "." -- Mount the current directory as DOSBox's "C" drive. (But what is the current directory? I guess it's whatever directory DOSBox was installed in.)
c: -- Switch to DOSBox's "C" drive.
cls -- Clear DOSBox's "DOS" window.
fall.exe z.cfg -- Launch the "fall.exe" program, which I presume is the name of Daggerfall's executable file. Use the settings in the "z.cfg" file.
Exit -- After the player quits the Daggerfall game, close DOSBox's "DOS" window and shut down DOSBox.

If you want to have DOSBox start up at a "C" prompt so you can launch Daggerfall manually, or launch some other program such as DagHex, you could pound out the last two lines, as follows:

@ECHO OFF
mount C "."
c:
cls
# fall.exe z.cfg
# Exit

Then you could use Notepad or a similar text editor to create a batch file for launching Daggerfall, so you don't have to type the entire command line. For instance, if you were to name the batch file "Dagger.bat" then you could launch Daggerfall by simply typing "Dagger" at the "C" prompt and pressing Enter. Or if you were to name it "df.bat" then you could just type "df." The contents of the batch file would be as follows:

call fall.exe z.cfg
Exit

Adding the "call" keyword in front of the "fall.exe z.cfg" command line will ensure that the following "Exit" statement gets executed after you quit Daggerfall; otherwise you'll find yourself sitting at DOSBox's "C" prompt after quitting Daggerfall. (Of course, maybe that's what you want to happen?)

If you install the DagHex utility in the same folder that Daggerfall is in, then you should be able to launch it by typing the appropriate command line at the "C" prompt, rather than launching Daggerfall. I don't know what the command line for launching DagHex is, or if it can take any arguments or command line switches, so it might not be necessary to make a batch file for launching DagHex if the command line for launching it is simple enough.

So batch file "dagger.bat" contains the

call fall.exe z.cfg
Exit

DOSBox didn't seem to recognize the directory upon input. Unless there's something I have to do other than put the two items in the same folder.

Test running the other commands, DOSBox seems to consider pound signs to be illegal actions.

So now I'm hoping I didn't get some funky version of DOSBox.