Daggerfall:Corrupted Saved Games

Corrupted saved games are a common and frustrating problem in Daggerfall, even with all available patches installed. This article provides some known workarounds and also provides advice on how to avoid the problem in the first place.

In most cases, if Daggerfall crashes to DOS when you try to load a saved game and the error message is 1002, 1003, or 2020, then a corrupted saved game is to blame. Generally, the game-internal tool FIXSAVE will not solve this problem.

Avoiding Corrupted Saved Games

Memory issues cause the majority of corrupted saved games. Therefore, the best way to avoid such problems is by replacing the memory extender that comes with the original game with a more advanced one.

One such Memory Extender is DOS32A.

• To set up the program, read the documentation on the program's original webpage or else read the article on the DOSBox wiki.
• Use DOS32A whenever you run Daggerfall, preferably from the start of a new game. Players have reported that by doing so, you can effectively prevent corrupted saved games from occurring.
• This Memory Extender should also be used when running DOS programs other than Daggerfall, including other DOS games that use a memory extender such as the once-popular DOS4GW.

Step-by-Step Instructions for DOS32A

Here are step-by-step instructions for getting Daggerfall to work with DOS32A.

• Download DOS32A. You should have SB.EXE, DOS32A.EXE, and other files.
• Copy SB.EXE and DOS32A.EXE to your \DAGGER directory (where DAGGER.EXE and FALL.EXE are).

Important: Make a backup of FALL.EXE in case this messes it up.

• COPY FALL.EXE FALLBAK.BAK
• sb /R fall.exe

Now, when you start Daggerfall normally (DAGGER.EXE), it will use the DOS32A memory extender instead.

Workarounds for Corrupted Saved Games

There are some workarounds for corrupted saved games:

1. Use the DOS32A Memory Extender (discussed above).
   • Very often an apparently corrupt saved game can be run again when using DOS32A. In this case, you will need to always run DOS32A to keep your saved games working.
2. Delete all ATF and ATM files from the ARENA2 directory, as well as the BIO.DAT, MAPSAVE.SAV, and RUMOR.DAT files, also located in the ARENA2 directory.
   • Run Daggerfall using DOS32A and load the saved game. If this doesn't work, see step 3.
   • If this step does work, you must do this procedure from now on whenever you start the game from DOS, but you only need to delete the ATF and ATM files.
   • You can write a small shell program (BAT file) that does this task for you and starts the game afterward. For example:
     @ECHO OFF
del ARENA2\*.AMF
del ARENA2\*.ATF
dos32a fall.exe z.cfg
3. If you have tried step 2 and you couldn't load the saved game, run Daggerfall again using DOS32A, this time without deleting any files.
4. If you used the workaround mentioned in step 2 for some time and you get corrupted saved games again, you must not delete the files listed in step 2 anymore. Just start the game using DOS32A and load the saved game as you would normally do.

If none of these steps work, the saved game is corrupted beyond any known workarounds. Use a saved game dated earlier than the corrupted one and use DOS32A from now on.

Getting DOS32A to work on Windows 11

Making DOS32A compatible with Windows 11 requires a little more work. The sb /R fall.exe command on your device's command line may not work, because Windows 11 dropped some of the support for running 16-bit scripts. If you get an error message saying that the script is not compatible with your version of Windows, follow the steps below to enable DOS32A for Daggerfall.

1. Make a copy of the DAGGER directory in a convenient location, such as C:/Users/exampleUsername.
2. Open up DOSBox.
   • If you downloaded Daggerfall from Steam, you will find it in the folder DOSBox-0.74.
3. Mount the copy you made of the DAGGER directory in step 1 as the C: drive in DOSBox.
   • To do this, enter mount c [insert the path for the DAGGER directory copy here].
   • If this does not work, move the copy of the DAGGER directory somewhere else and try again.
4. Enter c:
5. Run the sb \R fall.exe command (note: you might need to replace \ with /).
6. Exit DOSBox and move your new DAGGER directory back to the same folder as the original DAGGER directory, and replace the files in the destination with the ones from the newer directory.

At this point, you should be able to run the game without issue.