Retro Show & Tell - Daggerfall Tuesday, 12 January 2010 01:33 | Written by Blaine |   
The Elder Scrolls is a video game series spanning generations of PC and gaming consoles.
Beginning with The Elder Scrolls: Arena in 1994, several games have been created for the series,
some notable and others not so much. Personally, I have put probably 100-150 hours in the
numbered games of the series, excepting Arena itself. The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, released
in 1996, to me represents the peak of the series, and in many ways the peak of immersive RPG
gaming. I just picked up the game again recently and decided to write a bit about it for those
who may be unfamiliar with the series or only took notice when it hit the consoles.
--readmore--
The basic idea of the game is that you start, D&D style, creating your player character from a
variety of playable races. You answer questions that determine your experiences as a youth, which
in turn decide what type of skills and strengths you have. You also choose a birthsign that
provides its own unique bonuses and drawbacks. For those who are familiar with games in the
series or RPG games in general, it is also possible to manually pick and choose skills and roll
for stat points. You begin the game in a notoriously difficult starter dungeon, and once you are
finally out you are no longer playing the same game as anyone else - the immense open world is
yours to explore any way you want, whichever way best suits your character.
Daggerfall is simply massive, with over 62,000 square miles of territory - compared to TES3:
Morrowind's 10 square miles and TES4: Oblivion's 16 square miles. It takes many hours to cross
from one side of the world to the other. The scope of the game is only possible due to random
generation of dungeons and locations, which can cause problems with nonsensical dungeons once in
a while. I find this to simply be a sign of the game being ahead of its time and lacking the
resources necessary to make the world the developers set out to create. There are over 20
factions your character can join and perform quests for, and each has political interconnectivity
with the others (some quests might pit members of one guild against another, and if you are a
member of both your reputation will raise/lower accordingly if you've wronged your allies). There
is just a ridiculous amount of depth in this game, including advanced crafting systems,
spellmaking, a full calendar with holidays, law and order, a banking system, religion, and tons
of secrets. To further steep the player in the lore of the world, there are many places one can
go to read books in-game about the places and history of the world, including "fictional" tales
and legends - all of which are *very* well-written. The Imperial Library is a website that
provides the in-game written materials throughout The Elder Scrolls series as well as synopses of
the games' plots, so even if you are only interested in the new games (because maybe you're a
wuss) that site provides some excellent reading material to soak up the game experience without
having to put 100 hours into your Daggerfall guy (again, wuss).
If you've heard of Daggerfall at all, you are probably familiar with some of its shortcomings.
The game's graphics are dated and not pretty to look at, although they were revolutionary and
totally awesome when they came out. With the latest (213) patch applied, the game can be very
buggy. Back when the game came out, many people used all kinds of various boot disks and
utilities to squeeze out extra memory for DOS games and programs, and Daggerfall tended to hate
all of this. Fortunately, these days it is possible and recommended to use a DOS emulator for
Windows called DosBox. With DosBox I am able to play Daggerfall as it is intended in its native
environment, except on a 46" HDTV with a PS3 Logitech Mediaboard Pro (which is now my preferred
way to play it). As a matter of fact, Daggerfall runs far better on an emulator than it did on -
eXu-'s Pentium 75 because it is not required to perform a lot of the hacking about that was
required in those old days. However, it is still buggy and it WILL crash on you. If you decide to
pick up Daggerfall, save a LOT, especially before starting quests. Before you quit the game,
save, then move outside or to a different location and save there also. Once in a while you
should back up the savegame folders in case one or more of them corrupts, which can happen from
time to time. Here is a guide on the care and feeding of Daggerfall and how to avoid these
issues.
Chances are if you're still reading the article I have sold you on how great Daggerfall is.
Luckily, the game is totally legitimately free, and available for download here. Read
Installation / First Time Config
1. Download DosBox from here http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/dosbox/DOSBox0.73-win32-
installer.exe?download and install it.
2. Create a folder for your DOS filesystem. I usually make it something like "C:\Program Files
\Games\DosBox".
3. Inside your DOS filesystem folder, create a folder called DAGGER. Following my example, it
would be "C:\Program Files\Games\DosBox\DAGGER".
4. Inside the DAGGER folder, create folders called SAVE0, SAVE1, SAVE2, SAVE3, SAVE4, and SAVE5.
5. Download Daggerfall from http://www.elderscrolls.com/downloads/download-legal-daggerfall.php .
6. Extract DFInstall.zip. You will have two folders - one called DAGGER and the other called
DFCD.
7. Inside the DAGGER folder is a single file, DAG213.EXE. Copy this file to the DAGGER folder you
created in step 3.
8. Inside the DFCD folder is another folder called DAGGER. Open the DFCD\DAGGER folder and copy
everything inside it to the DAGGER folder you created in step 3.
9. Inside the DFCD folder is a folder called DATA. Open the DFCD\DATA folder and copy everything
inside it to the DAGGER folder you created in step 3.
10. Inside the DFCD folder are three INSTALL files - INSTALL.EXE, INSTALL.SCR, and INSTALL.PIF
(in Windows it just says INSTALL and has a shortcut arrow on the icon). Copy these files to the
DAGGER folder you created in step 3.
10. Download DAGFIXES.ZIP from me.
11. Extract DAGFIXES.ZIP. There will be three files inside.
12. Copy Z.CFG to the DAGGER folder you created in step 3. The other two files, you will copy to
the ARENA2 folder which is inside the DAGGER folder you created in step 3.
13. Open DosBox.
14. Type in this command and then press the ENTER key: quotebox mount c "C:\Program Files\Games
\DosBox" (or whichever folder you chose). If you typed the path correctly, you will be informed
that the drive has been mounted.
15. Type c: and hit ENTER, then type cd DAGGER and hit ENTER. Type setup and hit ENTER.
16. Press the down arrow to choose "Select Digital" and hit ENTER. Arrow down to Sound Blaster
16/AWE32 and hit ENTER. Hit ENTER four more times to accept the defaults and test the setting.
Press the right arrow to OK and hit ENTER.
17. Press the down arrow to choose "Select MIDI" and hit ENTER. Arrow down to MPU-401 (in my
opinion sounds better than the Sound Blaster 16 setting) and hit ENTER twice (or three times if
you want to hear the sample). Arrow down to OK and hit ENTER.
18. Arrow down to OK and hit ENTER, then hit ENTER again to save the settings.
19. Type DAG213.EXE and hit ENTER. When prompted to update, press Y. You will be prompted again
to press Y to patch a different problem. Press Y.
20. Type c:\dagger\fall.exe z.cfg and hit ENTER to load the game. If you type DAGGER, as the
patcher tells you to, it will ask for the game CD to be inserted and won't work properly.
21. Press and hold the ALT key and then press the ENTER key to make the game full-screen. This is
necessary for the mouse input to work properly.
Playing the Game
1. Open DosBox.
2. Type in this command and then press the ENTER key: quotebox mount c "C:\Program Files\Games
\DosBox" (or whichever folder you chose). If you typed the path correctly, you will be informed
that the drive has been mounted.
3. Type c: and hit ENTER, then type cd DAGGER and hit ENTER. Type fall.exe z.cfg and hit ENTER.
4. Press and hold the ALT key and then press the ENTER key to make the game full-screen. This is
necessary for the mouse input to work properly.
Welcome to Retro Show & Tell, the feature where I pick out an old game and opine about it and its impact on me. The first RS&T will be a positive take on one of the most amazing PC games ever created, The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall.
The Elder Scrolls is a video game series spanning generations of PC and gaming consoles. Beginning with The Elder Scrolls: Arena in 1994, several games have been created for the series, some notable and others not so much. Personally, I have put probably 100-150 hours in each of the numbered games of the series, excepting Arena itself. The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, released in 1996, to me represents the peak of the series, and in many ways the peak of immersive RPG gaming. I just picked up the game again recently and decided to write a bit about it for those who may be unfamiliar with the series or only took notice when it hit the consoles. Read more... Comments (1)
Last Updated (Tuesday, 12 January 2010 03:53) |
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