Arena talk:Running Under Windows

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This is relatively old information and needs to be updated. Recently, people have been using DosBox relatively successfully with Arena and quite well with Daggerfall. (DaveH 20:55, 22 Feb 2005 (EST))

I can't install it on windows XP...

I have successfully gotten Arena to run under Windows XP at what I assume is its top performance (I never played the game "back in the day" so I have no actual comparison but controls, sound and gameplay are smooth and responsive). I experimented with VDMsound first with no success, but DOSbox v0.72 works like a charm. Setting DOSbox up is not difficult but not completely intuitive either; the most important steps are to assign a subdirectory as DOSbox's virtual directory (set C:\Games to be interpreted as C:\ in DOSbox, for example) and run both the installation and the game itself thru DOSbox. Sound cards are emulated as a Sound Blaster with standard settings. DOSbox has shortcuts that allow you to speed up or slow down the clock as needed, so you will want to experiment a bit to find the ideal speed. As a sidenote, this emulator seems to run the majority of the old DOS games (I've tested it on quite a few) up until the games from the late 90's with Windows-based installers and launchers, which is where I've encountered the problems I still can't solve (complete failure with Battlespire). DOSbox is no secret but I hope this information is helpful to someone.