If you grew up in the 80s or early nineties, there’s a good chance you remember the AD&D goldbox series from SSI. These were top-down strategic RPG games based on the advanced dungeons and dragons pen and paper RPG series. While the first (Pools of Radiance) was my favorite, there were at least 10 or 11 others to play. Then there’s the Elder Scrolls, Fallout, X-Com, Master of Magic, Wizardry, Bards Tale, Albion, Superhero League of Hoboken, and about 1000 others. These games were great fun back in the day, but with some of the new improvements to DosBox you can actually improve the original experience on your Android handset or tablet.
Here’s a quick guide for playing your classic games with touchscreen and transparent keyboard on your Android.
- Install a DosBox port for Android. I highly recommend DosBox Turbo, as they are bleeding edge.
- If you’re using DosBox Turbo, also install ‘DosBox Manager’, it adds easy custom DosBox Profile Support
- Locate the game you wish to play, and extract it to a directory on your android. I recommend /dosbox/GameName/
- Install a good software keyboard for Android. I recommend ‘Hackers Keyboard’, as it comes with a transparent theme you can select
- Fire up Dosbox Manager, or manually edit your DosBox.cfg to have an appropriate amount of memory (32mb) and low frameskip
- While you’re editing the config, go ahead and enable mouse support, with absolute (perfect for touchscreen!) positioning
- Finally, edit the autoexec.bat in the config and add a couple of lines to start your game such as ‘cd dosbox/gamename/’ ‘startgame’
Update – Wizardry 7 by special request:
Hey bro
Can you test wizardry 7? I tried but didnt work =\
Hey Edward,
Which version of Wizardry 7 are you using? I know the Gold version was updated to include Windows/Mac support, but I have no idea if it retained DOS compatibility. How exactly did it fail? Let me know what binary you are using and I’ll see if I can’t figure out what’s going on.
Best,
/H
I tested wiz gold and appear a message saying “this program cannot run under dos mode”
Also I tried the older version wiz 7 dark savant and appear a message saying “unable to open scenario.hdr”
wiz 7 is a jewel and a must have to all rpg fans!
For sure Wiz Gold won’t work, but I’ll look into dark savant and see what’s happening.
/H
Almost forgot
I tested using my xperia play and dosbox turbo.
yeah! Imagine playing wiz 7 using xperia gamepad…
Ty
I got it working on dosbox turbo using dosboxmanager on my first gen transformer (I believe they have a similar chipset). Set your memory to 32mb in the game config as I think it tries to load some TSRs right off. I’ll update the article with a screenshot of it running. I used this version for testing http://www.bestoldgames.net/eng/old-games/wizardry-7-crusaders-of-the-dark-savant.php
WORKED!
OMG
You rox man!
xD
im going test might and magics later
thanks a lot bro
NP man, glad it’s happening for ya.
Hunter,
Hey man, I have a bit of an issue here. I happened to come across your blog while browsing the net for “Android DosBox” and if you could help me, I will be forever grateful.
My issue is that I recently acquired a Nexus 7 Asus Tablet. Well when I found out that I could put Bethesda’s Daggerfall onto it, I almost shat myself with joy. However, I am fairly new to using DosBox and don’t quite know how to correctly install it. I downloaded DosBox Turbo, along with DosBox Manager, and then ran Daggerfall setup on windows. I placed the installed version into a file simply called “Daggerfall.” I then copied this file over to my Nexus 7 (however into the internal storage – which may be a problem), to where the directory looks something like this:
Nexus 7 > Internal Storage > Daggerfall > *various files unloaded from the installation*
Could you please offer advice to assist me from this point? Sorry for sounding like such a noob, but if you help that would be great
Hey MMH,
It depends on whether you have the CD version or the downloadable version of Daggerfall, but here’s basically what you need to do.
1. You’ll need to run the install process from within DosBox.
2. You’ll need to have your mounted directory (in your Dosbox Manager config) show freespace of 600megs with -freesize 614400
3. You’ll need to have both the daggerfall cd directory and the main directory mounted.
Here are the commands to do this
mount D \mnt\sdcard\dosboxgames\daggerfall\DFCD
mount C \mnt\sdcard\dosboxgames\ -freesize 614400
D:
INSTALL.EXE
You should have no problems installing.
To run the game if you followed the above code.
mount D \mnt\sdcard\dosboxgames\daggerfall\DFCD -t cdrom -label Daggerfa
mount C \mnt\sdcard\dosboxgames\
C:
cd DAGGER
DAGGER.EXE
You can find more info about Daggerfall and DosBox on the DosBox Daggerfall wiki page here: http://www.dosbox.com/wiki/GAMES:The_Elder_Scrolls_II:_Daggerfall
Best of luck!
Hunter,
Thanks for the speedy reply! And I am making partial progress – I am now able to access the installation screen. However I still am having an issue with modifying the “freespace.” BTW, I am using the downloaded version of Daggerfall (sorry for not mentioning this earlier). The DOS prompt is looking something like this:
C:/>mount D /sdcard/dosboxgames/DFCD
Drive D is mounted as local directory /sdcard/dosboxgames/DFCD/
C:/>mount C /sdcard/dosboxgames/ -freesize 614400
Drive C already mounted with local directory /sdcard/
…So then I attempted going into the C: directory then just typing /sdcard/dosboxgames/ -freesize 614400. After hitting enter I did not get a notification stating anything, so I thought the code went through; however, upon going back to the installation, it prompted me that not enough space was present.
Sorry again, but I am slowly making progress lol
Hey Chris,
Since you’re using Dosbox Manager (DBM), this will be easier. Open up the DBM config you are using (long-click on the profile and select ‘edit’). Head to ‘advanced settings’. While you’re in there, I’d set the ‘memory size’ to be 24 or 32. Scroll on down to the ‘autoexec’ button and edit it. This is where you C drive is being mapped and where you can set the freespace.
Best of luck!
/H
Hey! It’s installing! awesome. The weirdest thing – I adjusted the freesize amount from “614400″ to “1000″ and for some reason that is what did it.
Ok, second (and hopefully last) question. In the autoexe.bat within DosBox manager, I currently have this:
mount C /sdcard/dosboxgames/DFCD
mount D /sdcard/dosboxgames/ -freesize 1000
c:
After the installation completes, will this require modification? (such as what you have posted above), i.e.,
mount D \mnt\sdcard\dosboxgames\daggerfall\DFCD -t cdrom -label Daggerfa
mount C \mnt\sdcard\dosboxgames\
C:
cd DAGGER
DAGGER.EXE
…Or can I just use the command “dagger.exe” and roll from there?
Hey Chris,
Well, you’ll probably want C as /dosboxgames and D as /DFCD, but as long as you’ve got the CD mounted and the install went ok, you should be good. You can definitely just execute dagger.exe (or daggera or whatever the executable is in the CD version) after the install completes.
Glad it’s going well!
/H
I just spoke to the developer of DosBox Turbo the other day, and he said that he was going to have a cyber weekend sale (Nov 23 – 25), so might be a chance for your readers to pick up DosBox Turbo for cheap.
Nice, good find!
Stupid question, but I’ve gotten Daggerfall to run, and but now I can’t get my character to move via the touch screen mouse.. Any tips?
Well I know in Daggerfall you have a few options. In the mouse based interface, you can hold down the left mouse button to move, or move your mouse cursor to the very edge of the screen to get an arrow cursor and move by clicking. You may be having difficulty with the ‘hold’ aspect, or getting into the ‘arrow cursor’ aspect. If all fails you could fall back to ‘keyboard’ mode, which I believe is in the settings. Best of luck!
Just my luck to breeze through the hard part and get stuck with the easy. Thanks for the speedy reply and helpful guide.