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StoneKeep Dos Box game: The Best Way to Play a 90s Gem



Ok, lets get straight. I am installing Stonekeep on windows xp (not in Dosbox) on "c:\intrplay\stonkeep" and configuring setup. Now, I run Dosbox and write:mount f f:\ -t cdrom -usecd 0 -ioctlmount c c:\intrplay\stonkeepI run Stonekeep and everything is good. Almost everything. Game is kinda laggy (game have freezes for microseconds) but sound is ok. I don't have any idea how to solve this problem.


2.Try changing to the dynamic cpu core. This won't work with as many games, but it might work for Stonekeep. Just don't forget to change it back if something doesn't work. You have to change "core=normal" to "core=dynamic" in the dosbox.conf file. If it does work with your game, you should then be able to increase cycles more.




StoneKeep Dos Box game




I tried all the solutions you'd write and playing game is a little better but still not it. I found the solution no 1 (ctrl f11, ctrl f12) is helping a little. Game have freezes with starting move forward/backward, turning around, stop moving, fighting.


I am having a problem with the same game. I tried using VDMS, and got the error you are reporting, but when I try to run it in DOSBOX, I get a "You must run this game from a CD" message. I have mounted the drives, properly. Does anyone else have any ideas about Stonekeep, and how to get it running? I have the program installed, and the setup worked fine, but I can't run the program.


I am also having trouble with Stonekeep. The Patches Scrolls website no longer list the patch for Stonekeep. I did originally get the game to play, then saved my game and exited. Upon trying to re-launch the game, I get the error message: RAM space allocated for directory headers too small adjust degug.c MAX_GF_HEADER_MEM to more than 100000. I have tried changed the memory in the config.com file from 16 to a higher number, but i get an error that the files is not at the specified location when trying to save the changes. I am using notepad. My operation system is Vista. Help.


My computer is an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4 Ghz (1066MHz FSB, 8 MB Cache) with a nVidia GeForce 8800GT 512MB video card, and I use the motherboard's sound card. I don't increase frameskip using dosbox (some sites say increase frameskip to 5) I increased game speed (using dosbox CTRL-F12) to 13000 cycles - haven't tried setting it faster yet.


I have the v1.2 patch and have attached it here. Installation of the patch is pretty easy - after installing stonkeep and doing the SETUP, get out of dosbox and use vista. Just unzip the attached SK_V12.ZIP and move SK.BAT and the PATCHES folder to the installation folder (c:\games\stonkeep if you follow the Stonekeep installation instructions above). This will overwrite the old SK.BAT, so you may want to back it up first.


Stonekeep is a role-playing video game developed and released by Interplay Productions for the PC in 1995. It is a first-person dungeon crawler game with pre-rendered environments, digitized characters and live-action cinematic sequences. Repeatedly delayed, the game that was supposed to be finished in nine months took five years to make.


Stonekeep is a first-person role-playing game in the style of Eye of the Beholder and Dungeon Master. The game is set in a series of underground labyrinths, filled with monsters, treasures and traps. The player uses the keyboard for movement and typing in notes in the journal, and the mouse to interact with objects and characters. The mouse pointer is usually a target indicator for aiming attacks and weapons wherever it is clicked. When the mouse pointer is moved onto a particular something it changes to another icon to indicate a different action. For example, the mouse pointer changes to an eye when the player can examine things (often signs), or a spread-out hand when the player can pick up items. Other tasks performed with the mouse pointers include opening and closing chests, opening and closing panels, pulling levers and switches, pressing buttons, drinking water, and giving items.


Stonekeep's mythology revolves around a variety of gods associated with planets of the solar system. In order, they are Helion (Mercury), Aquila (Venus), Thera (Earth), Azrael (Mars), Marif (Jupiter), Afri (Saturn), Saffrini (Uranus), Yoth-Soggoth (Neptune) the Master of Magick, and Kor-Soggoth (Pluto) the Brother to Magick. These gods were captured and imprisoned in nine orbs by the dark god Khull-Khuum 1000 years before the events of the game, during a cataclysm referred to as "The Devastation".


Stonekeep is centered on a hero, Drake. Ten years before the events of the game, Drake's home, the castle of Stonekeep, was destroyed by the insane god Khull-Khuum, the Shadowking. Drake, at this time just a boy, was saved from the castle by a mysterious figure. Returning to the ruins of Stonekeep, Drake is visited by the goddess Thera, who sends his spirit out of his body into the ruins itself to explore, find the mystical orbs containing the other gods, and reclaim the land.


The earliest development of Stonekeep dated back in October 1988, discussed between Brian Fargo and Todd Camasta with the simple title "Dungeon Game".[3] Producer Peter Oliphant and lead programmer Michael Quarles joined the company in 1990 and 1991, respectively. The game development was planned for a minimum period of nine months and a minimum budget of $50K. However, because the initial stages of the game looked good, it exceeded nine months, lasting a total of five years.[citation needed] Stonekeep's final cost was $5 million; its production crew had grown to 200 members by the time of the game's release.[4] The intro sequence was the most expensive part of the production, costing nearly half a million dollars to produce, which was ten times more than the initial budget for the entire project.


The initial story line was written by Oliphant, who also designed and programmed the graphics and artificial intelligence engine for the game. The project started out being called Brian's Dungeon (named after Brian Fargo, the president of Interplay Entertainment at the time). Fargo came up with the final name, Stonekeep.


The production took much longer than expected because of the rapid advancement of personal computer hardware at the time; specifically, PC CPUs advancing from 80386, to 80486, to Pentiums in the years the game was being developed. Oliphant, who originally designed the game and was lead programmer, left the game as the project passed its fourth year in development. He felt his continued presence was resulting in the constant addition of feature creep and changes (he was a contractor, and had initially only signed up for a nine-month project). After he left, the design became finalized and the product was shipped one year later. Quarles, who was an Interplay employee, stayed as the game's producer and saw it through to the end.


The initial specification for the game included that it could not require a hard drive or a mouse, run on an 80286 CPU, use 640K, and run off floppy disks. At the project's end, the game had been upgraded to requiring a mouse, a hard drive, a 386 CPU, and ran off CD-ROM. As a result, the engine had to be extensively modified throughout the production.


The 3D rendering was accomplished by using the Strata Vision application to create the room layouts, monsters, and objects.[3] The initial motions of the monsters in the game were captured by using a blue screen outside with the sunlight. This resulted in uneven lighting from take to take, so eventually all that work was scrapped. Later, a professional studio with controlled lighting was used.


According to Oliphant,[5] when the project was taken over by Quarles, two questionable decisions were made. The game was always designed to be grid-based, where the player moved from grid to grid (in contrast to today's full freedom of motion 3D environments). Oliphant wanted the movement from center of grid to center of grid, but Quarles changed this to edge of grid to edge of grid. This resulted in the problem that turning within a grid moved the player to the other side of the grid. Much of the long production was a result of correcting this lack of symmetry. The other questionable decision was to not include Oliphant in the production of the motion graphics (Oliphant had an extensive Hollywood background before becoming a game developer). One consequence was that the original combat graphics had been captured from the waist up only, as Quarles had reasoned one must be close to a monster to fight it. Peter Oliphant, upon being delivered these graphics and seeing them for the first time, pointed out that the player could back away during a fight, which would result in seeing their legs. The legs therefore had to be drawn in by hand frame-by-frame to fix this, until these graphics were scrapped for a professional green-screen treatment used later on. The original skeleton in the game was an actual skeleton being worn by one of the artists, and was filmed against a green screen. Because of this, there were no images or animations of the skeleton walking away from the player during game play. A few months before the game's release the skeleton was replaced with the 3D model which was used on the packaging.


In preparation for Stonekeep's launch, Interplay shipped 175,000 units to retailers. This was the company's biggest shipment ever, according to Greg Miller of the Los Angeles Times.[8] Interplay dedicated $1.5 million to the game's marketing budget, also the largest for any of its games by that point.[9] In response to public reception of Stonekeep's pre-release demo, the company "stepped up the initial release forecast to 200,000 units".[10] In the days before Stonekeep's release, Next Generation reported, "With store orders already topping 90,000, Interplay says it's set to become the fastest selling game in the company's 12-year history."[11] Upon its release, the game placed fourth on PC Data's monthly computer game sales chart for November 1995,[12] but was absent on the following month's chart.[13] According to Interplay, its global sales surpassed 300,000 copies by June 1998.[14] Author Erik Bethke later described Stonekeep's commercial performance as "weak", which he blamed on its five-year development cycle.[15] 2ff7e9595c


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