Trouble with books

Post here if you need help getting started with Daggerfall Unity or just want to clarify a potential bug. Questions about playing or modding classic Daggerfall should be posted to Community.
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freddy72nz
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Joined: Tue Nov 26, 2019 1:28 am

Trouble with books

Post by freddy72nz »

Hi everyone,
I have an issue with books. Every time I get one it is broken and unreadable, even ones that are quest items or rewards for doing quests.
It seems my character rips books apart just by looking at them...
I haven't tried looking at books in a library as I think I'd get kicked out for destroying them.
Any idea what's up?

Build 0.10.12, Linux Mint

Thanks,
Freddy

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pango
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Re: Trouble with books

Post by pango »

Hi freddy72nz,

How did you install (classic) Daggerfall?
Can you attach à screenshot?
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freddy72nz
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Joined: Tue Nov 26, 2019 1:28 am

Re: Trouble with books

Post by freddy72nz »

Hi Pango,

I used DosBox to install Daggerfall in my home directory from my CD and then copied the extra files across.

I must have missed something as I went to a seminary and all the books are blank... I'm guessing that's my issue.

Thanks,
Freddy

Edit: I checked the path in settings.ini and it matches my install path
MyDaggerfallPath = /home/freddy/Daggerfall/DAGGER

There are 91 book files (BOK#####.txt) in the ARENA2/BOOKS folder.
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Interkarma
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Re: Trouble with books

Post by Interkarma »

If you installed from an old CD, there are quite a few extra steps involved to make sure the classic game data is fully patched and compatible. See below for the full process.

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2360&p=27539#p27539

I'd honestly recommend using either DaggerfallSetup (with all defaults) or the DaggerfallGameFiles method. The latter is probably the easiest overall and is known-good game data.

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2360&p=27538#p27538

freddy72nz
Posts: 6
Joined: Tue Nov 26, 2019 1:28 am

Re: Trouble with books

Post by freddy72nz »

Thanks Interkarma,

I downloaded the DaggerfallGameFiles and changed settings.ini to point to it, and now it's working :)

The only difference I can see is the capitalisation of the directories, ARENA2 v arena2 and BOOKS v books, Linux is case sensitive so maybe it couldn't find the files in the install with the all caps folders. Wouldn't showup in windows as it isn't case sensitive.

I'll do some testing.

Yep, that was it. Renaming ARENA2 to arena2 and BOOKS to books, pointed settings.ini to my CD install folder and now it's all good.

Thanks again,
Freddy

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Interkarma
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Re: Trouble with books

Post by Interkarma »

Ah, well done! I didn't expect that to be the issue, just that it was game data somehow. Thanks for reporting back with more information. :)

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pango
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Re: Trouble with books

Post by pango »

I think Mono can take care of such discrepencies using $MONO_IOMAP; But it adds overhead, so it's not enabled by default.
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Deepfighter
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Re: Trouble with books

Post by Deepfighter »

I am quite interested in the sentence "The book is ruined and is now unreadable". I suppose this was not implemented by DFUnity (or?), but exists already in Classic, even though I never managed to get it. Supposedly it appears only if there is a problem with the source file (like in the case of this thread) and is like the frontend-user-message that's something wrong behind the scenes. Just wondering as there is afaik no way to get a book in-game to this point (like "wearing it out") that it becomes unavailable. Can somebody clarify this, please? :)
Head of the German Daggerfall translation - www.daggerfalldeutsch.de
and German translator for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Lore-Expert for The Elder Scrolls: Online

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TheLacus
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Re: Trouble with books

Post by TheLacus »

Deepfighter wrote: Fri Dec 06, 2019 8:45 am I am quite interested in the sentence "The book is ruined and is now unreadable". I suppose this was not implemented by DFUnity (or?), but exists already in Classic, even though I never managed to get it. Supposedly it appears only if there is a problem with the source file (like in the case of this thread) and is like the frontend-user-message that's something wrong behind the scenes. Just wondering as there is afaik no way to get a book in-game to this point (like "wearing it out") that it becomes unavailable. Can somebody clarify this, please? :)
I added this message to deal with books provided by mods which are then uninstalled. In this case book remains in the inventory but is not readable unless mod is installed again.

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Deepfighter
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Re: Trouble with books

Post by Deepfighter »

Thank you The Lacus! Good and reasonable idea. :)
Head of the German Daggerfall translation - www.daggerfalldeutsch.de
and German translator for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Lore-Expert for The Elder Scrolls: Online

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