Daggerfall runs slow as fuck

[Lyric Suite]

Ok, i'm trying to run this on a netbook (Lenovo X120e), but even after overclocking the CPU to 3.2ghz (according to CPU-Z, at any rate), the game still runs slow as hell when lots of enemies are on screen. In fact, overclocking the CPU seems to have no effect whatsoever (where as it solved a stuttering problem i was having with Dungeon Keeper), so something is wrong here. For instance, CPU cycles are always set to 100% independently on the clock of the CPU, where as with Dungeon Keeper i can change cycles freely even at default speed (1.6ghz). Either this game is that much of a resource hog (in this case i might as well wait for Daggerfall XL since i'm not buying a desktop anytime soon), or there's something wrong here i can't fathom.

 

[Pablosdog]

you are using dosbox i'm assuming? Just increase the cycles to oblivion, sometimes decreasing the cycles can help. What's your processor emulation on dosbox config? Post a list of your specs from your config of dosbox.

 

[OSK]

Maybe you need to scan for spyware: http://www.spyware-adware-remover.com/c ... puter.html

I suggest the Yahoo Toolbar with Anti Spyware.

 

[RK47]

Strange. Did u use the installer from a site? I did that and ran things fine without a graphic accelerator and low end pc on XP at work. Not even 2ghz processor desktop mind you.

 

[Sceptic]

Core=auto
Cycles=max (auto will work for most protected mode games, but it tends not to do shit for others and leaves cycles at the default of 3000, which is not good for something like Daggerfall)
Output=direct3d/openglnb/overlay (basically not surface)

Daggerfall isn't that demanding in terms of CPU. I think I had it running silky smooth at like 50K cycles.

 

[Lyric Suite]

you are using dosbox i'm assuming? Just increase the cycles to oblivion, sometimes decreasing the cycles can help. What's your processor emulation on dosbox config? Post a list of your specs from your config of dosbox.

Changing CPU cycles just makes the sound stutter with no frame rate increase. CPU settings are all put on auto. I don't know what you mean by CPU emulation. Where do i find it?

 

[Lyric Suite]

Core=auto
Cycles=max (auto will work for most protected mode games, but it tends not to do shit for others and leaves cycles at the default of 3000, which is not good for something like Daggerfall)
Output=direct3d/openglnb/overlay (basically not surface)

Daggerfall isn't that demanding in terms of CPU. I think I had it running silky smooth at like 50K cycles.

core=auto
cputype=auto
cycles=max

output=ddraw

Those are my settings. Setting cycles to 50k makes the sound stutter like hell with no frame rate improvement. I'm guessing CPU-Z is lying to me, BTW. I had it at 3.2ghz for like half an hour without problems. Seems odd to me.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Ok, the sound thing is starting to get annoying. On Dungeon Keeper, anythink more the 5k cycles makes the sound stutter, and the only way to run the game at 5k cycles is to overclock the CPU (whether 3.2ghz is real or not, the CPU is going above stock speed). This is getting annoying. If i can't get doxbox to run right, i'll sell this stupid netbook. I bought it specifically to play old games and those are the ones i'm having problems with (fuck, even NWN2 is more playable).

 

[Sceptic]

Yeah ddraw should work as well I think. Try overlay just in case though (direct3d and openglb are not a good idea on a laptop, now that I think of it).

cputype=auto will emulate a 486 with pentium commands, but it doesn't really matter because at cycles=max you're running much faster than any real 486 anyway.

That's odd. The sound stuttering makes it sound like your max cycles are lower than 50K (the emulation goes completely crazy if you try to run at more cycles than your CPU can handle). Are you running one of the SVN's with a menu bar? If yes, keep cycles=max, then with the game running go into the menu, into "CPU", turn off "max cycles" and see what number of cycles it display.

(btw I'm assuming that you DO see the cycles number change from 3000 to max when you start the game)

EDIT: FIVE THOUSAND??? OK something's definitely wrong. I don't know if it's with the laptop or with your DOSBox though. 5K cycles is basically equivalent to a real 386 so no wonder Daggerfall and DK choke on it. If you're not using it, try this SVN build (my personal favorite) and see if you get anything working better. Though if you got NWN2 running on this laptop then the problem is definitely with your DOSBox conf.

 

[Lyric Suite]

That's odd. The sound stuttering makes it sound like your max cycles are lower than 50K (the emulation goes completely crazy if you try to run at more cycles than your CPU can handle).

I'm guessing CPU-Z is bullshitting me, because at 3.2ghz its impossible that i get sound stuttering at 5k cycles. Besides, i don't get any sound stuttering in Daggerfall until i hit 30k cycles, so why would Dungeon Keeper be any different? I'll try the doxbox build you linked to, but i think at this point i'm temped to sell this thing and get an M11x or something.

 

[villain of the story]

Install VMWare. Setup W98 SE in a virtual machine. Install Daggerfall in virtual OS. WIN. No configs, nothing, everything smooth as fuck.

 

[Ruprekt]

On my machine Daggerfall doesn't like being run in a window with dosbox. It stutters for some reason; not a problem with full screen.

 

[SCO]

Use dos32a.
instructions here (read the whole page)
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Corrupted_Savegames

Yes it's hard to install into the game, no don't bitch it increases speed substantially on all games you install it into.

 

[shihonage]

Install VMWare. Setup W98 SE in a virtual machine. Install Daggerfall in virtual OS. WIN. No configs, nothing, everything smooth as fuck.

+1

I've been using this setup to run Mechwarrior 2+GBL, among other things. Efficient and reliable.

Well, I used Microsoft Virtual PC, but same idea.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

I really couldn't get into this one, it just isn't smooth enough to move, it takes too long to move to go everywhere and perform actions, and I get a headache just thinking of all the awful generic randomly generated content, generic buildings to inspect, and randomly generated NPCs to question. A terribly incomplete game and it shows. No way I'm going to be patient enough to wade through endless generic crap.

Thankfully Bethesda moved on to hand-crafted content, because randomly generated content SUCKS. There's only so many pre-defined variables one can set.

 

[ArcturusXIV]

The question is, is Daggerfall WORTH installing. I've got a netbook, too, and the problem seems to be the DOSBeast (Box). I've played Morrowind, curious about how worth my time it would be to go back from there... Will I be disappointed?

 

[Lyric Suite]

I really couldn't get into this one, it just isn't smooth enough to move, it takes too long to move to go everywhere and perform actions, and I get a headache just thinking of all the awful generic randomly generated content, generic buildings to inspect, and randomly generated NPCs to question. A terribly incomplete game and it shows. No way I'm going to be patient enough to wade through endless generic crap.

Thankfully Bethesda moved on to hand-crafted content, because randomly generated content SUCKS. There's only so many pre-defined variables one can set.

The endless generic crap is tens times more entertaining then any of the hand-crafted shit made by Bethesda later on. I had more fun coming out of the starting dungeon of Daggerfall then i ever did playing Morrowind in its entirety.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Use dos32a.
instructions here (read the whole page)
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Corrupted_Savegames

Yes it's hard to install into the game, no don't bitch it increases speed substantially on all games you install it into.

Didn't do a peep. I'm going to try installing the game under virtual machine next.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Fuck it, i give up. I'm going to sell this piece of crap back and buy a M14x instead. That ought to take care of this shit.

 

[villain of the story]

What a loser.

 

[GeneralSamov]

That's surely weird. I made it run on an AMD 2.6, no problems whatsoever. Have you checked whether it's overheating too much? I'm currently setting up XP on an Acer netbook (a serious chore btw) and the little bugger starts heating up as soon as it leaves idle mode, with all the summer especially. Though I'm not really sure DOSBox could be such an ordeal, but anyway.

 

[SCO]

I can't recall, is daggerfall one of those games where dosbox gets confused if run as "auto" cpu instead of "dynamic" (it thinks it needs the "normal" - slow - core)?

 

[Tel Velothi]

I installed Daggerfall on my netbook (old as fuck btw) and it also runned very slow. Pity. Seems I will play it only on PC.
Oh, Morrowind runs just fine.

 

[Lyric Suite]

What a loser.

Ok, help me out here. When i try to run the game in Windows 98 i get the dreaded no CD error and i can't find a crack for the patched version of the game. How did you get around that?

 

[villain of the story]

Copy arena2 folder from cd to game folder and edit Z.cfg, IIRC. Eg:

path c:\dagger\arena2\
pathCD c:\dagger\arena2\

I don't remember ever doing anything else. There is also a DF Installer, mainly for installing the game correctly under XP but maybe it will work in W98 too. Anyway, try what I said first. If that fails, well, I remember the game not working with every CD or CD image; it had to be a perfect clone. If the first two steps fail to work, I'll try to provide a perfect image.

Oh, btw, haven't Bethesda released the game with working DosBox presets?