This article has a talk page!Stonekeep is a first-person dungeon crawler, notable for its use of pre-rendered graphics. With a Development cycle that took much longer than planned, spanning roughly five years, it ended up releasing in 1995 to good reviews.
Sub-Page#
Scrapped item descriptions in memory#
If you search memory for the strings Drake uses to describe things you'll find them, along with quite a few others.
- item_bg40 { "Bag to hold oil bombs." }
- item_bold { "A very large boulder." }
- item_boom { "A boomerang." }
- item_bow3 { "A sling." }
- item_cnc1 { "A copper coin." }
- item_cnc2 { "A couple copper coins." }
- item_cncm { "Many copper coins." }
- item_cng1 { "A gold coin." }
- item_cng2 { "A couple gold coins." }
- item_cngm { "Many gold coins." }
- item_cns1 { "A silver coin." }
- item_cns2 { "A couple silver coins." }
- item_cnsm { "Many silver coins." }
- item_gem1 { "A large gem." }
- item_gem2 { "A large black gem." }
- item_ham4 { "It looks like a bonecrusher." }
- item_ky01 { "Key of the Body." }
- item_ky05 { "Key of the Heart." }
- item_ky11 { "Key of the Mind." }
- item_ky14 { "Key of the Soul." }
- item_leg6 { "A finely wrought chain mail skirt." }
- item_rng3 { "Magick Deflection Ring." }
- item_rope { "A rope and grappling hook." }
- item_sp02 { "A javelin." }
- item_spk2 { "A spike made from iron." }
- item_stf2 { "A staff of mithril." }
- item_swd5 { "The sword of the Shadowking." }
- item_trs6 { "A finely wrought chain mail shirt." }
- item_nck2 { "A horseshoe medallion pendant." }
- item_nck3 { "A throg pendant." }
- item_boulder { "Boy, am I strong." }
It appears that item_cn refers to currency. There is no item_cnc_ or item_cns_ in memory but there is an item_cng_, so this is likely used in place of the other cng# which don't exist.
The gems and keys have corresponding journal photos.
Javelin is an odd one. "A large ballista bolt" is found but never a ballista, it's still a spear.
The iron spike is an odd one, there are indeed two: One with a point and one without a point (a dud?). There are journal photos and they even appear when the level is probed, but when the dud under the giant mushroom by Binkle is picked up, it becomes the pointed one. Additionally Binkle doesn't give you anything, even though it is determined that he is holding a pointed spike.
There are duplicate necklace entries, nck2 is slightly different and wasn't the used one, nck3 is identical.
The metal bar item (used by the Dark Dwarf in Tower 1) doesn't have a description / listing.
Unused items#
A piece of parchment internally numbered #8 reads "The Order of Wisdom and Strength sends this magick to you in your time of need. Cast (Heal rune) to cure your pain."
A piece of parchment internally numbered #9 reads "Purity of sightviewed with receptacle right,
transcends normal vision,
action without hesitation." A comment in memory above it calls it a "Monster Sensing Scroll".
A piece of parchment internally numbered #11 reads "Xavier's Shield Magick (Shield rune) envelopes the target in a sphere of force, preventing some attacks." A tongue in cheek joke? Xavier has etymology connections to "Castle".
A piece of parchment internally numbered #14 reads "(Shrink Rune) Greater Transformation Magick.
Daemons too small to see will remove non-essential parts of spell target."
A piece of parchment internally numbered #20 reads "(Swiftness rune) is life. (Swiftness rune) is speed. Speed is life. The candle that burns both ends burns twice as fast but twice as bright." as well as the associated Swiftness rune in the Journal, this is the only scroll that bears it.
A piece of parchment internally numbered #34 reads "Drake, I cannot explain what has happened. I must leave for a while, to pay for what I have done. You would not understand why, but please try. - Farli Mallestone." This is Farli's farewell letter, same as Scroll #50, but without extra whitespace formatting. There is no double spacing after periods or line break for the signature in the unformatted scroll. Scroll 50 still fails in formatting because it uses spaces rather than underscores for whitespace, which ended up getting trimmed off.
A piece of parchment internally numbered #44 reads "He he, gotcha. (Quickness rune) is what makes it all work."
Level 1#
Early Very Sharp Dagger#
At the start of the game, follow Thera to the downstair door. At the lever, pull it down, up, and then down. Turn around, go around the corner to the left, and search the left wall for a new hidden compartment. Open the compartment and operate the lever. A hallway will have opened behind you to the left. Search the left wall for yet another compartment and open it to reveal the Very Sharp Dagger for your taking along with some not-so-hidden oil flasks. This also opens a hallway containing a large Sharga with normal Sharga stats in the southeast tower. When approached, it says "Beware the Kevin of Bass", a programmer's name, before it engages in combat.
This secret can only be engaged at the start of a game. Once you go downstairs, the secret lever combination is disabled and the hidden compartment becomes inaccessible again.
Forgotten Dev Item Dump#
X22 Y8 1 (inaccessible area on Ruins of Stonekeep Level 1):
A skull item ID 0 (items start from ID 49 in this level), this seems to be a "default item" when it can't find what really should be there.
A Sharga sword item ID 46. This is the "Beware the Kevin of Bass" Sharga's sword from the previous level.
The contents of your scroll of Aquila (inventory), maybe the actual scroll but behaving in a buggy manner? If you pick up either the sword or skull, the contents on the ground disappear. If you pick up the contents it just cycles through the items in your scroll somewhat glitchy as if you had interacted with the scroll itself.
Level 3#
X22 Y3 Inaccessible Developer artifact: Seemingly invulnerable and off-palette colored snake.
X19 Y18 Inaccessible Developer artifact: Seemingly invulnerable and off-palette colored snake.
Dwarven transactional items#
Dwarves hold a copy of the items that they use to conduct give and take transactions. Farli holds a copy of the Dwarven sword that he gives you, Geldor holds a copy of the money bag, Dombur holds a copy of the stoneshooter, and Sardin holds a copy of the very sturdy key. If you were to kill them, however, the item would not drop.
There are two very sturdy keys in memory, it's likely that Sardin is holding a copy and gives you the other.
Dwarven Fortress#
"JIM" Area#
In the southeast corner of the Dwarven Fortress, when you use the Orb of Afri to view a live map, you can see some inaccessible corridors, which are also mapped strangely by the orb. Through the use of tools (Universal Game Editor / Cheat Engine) you could manipulate your coordinates to appear in the area. You would think it would be empty, but it has a full set of powerful Ancient Armor inside. Given the difficulty of locating the Dagger of Penetration at the start of the game, this is another complicated developer secret that hasn't been discovered yet. There are several Jims involved with the game, the one most likely being Jim Gardner, the programmer.
Unused / Undiscovered Content#
A container containing 4 feces items was loaded for the level but was not found. It was listed somewhere between the contents of the Sarcophagus (and to the right of), and Karzak's treasure chest (and to the left of) and could be anywhere in all Y levels in between. This is well above the "JIM" area, and is not in Geldor's locked room or shop.
Out-of-Bounds Content#
Farli's letter scroll is unusual in that it initially resides out of bounds in the intersection between residential rooms in the southwestern corner. A hidden floor trap in Farli's room north of the bed (NW corner of the SE room) checks for the condition that Farli is not in the party, and if true, teleports the letter to the bed. A clever piece of sleight-of-hand programming, as the letter could be barely visible between the column and the bed in the tile northeast of the bed if it was actually there before stepping on the trap, and up until this point has only been used for mobs.
Muffin Recipe#
Hidden on the CD is a file called MUFFIN.TXT, which appropriately contains a recipe for muffins.
Tim Cain's Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Muffins
----
They're the Shadowking's favorites!
1 2/3 cup flour 1 cup sugar
2 tsp cinnamon 1 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cloves 1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder 1/4 tsp salt
2 eggs 1 cup pumpkin (half of a 16 oz. can)
1 cup chocolate chips 1/2 cup butter (1 stick), melted
Preheat oven to 350. Grease muffin tins (one dozen regular sized)
or use baking cups. Mix flour, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves,
baking soda, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. Break eggs
into another bowl. Add pumpkin and butter and whisk until blended.
Stir in chocolate chips. Pour over dry ingredients and stir until just
blended. Do NOT overstir! Scoop batter into tins and bake 20-25
minutes. After cooling, keep muffins wrapped in plastic to avoid drying.Regional Differences#
The German version removes all instances of blood.