I am not sure why you would get an "Illegal read" error. The ISO could be bad, but since you can play it single player that kind of rules it out. You could try to reinstall to see if that makes a difference.
Joel: I have not experienced a noticeable slowdown when running Dungeon Keeper through dosbox, nor any other game. It could be you are experiencing lag due to dosbox not getting enough cpu cycles or you have a high frameskip which may be more noticeable in an fps. Try hitting ctrl+f12 to increase your cycles or use a frontend like D.O.G. to manage this for you. If that doesn't work then maybe you should free up system resources by closing programs you may have running in the background.
Dudes, you can play dungeon keeper without cd! Just copy the directories DATA, LDATA, LEVELS and SOUND from the cd and change the keeper.cfg file to read INSTALL_PATH=C:\KEEPER\ (or wherever you installed dk).
That D.O.G. thing is also not required. Go in the config file of dosbox and change "IPX=false" in "IPX=true". The host should type "ipxnet startserver" and the clients "ipxnet connect ***.***.***.***" where the * is the IP of the host (computername works to)
dont have to waste time with dosbox, just install the game and set it to run in windows 98/ME compatibility or 256bit color if needed, takes about 1 minute to set up I regret ever reading ur tread, nice effort though the game is worth it. just thought id save others thoughts of suicide.
Hey quike question. how do you speed the game up, it lags when we play, i could not get DOg to work on vista. it just crashes all the time i try to download it. so i did that ipxnet thing. works awesome just lags after a while.
Hey i tried all, i use D.O.G and use the commands ipxnet startserver for the host and the ipxnet connect xxx.xxx.x.xxx for the client obviously.. once in game all runs slowly, ctrl+f8 and ctrl+ f12 doesnt help, someone know how to fix it?
Nice article.
I play this game with a friend over the internet I am in the UK and he is in the USA ping around 130ms.
I tested Dosbox but without D.O.G. it runs ok over LAN. But notice very strange issue maybe it's if screen dosbox screen gets minimized and even if open it again the game remains to be slowed down a bit when it started off fast even trying the settings to skip frames or change cpu cycles. Me and my friend have tried over Dosbox maybe will see if D.O.G. makes any difference but over Dosbox so far over internet has been to slow to play with him, this might not be same for every player. Runs fine in single player but as soon as ipx connection starts in dosbox and connect into Dungeon Keeper it becomes slow. We use Windows XP. IPX works for Dungeon Keeper and Deeper Dungeons on XP without Dosbox for me without problems. Our games over the internet are fine and we use Kali to play over the internet together. The game can be added to Kali under custom add games. Don't get the major slowdown reason on Dosbox but on Kali it's fine over the internet for us. But we have successful games over internet on just XP and Kali. We are also running the windows executable's. Keeper95.exe and Deeper95.exe so other ops like Linux this might not be ideal, and every time we play we disable Graphics Acceleration to prevent a crash that usually happens on maps with Lava in it by going to our Start button then Run and dxdiag.exe we run this click on the Display tab and from there we disable the acceleration forgot what one it was so we just disable them all only for graphics and this resolves our crash problem we had once. Kali is not free but is not much to buy a serial for lifetime use. You might get the same results on other software that's free though such as Tunngle but I have not tried this. By the way Dungeon Keeper 2 also worked fine on XP over Kali with graphics acceleration disabled in Directx Diagnostic Tool settings but also for DK 2 we needed to change properties to run the EXE with compatibility mode as Win98/Windows ME compatibility ticked will solve out of sync issue in DK 2 multiplayer games. As extra precaution we run exe on 1 core only. Seems then we play multiplayer games successfully. These two games :-). We use 32bit have not tested on other ops except Windows 98 SE.
i am by no means good with these things, but its becoming painfully frustrating that each time i put in E:\ into dosbox, after i've mounted the .iso image file to that drive it keeps saying "Drive E does not exist!", even though it evidently does. What is the cause of this? and how do i fix it? would appreciate some help
What says "Drive E does not exist!", is it DOSBox?
You are probably missing a step somewhere, remember Dosbox is separate from your machine, you assign a drive letter in DOSbox for that drive that has Dungeon Keeper in it. You may have picked a different letter than what Windows says it is.
Go back to the "Configuring your PC for DOSBox and Dungeon Keeper" part of the guide to make sure you didn't miss anything.
wohoo!! i got it working, thanks so much for your help mate. The only thing which has confused me a bit is the last bit of the very last step:
Whomever is hosting should pick “Server†and enter their IP address. For everyone else at the party, select “Client†and enter the host’s IP into the given field.
where do you pick "server"? i couldnt find it. Thanks again mate
to be more specific, the problem I'm having now is i can get into the IPX and have it all installed and all that but when i create a game on one computer, i cant see it on the other...and i couldnt find out how to pick 'server' and enter my ip address, so i assume that is the problem.
You can try to skip D.O.G. and just set up IPX in DOSbox. You can do this with what Taso said earlier in this discussion.
After a bit of research I just ended up using dos box to create the ipx tunneling service by typing ipx=true on both machines then the server computer typing ipxnet startserver and the other client comps typing ipxnet connect then my ip address. This way seemed to work and i was able to start a multiplayer match
The only problem with this is that you will either have to set this up each time you run DOSbox or manually edit the config file for DOSbox to make these changes permanent. This is why I use the D.O.G. frontend which makes DOSbox a little less clunky to work with.
Make sure both computers have IPX installed and that they are connected in a LAN (local area network). You really only want to connect through a hub or a switch to get this to work. If you are trying to connect over the internet then you are probably going to have to get some kind of virtual LAN like Hamatchi to make things work.
Doing it that way I've been able to play a match but my final problem is that when playing DK in either single or multiplayer it lags very badly. I've put the CPU cycles on max and quit as many programs as there was still horrible lag. any known fixes for this?
No fixes that I know of. I don't know if it was because if I got D.O.G. to setup a client/server situation or not, but I played with 2 of my friends with no lag problems on a LAN. Sorry if this makes all that work you just did worthless, there should be a way to get D.O.G. to show all the stuff (refer to my pic) to allow that to happen. I don't know why so many people have had problems with IPX settings showing up in D.O.G. because it worked fine for us in our first go around.
That's really the only idea I have as to why you are having lag problems.
Tried to play the multiplayer game with osmone connecting through ip addresses. anyone know if this wont work for 7 and xp for some reason? we have correct ip addresses and made sure firewall isnt blocking us but still cant find each other games.
We tried to play in dosbox via dosbox ipx, but the speed was terrible: both machines are pretty recent and can run the game at full speed alone and the network isn't bad either, but the networked play was just plain unbearable (
We're back to Age of Mythology, another long time favourite.
Oh glad you got it working.
But yes I also found it was slow over Dosbox thru internet however it was allot better using Windows version executable and over Kali.net when playing online you can set it up as custom game and it seems to be faster over internet than Dosbox.
Tested over the internet using TCP-Com program like in that video but without Tunngle and it worked nicely using UDP and virtual com port when doing serial multiplayer in the game using Windows EXE... much more playable over net. But had to be latest TCP-Com version.
I can't get these 2 files. help?
# Make an ISO image of your Dungeon Keeper CD using MagicISO (Get it: Here)
# Download and install DAEMON Tools or similar Virtual Device software (Get it: here)
You don't even need Dosbox. Just download the patches, install IPX on your network connection and it worked for us as a straight Windows 95 install in XP.
Comments
Joel: I have not experienced a noticeable slowdown when running Dungeon Keeper through dosbox, nor any other game. It could be you are experiencing lag due to dosbox not getting enough cpu cycles or you have a high frameskip which may be more noticeable in an fps. Try hitting ctrl+f12 to increase your cycles or use a frontend like D.O.G. to manage this for you. If that doesn't work then maybe you should free up system resources by closing programs you may have running in the background.
That D.O.G. thing is also not required. Go in the config file of dosbox and change "IPX=false" in "IPX=true". The host should type "ipxnet startserver" and the clients "ipxnet connect ***.***.***.***" where the * is the IP of the host (computername works to)
DOS DUNGEON KEEPER MP ROCKS!!!!
(http://www.enigmasoftwaredevelopments.com/ipx.html)
dont have to waste time with dosbox, just install the game and set it to run in windows 98/ME compatibility or 256bit color if needed, takes about 1 minute to set up I regret ever reading ur tread, nice effort though the game is worth it. just thought id save others thoughts of suicide.
I suppose it would have to be planned dates now as it not as popular.
Nice article.
I play this game with a friend over the internet I am in the UK and he is in the USA ping around 130ms.
I tested Dosbox but without D.O.G. it runs ok over LAN. But notice very strange issue maybe it's if screen dosbox screen gets minimized and even if open it again the game remains to be slowed down a bit when it started off fast even trying the settings to skip frames or change cpu cycles. Me and my friend have tried over Dosbox maybe will see if D.O.G. makes any difference but over Dosbox so far over internet has been to slow to play with him, this might not be same for every player. Runs fine in single player but as soon as ipx connection starts in dosbox and connect into Dungeon Keeper it becomes slow. We use Windows XP. IPX works for Dungeon Keeper and Deeper Dungeons on XP without Dosbox for me without problems. Our games over the internet are fine and we use Kali to play over the internet together. The game can be added to Kali under custom add games. Don't get the major slowdown reason on Dosbox but on Kali it's fine over the internet for us. But we have successful games over internet on just XP and Kali. We are also running the windows executable's. Keeper95.exe and Deeper95.exe so other ops like Linux this might not be ideal, and every time we play we disable Graphics Acceleration to prevent a crash that usually happens on maps with Lava in it by going to our Start button then Run and dxdiag.exe we run this click on the Display tab and from there we disable the acceleration forgot what one it was so we just disable them all only for graphics and this resolves our crash problem we had once. Kali is not free but is not much to buy a serial for lifetime use. You might get the same results on other software that's free though such as Tunngle but I have not tried this. By the way Dungeon Keeper 2 also worked fine on XP over Kali with graphics acceleration disabled in Directx Diagnostic Tool settings but also for DK 2 we needed to change properties to run the EXE with compatibility mode as Win98/Windows ME compatibility ticked will solve out of sync issue in DK 2 multiplayer games. As extra precaution we run exe on 1 core only. Seems then we play multiplayer games successfully. These two games :-). We use 32bit have not tested on other ops except Windows 98 SE.
You are probably missing a step somewhere, remember Dosbox is separate from your machine, you assign a drive letter in DOSbox for that drive that has Dungeon Keeper in it. You may have picked a different letter than what Windows says it is.
Go back to the "Configuring your PC for DOSBox and Dungeon Keeper" part of the guide to make sure you didn't miss anything.
Whomever is hosting should pick “Server†and enter their IP address. For everyone else at the party, select “Client†and enter the host’s IP into the given field.
where do you pick "server"? i couldnt find it. Thanks again mate
The only problem with this is that you will either have to set this up each time you run DOSbox or manually edit the config file for DOSbox to make these changes permanent. This is why I use the D.O.G. frontend which makes DOSbox a little less clunky to work with.
Make sure both computers have IPX installed and that they are connected in a LAN (local area network). You really only want to connect through a hub or a switch to get this to work. If you are trying to connect over the internet then you are probably going to have to get some kind of virtual LAN like Hamatchi to make things work.
That's really the only idea I have as to why you are having lag problems.
ipx=true
ipxnet connect 91.121.201.21
That will connect to my dedicated ipx tunnel server. It may help as don't need to forward port.
Or
ipx=true
ipxnet connect 87.98.179.135
We're back to Age of Mythology, another long time favourite.
But yes I also found it was slow over Dosbox thru internet however it was allot better using Windows version executable and over Kali.net when playing online you can set it up as custom game and it seems to be faster over internet than Dosbox.
As it's free but don't know if it would work.
# Make an ISO image of your Dungeon Keeper CD using MagicISO (Get it: Here)
# Download and install DAEMON Tools or similar Virtual Device software (Get it: here)