DaggerFX -- vanilla DF in Windows

MrFlibble · Post by **MrFlibble** » Mon Jul 20, 2026 3:27 pm

It looks like there's been no announcement here in the forums yet, but @Ferital recently made the first release of DaggerFX, which is a project similar to KeeperFX and allows to play Daggerfall natively in Windows without the use of emulators like DOSBox.

The difference from Daggerfall Unity (DFU) is that you're essentially playing the same vanilla Daggerfall, just hooked directly into Windows OS (thus bypassing any performance issues arising from emulation). This means that gameplay is exactly the same (save for some bug fixes for now), and there is 100% saved game compatibility. The current release has been tested to play the main quest from start to finish.

Ferital · Post by **Ferital** » Sat Jul 25, 2026 10:28 pm

Thank you for the announcement, MrFlibble!

The release is still in beta, and so far I’ve only announced it on a few Discord servers. I’m currently working on Beta 2, which will include several bug fixes as well as quicksave functionality.

MrFlibble · Post by **MrFlibble** » Sat Aug 01, 2026 1:04 pm

Ferital wrote: Sat Jul 25, 2026 10:28 pm The release is still in beta, and so far I’ve only announced it on a few Discord servers. I’m currently working on Beta 2, which will include several bug fixes as well as quicksave functionality.

Lovely, good luck with perfecting your port!

I haven't gotten around to test it yet, I have a custom DOS Daggerfall setup for playing, which does not bypass CD copy protection -- Medium install with patches and fixes on the virtual HDD mounted in DOSBox and a separate virtual CD-ROM folder. I suppose I'd need to create a cumulative AREA2 folder with everything from the CD added to it to play DaggerFX?

Ferital · Post by **Ferital** » Sat Aug 22, 2026 9:48 pm

MrFlibble wrote: Sat Aug 01, 2026 1:04 pm Lovely, good luck with perfecting your port!

Thanks! Beta 2 has just been released (https://ferital.itch.io/daggerfx), with quicksave/quickload as a new QoL feature, fixes for several bugs inherited from the original game, and various improvements to DaggerFX native backends, among other changes.

MrFlibble wrote: Sat Aug 01, 2026 1:04 pm I haven't gotten around to test it yet, I have a custom DOS Daggerfall setup for playing, which does not bypass CD copy protection -- Medium install with patches and fixes on the virtual HDD mounted in DOSBox and a separate virtual CD-ROM folder. I suppose I'd need to create a cumulative AREA2 folder with everything from the CD added to it to play DaggerFX?

Indeed, for now, it is best to run DaggerFX from a full DF install. However, you can also copy the contents of the Daggerfall CD to a separate directory, then manually edit ZFX.CFG (DaggerFX equivalent of Z.CFG) so that pathCD points to the appropriate ARENA2 directory in that copy. For the final 1.0 release, I will make sure DaggerFX works with any install size.

Adda · Post by **Adda** » Fri Sep 25, 2026 12:28 pm

This is all very promising, just the kind of thing I'd like for DaggerFall, which looks great in it's original state, something I feel is lost in the Unity version.
I tested the beta out and it works, donno about quests and such, I just did a quick test as I have played DaggerFall too much, I'll return though.

However the framerate seems low, I think I might understand there is a reason for this other then that I use an older computer.
The framerate seems the same everywhere, even in the menus, my guess is that this is because the game get increasingly buggy as framerate goes up in the original version, a fast computer running the original DaggerFall crashes all the time.
But maybe there is a way to make it higher.

Edit: framerate goes up with lower resolutions, so it's my old W510 that is slow, it plays rather well at 640x480 though (CRT in use).

Another ting is the aspect ratio, I would like the original setting (16:10) as well as the new one as I prefer squared pixels.

And one last thing, it would be nice to have separate mouse sensitivity settings for the mouse cursor and mouse look modes.

As for dreams, it would be nice if the map that is included in the game but not used could be used, maybe as an optional feature.

Oh and what about further view distance, I once used a hack for that.

Almost forgot, it would be nice if you could move forwards/backwards and to the side at the same time.

Anyway thanks for the good work!

MrFlibble · Post by **MrFlibble** » Wed Oct 21, 2026 9:26 pm

I finally got around to play a bit and had a crash. Here's my crash log:

Spoiler:

For some context, I loaded and continued playing one of my characters, level 11 Ranger. I got two side-quests, one immediately botched (stolen book) -- there was only one tavern in the town, and the quest apparently wanted another tavern than the one where I got the quest to place an NPC.

However, while I was looking for clues, I found an "indoor coven" and took a quest there instead. The quest was to rescue an imprisoned witch from a dungeon, which I did. Once I got her the game started spawning Knights, I dispatched one right in the dungeon, and two more trailed after fast-travel in the town.

Now all Knights had identical gear, some Elven stuff plus an item called "Glass bottle" that looks identical to a potion bottle, but can't be used. I don't think I ever found this item in the DOS version. Anyway, I collected the weapons and sold them in a nearby general store, but kept the bottles in my inventory. Then I travelled to a random town with a bank (asked an NPC about one and went there), hired a room in the nearest inn. The game crashed when I tried to move the bottles from my inventory to the wagon, while being in a rented room.

Also during the same playthrough, I rested in the quest dungeon and levelled up my long blade skill -- and the message never went away, it stuck on the screen. I certainly did encounter the same bug in vanilla DOS game, although not very often. Do you think you could fix it?

Also during questing I had a few replies from NPCs (in the dialogue menu where you pick topics and tone, not the messages displayed in a parchment style text-box) that lack spaces between certain words. Again, this is something that happens to certain dialogue text in vanilla DF as well, I wonder if this could be fixed too?

UPD: I loaded a previous save where I had the bottles in my inventory and tried moving them into the wagon while being indoors (in a store). No crash.

Ferital · Post by **Ferital** » Sat Oct 31, 2026 10:39 pm

Adda wrote: Fri Sep 25, 2026 12:28 pm This is all very promising, just the kind of thing I'd like for DaggerFall, which looks great in it's original state, something I feel is lost in the Unity version.
I tested the beta out and it works, donno about quests and such, I just did a quick test as I have played DaggerFall too much, I'll return though.

However the framerate seems low, I think I might understand there is a reason for this other then that I use an older computer.
The framerate seems the same everywhere, even in the menus, my guess is that this is because the game get increasingly buggy as framerate goes up in the original version, a fast computer running the original DaggerFall crashes all the time.
But maybe there is a way to make it higher.

Edit: framerate goes up with lower resolutions, so it's my old W510 that is slow, it plays rather well at 640x480 though (CRT in use).

Another ting is the aspect ratio, I would like the original setting (16:10) as well as the new one as I prefer squared pixels.

And one last thing, it would be nice to have separate mouse sensitivity settings for the mouse cursor and mouse look modes.

As for dreams, it would be nice if the map that is included in the game but not used could be used, maybe as an optional feature.

Oh and what about further view distance, I once used a hack for that.

Almost forgot, it would be nice if you could move forwards/backwards and to the side at the same time.

Anyway thanks for the good work!

Thanks! Your comment about the framerate was really helpful, because it made me re-read the rendering code, and I realized I had made a mistake in the configuration of SDL2, the graphics library DaggerFX uses for rendering. I've fixed it in the upcoming Beta 3 release (expected in November), so DaggerFX should run much more smoothly at higher resolutions. The 3D display will remain limited to 30 fps, since the game's logic depends on it, but your W510 should now be able to reach that frame rate at its native resolution.

As for the other points, here are my answers:

Image aspect ratio: 4:3 is actually the original aspect ratio, which DaggerFX preserves in its entirety. The game ran at 320x200, and CRT monitors displayed it in 4:3, with pixels that were slightly taller than they were wide. Square pixels (16:10) wouldn't be true to the original, but that should be an easy option to add, so I'll think about it. In the next version, Beta 3, I plan to add a 640x400 mode that was most likely intended by the developers but abandoned along the way.

Mouse sensitivity: separate settings for the cursor and view mode could also affect weapon movements. So I can't promise anything on that front.

Map: I'm not sure exactly which map you're referring to. Could you specify which image you're talking about?

View distance: I know there's a hack to increase the view distance, and I'm considering incorporating it properly as a part of DaggerFX "QoL improvements".

Moving forward and sideways at the same time: this should be doable, again, as a part of DaggerFX "QoL improvements".

Ferital · Post by **Ferital** » Sat Oct 31, 2026 10:47 pm

MrFlibble wrote: Wed Oct 21, 2026 9:26 pm I finally got around to play a bit and had a crash. Here's my crash log:
Spoiler:
[INFO] FALL.DLL SHA-256 verified (v1.07.213)
[INFO] Patched 51/51 VGA framebuffer references
[INFO] Patched screenshot framebuffer reference
[INFO] Installed 12/12 display JMP patches
[INFO] Installed 14/14 throttle call redirect patches
[INFO] Installed 1/1 throttle trampoline patches
[INFO] Patched automap scroll/rotate/zoom throttle (5 ms)
[INFO] Patched VID DOS file I/O and timer gate
[INFO] Patched VID palette I/O
[INFO] Installed 15/15 DOS JMP patches
[INFO] Patched 96 BIOS timer inline references
[INFO] Patched 31 key-release spin-waits
[INFO] Patched init_shading DOS fatal path
[INFO] Patched read_world_file DOS fatal paths
[INFO] Installed 2/2 DOS byte patches
[INFO] Installed 15/15 bugfix byte patches
[INFO] Installed 6/6 bugfix JMP patches
[INFO] Installed 7/7 bugfix trampoline patches
[INFO] Installed 1/1 bugfix call redirect patches
[INFO] Installed 6/6 gameplay bug fix JMP patches
[INFO] Installed 5/5 gameplay bug fix byte patches
[INFO] Installed 2/2 gameplay bug fix call redirect patches
[INFO] Installed 14/14 gameplay bug fix trampoline patches
[INFO] Installed 16/16 clib JMP patches
[INFO] Installed 10/10 engine JMP patches
[INFO] Installed 3/3 engine byte patches
[INFO] Installed 1/1 engine trampoline patches
[INFO] Installed static NPC anim counter CALL patch
[INFO] Installed 5/5 audio JMP patches
[INFO] Installed 1/1 audio trampoline patches
[INFO] Win32 MIDI output initialized
[INFO] Installed 1/1 MIDI byte patches
[INFO] Installed cfg fmMusic store patch
[INFO] Installed 8/8 MIDI JMP patches
[INFO] Installed 16/16 input JMP patches
[INFO] Installed 17/17 input call redirect patches
[INFO] Patched clear_keyboard_state for key bleed fix
[INFO] Installed 1/1 quicksave trampoline patches
[INFO] Display backend initialized: 320x200 -> fullscreen desktop (4:3, render thread)

=== DaggerFX CRASH ===
Thread id : 10504
Exception code : 0xC0000005
Fault address : 0x6FC0F8FD
Access type : READ
Target address : 0x59A63C5F
EIP = 0x6FC0F8FD
EAX = 0x59A63C40 EBX = 0x0000015C ECX = 0x000000C7 EDX = 0x6FC0F8E9
ESI = 0x005400FC EDI = 0x0040C33A EBP = 0x0019FC5C ESP = 0x0019FC40
EFLAGS = 0x00210202
EIP bytes : 8B 40 1F 3B 05 18
Target region : alloc=0x00000000 state=0x00010000 protect=0x00000001 type=0x00000000 module=C:\Games\DaggerFX\DaggerFX.exe
FALL base : 0x6FB90000 size=0x001A9000
FALL.DLL+0x7F8FD (RVA)
Stack trace :
[0] 0x6FC0F57E FALL.DLL+0x7F57E
[1] 0x6FC0F599 FALL.DLL+0x7F599
[2] 0x6FC0F599 FALL.DLL+0x7F599
[3] 0x6FC0F9AC FALL.DLL+0x7F9AC
[4] 0x6FC0FBD3 FALL.DLL+0x7FBD3
[5] 0x6FC1595E FALL.DLL+0x8595E
[6] 0x6FC152E9 FALL.DLL+0x852E9
[7] 0x6FC13BE6 FALL.DLL+0x83BE6
[8] 0x6FB91471 FALL.DLL+0x01471
[9] 0x6FB911CD FALL.DLL+0x011CD
[10] 0x004073B8
[11] 0x001A0000
[12] 0x0040C33A
[13] 0x76FC82AE
[14] 0x76FC827E
======================
For some context, I loaded and continued playing one of my characters, level 11 Ranger. I got two side-quests, one immediately botched (stolen book) -- there was only one tavern in the town, and the quest apparently wanted another tavern than the one where I got the quest to place an NPC.

However, while I was looking for clues, I found an "indoor coven" and took a quest there instead. The quest was to rescue an imprisoned witch from a dungeon, which I did. Once I got her the game started spawning Knights, I dispatched one right in the dungeon, and two more trailed after fast-travel in the town.

Now all Knights had identical gear, some Elven stuff plus an item called "Glass bottle" that looks identical to a potion bottle, but can't be used. I don't think I ever found this item in the DOS version. Anyway, I collected the weapons and sold them in a nearby general store, but kept the bottles in my inventory. Then I travelled to a random town with a bank (asked an NPC about one and went there), hired a room in the nearest inn. The game crashed when I tried to move the bottles from my inventory to the wagon, while being in a rented room.

Also during the same playthrough, I rested in the quest dungeon and levelled up my long blade skill -- and the message never went away, it stuck on the screen. I certainly did encounter the same bug in vanilla DOS game, although not very often. Do you think you could fix it?

Also during questing I had a few replies from NPCs (in the dialogue menu where you pick topics and tone, not the messages displayed in a parchment style text-box) that lack spaces between certain words. Again, this is something that happens to certain dialogue text in vanilla DF as well, I wonder if this could be fixed too?

UPD: I loaded a previous save where I had the bottles in my inventory and tried moving them into the wagon while being indoors (in a store). No crash.

Thanks for the report and the log file!

The crash occurred just as you were placing the bottle in the cart: the game detected an item that was already damaged, either in your cart, your inventory, or in town. The log file doesn't let me determine which one, so could you send me your latest save file from before the crash, ideally one saved at the inn while the bottles were still in your inventory? Just compress the corresponding SAVEx folder from your game directory. Please also let me know if moving the bottles causes the game to crash every time.

In the meantime, I'll look into the level-up message that gets stuck, the missing spaces in the NPC responses, and the unusable "glass bottle".

Adda · Post by **Adda** » Sun Nov 01, 2026 10:35 am

Ferital wrote: Sat Oct 31, 2026 10:39 pm Map: I'm not sure exactly which map you're referring to. Could you specify which image you're talking about?

I can't point you to a specific file, but the abandoned DaggerXL project used this terrain map as far as I understand.

640x400 would be cool.

MrFlibble · Post by **MrFlibble** » Sun Nov 01, 2026 2:24 pm

Ferital wrote: Sat Oct 31, 2026 10:47 pm The crash occurred just as you were placing the bottle in the cart: the game detected an item that was already damaged, either in your cart, your inventory, or in town. The log file doesn't let me determine which one, so could you send me your latest save file from before the crash, ideally one saved at the inn while the bottles were still in your inventory? Just compress the corresponding SAVEx folder from your game directory. Please also let me know if moving the bottles causes the game to crash every time.

Ahh, I'm afraid I already overwrote the save file, and did not make a backup. But I encountered no further crashes so far.

Ferital wrote: Sat Oct 31, 2026 10:47 pm In the meantime, I'll look into the level-up message that gets stuck, the missing spaces in the NPC responses, and the unusable "glass bottle".

Thanks! Regarding the missing spaces, I think that in this particular case, this might be actually caused by something in the quest file, but not sure.

Ferital wrote: Sat Oct 31, 2026 10:39 pm In the next version, Beta 3, I plan to add a 640x400 mode that was most likely intended by the developers but abandoned along the way.

Ahh, that's lovely, I was about to request this feature.

BTW, SkyNET optionally runs at 640x480, I wonder if the code is the same/similar enough to what DF and Battlespire are using.

I also had a few questions regarding sound and music playback:

Would it be possible to hook in FluidSynth for MIDI playback through soundfonts instead of the default Windows MIDI option?

As for the sounds, I noticed that compared to playing in DOSBox, all sound effects sound somewhat rough and muffled, because I guess they're played back in the original 11 kHz quality, while DOSBox resamples sounds very nicely to 44 kHz. Would it be possible to add a similar option as a QoL feature?

Another more specific thing, I wonder if it is possible to fix the odd colours/pixels that occasionally show on the top front edge of shelves (both in stores and purely decorative shelves in houses or dungeon rooms)? Or is that a texture misalignment issue?

Also what about the unused sound effects? DFU makes use of what are claimed to be unused player death and human enemy attack grunt noises, is there any evidence in the code those were indeed intended for these purposes? If so, maybe re-add them as an option as well?

Adda · Post by **Adda** » Sun Nov 01, 2026 3:48 pm

MrFlibble wrote: Sun Nov 01, 2026 2:24 pm I also had a few questions regarding sound and music playback:

Would it be possible to hook in FluidSynth for MIDI playback through soundfonts instead of the default Windows MIDI option?

You can use BassMIDI for setting soundfonts, at least in Windows 7 and older.

Later Windows versions work with Coolsoft Virtual MIDI Synth.

Ferital · Post by **Ferital** » Sun Nov 01, 2026 9:16 pm

Adda wrote: Sun Nov 01, 2026 10:35 am
Ferital wrote: Sat Oct 31, 2026 10:39 pm Map: I'm not sure exactly which map you're referring to. Could you specify which image you're talking about?
I can't point you to a specific file, but the abandoned DaggerXL project used this terrain map as far as I understand.

640x400 would be cool.

So you're referring to the elevation map stored in WOODS.WLD. The original game doesn't read it directly, even though the terrain more or less follows it, since it's been integrated into the terrain data.

A few weeks agao, I've actually started an experimental branch on this: an optional mode that generates the terrain from this elevation map. It works, but it's on hold for now and won't be part of version 1.0. The problem is that it smooths out the grainy texture of the original terrain far too much, which I'd like to preserve.

There's also a more significant limitation related to your request regarding the viewing distance: the engine only renders a small area around the player, about 200 m in diameter, whereas a single pixel on the elevation map covers about 800 m. So, on a moutain, it would feel like you're climbing a long slope rather than seeing an actual mountain. For this feature to be truly interesting, a larger terrain area would also be needed. So I would consider these two aspects together if I were to revisit this topic.

Ferital · Post by **Ferital** » Sun Nov 01, 2026 10:03 pm

MrFlibble wrote: Sun Nov 01, 2026 2:24 pm
Ferital wrote: Sat Oct 31, 2026 10:47 pm The crash occurred just as you were placing the bottle in the cart: the game detected an item that was already damaged, either in your cart, your inventory, or in town. The log file doesn't let me determine which one, so could you send me your latest save file from before the crash, ideally one saved at the inn while the bottles were still in your inventory? Just compress the corresponding SAVEx folder from your game directory. Please also let me know if moving the bottles causes the game to crash every time.
Ahh, I'm afraid I already overwrote the save file, and did not make a backup. But I encountered no further crashes so far.
Ferital wrote: Sat Oct 31, 2026 10:47 pm In the meantime, I'll look into the level-up message that gets stuck, the missing spaces in the NPC responses, and the unusable "glass bottle".
Thanks! Regarding the missing spaces, I think that in this particular case, this might be actually caused by something in the quest file, but not sure.
Ferital wrote: Sat Oct 31, 2026 10:39 pm In the next version, Beta 3, I plan to add a 640x400 mode that was most likely intended by the developers but abandoned along the way.
Ahh, that's lovely, I was about to request this feature.

BTW, SkyNET optionally runs at 640x480, I wonder if the code is the same/similar enough to what DF and Battlespire are using.

I also had a few questions regarding sound and music playback:

Would it be possible to hook in FluidSynth for MIDI playback through soundfonts instead of the default Windows MIDI option?

As for the sounds, I noticed that compared to playing in DOSBox, all sound effects sound somewhat rough and muffled, because I guess they're played back in the original 11 kHz quality, while DOSBox resamples sounds very nicely to 44 kHz. Would it be possible to add a similar option as a QoL feature?

Another more specific thing, I wonder if it is possible to fix the odd colours/pixels that occasionally show on the top front edge of shelves (both in stores and purely decorative shelves in houses or dungeon rooms)? Or is that a texture misalignment issue?

Also what about the unused sound effects? DFU makes use of what are claimed to be unused player death and human enemy attack grunt noises, is there any evidence in the code those were indeed intended for these purposes? If so, maybe re-add them as an option as well?

I was finally able to fix most of the bugs you reported in your previous post, including, most likely, the crash you experienced. All of these fixes will be included in the next Beta version.

Fixed (all bugs from the original game, not DaggerFX):
- Glass bottles: These were potions that lost their contents when quest enemies were spawned. Starting with Beta 3, new ones will work normally, but those your character already possesses will remain unusable.
- Identical knights: Each enemy sent by a quest now has its own equipment and loot.
- Level-up message stuck: This was caused by an internal timer that reset every 6.5 hours. Under DOS, the timer only reset at midnight, which explains why it was rarely seen.
- Missing spaces in NPC responses: Also fixed; this was not a data bug but rather a bug in FALL.EXE.

Wagon crash: I found a bug in the way these knights' items were linked, which matches your error log and has now been fixed. However, I wasn't able to reproduce your crash exactly, so I can't be 100% sure. If this happens again in the next version, please send me the error log and your save file.

Stolen Book Quest: I haven't looked into this yet. If you remember the town or still have a save file from before the quest failed, that would be a big help.

Now, to answer you latest requests:

FluidSynth: I don't plan to integrate it for now. DaggerFX sends the music to the default Windows MIDI device. Therefore, a SoundFont MIDI driver such as VirtualMIDISynth or OmniMIDI should already work if it is set as the default device. I might add a help section on this topic, and I'll look into it later.

Sound quality: The original sounds are at 11 kHz, so no resampling can really add any additional detail. But you're right, the sound can be improved: DaggerFX is currently mixing in 8-bit at that frequency, and a 16-bit mix with smoother resampling should help. I'll look into it.

Shelves: This is a bug in the engine. At the top edge of a polygon, the rounded corner can cause the rendering engine to request the line located just above the texture. For textures whose height isn't a power of two, such as these 64x100 shelves, it then reads well beyond the image into unrelated memory, which explains why the colors change or turn black. I've confirmed this in the running game and will look for a safe way to fix it, but this won't be easy.

Unused sounds: good news for the first one. The code does attempt to select a death sound based on the character's race and gender, but a bug causes it to always play the same male voice. This can therefore be fixed as a bug. However I found no trace of attack growls for humans in the executable: the game never plays them, so this would be a new feature rather than a fix.

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DaggerFX -- vanilla DF in Windows

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