I'll take a look if you want to send me your save game.

Stonekeep is a bitch, would indeed be nice to check out a savegame on a different dosbox installation and a real system.

anyone can download my savegame from here: http://eoc.serveftp.org:9090/share/sksave.zip

just extract it into your "stonekeep/savegame/" directory. load it up, step forward, attack the green slime monster under the water (healing yourself now and again, "I" for inventory), and as soon as he dies, the game crashes.

I just tried this with dosbox 0.72 and the same basic thing happens except I get an error: "fopen failed: .poj not grouped". there are no *.poj files in stonekeep installation or cd, however. all files are readable by my system's user.

dosbox is the only way I can get StoneKeep to run at all. Qemu+Freedos fails install; Dosemu+Freedos hangs at black screen at start; I've even tried two real computers running Dos 6.2, mouse and cdrom drivers, with a real ISA SB16 card - installs and configs fine, but black screen at start.

This game is indeed a bitch.

oh and by the way, this is in my dosbox autoexec.bat for stonekeep (you might need to do the same for my savegame):

set files = 70
mount e /usr/share/games/dos/sk/skcd -t cdrom

I can confirm this freeze as well with my version , the readme says its version 1.05, I bought it right when it came out so it makes sense I have an earlier build I guess.

Will try a couple things and see if I can figure it out and get back to you.

Ok I also tried this out on my P90 with Dos6.22 and it actually crashes out after you kill the monster and gives some error codes which flash by as the computer resets.

Since it crashes both places im left thinking maybe it's a speed issue? It seems to me like a P90 would have been ideal for this game around that time though.

Maybe the game is just screwed. I did notice that you can sorta lead those slimes away by running back and then up. Maybe you can make it through just avoiding the slimes? Those things are a bitch to kill also.

I'll let you know if I get any further with this.

Update: Even with the game almost unplayably slow at 5000 cycles it still crashes. I don't know maybe there something wrong with the save but that seems unlikely to me.

If your games are unpatched, I'd suggest doing so...Stonekeep is a very, very evil game without patches.
If you're so hellbent on finishing it, the GOG version works all the way to the end. I finished it that way.

Unfortunately the 1.2 patch didn't fix the crash either. I'd be interested in knowing what settings gog used for DosBox.

It can very well occur that the savegame has become corrupted (this may be a dosbox bug) but that's quite tricky to evaluate i guess.

If a certain point in the game was impassable (or passable only by extraordinary means) in DOSBox, it most likely would have been reported already, particularly with the game being sold by GOG for some time now. Stonekeep has many save slots, so there's really no reason not to keep a thorough history of savepoints allowing you to back up to some point from which a particular problem does not always emerge.

What is GOG?

I had two savess near that point, and if I recall correctly they both crashed. I'll double check here in a bit.

yup, two different saves and the problem is still there

GOG

You may have to go back considerably farther in the save history than saves made near where the problem occurs; perhaps as far back as before entering that level, for example.

well at least it's a fluke, anyway.

is the GOG version of stonekeep in any way updated from the retail 1.2 version? (or does GOG not actually modify the games they acquire?)

GOG doesn't have any source code. The only modifications they do is to provide an installer, Use ScummVM or DOSBox or use an launcher executable that applies the fixes (for the windows games)

Some GOG games seem to be modified. For instance there's some titles using CDDA music in their original form but digital audio in their GOG incarnations. I don't think stuff like that can be done without modifying code. I wouldn't bet on GOG modifying old DOS games when there's no "distribution-related" reason to do so though. AFAIK, all GOG games are patched to the latest version.

Anyway, zeroth: just check the GOG forums, there's lots of info there.

It's probably done in memory, file hack or the original dev does it. GOG has stated many times that no source code is ever provided.