Welcome to the new Online Bard's Tale resource and fan-site!
The Bard's on the 'Book
[ May 19, 2010 ]
Bard's Tale Online has moved a little forward and taken another step into the social networking world - you can now Fan up BTO on Facebook! BardsTaleOnline Facebook Page
Please go and join! It would be great to have the page more easily memorable on Facebook with a slug, but it first needs 25 fans to choose one. Time to go Fan up, people! :)
Don't forget that if you're on Twitter, you can also follow BTO at @BardsTaleOnline.
There may be some additional news on the forefront coming soon, so stay tuned!
Manomio has recently published a C64 emulator app for the iPhone along with a few games, and has been asking about current Bard's Tale copyrights. Might it be possible we could see a C64 Bard's Tale port to the iPhone in the near future?
On another note, BTO is now on Twitter - @BardsTaleOnline! Mecandes (Bards Tale Compendium) also runs a news and live discussion stream twitter account at @TheBardsTale. Tell'em thebruce sent ye ;)
It's been reported that not much time is left now for sites which are currently hosted at Geocities.com to move to new hosting. The change will happen at the end of October 2009, so I've decided to offer some hosting for sites that the community feels should be saved, if not already.
Ideally, I would have any fan sites set up as a subdomain of Bardstaleonline.com. If you have any sites that you feel should be archived here, have contacted the owner or are the owner, contact me and I'll see what I can set up.
After endless requests for help in getting various Bard's Tale versions to work in various Windows OS's, I've finally added the emulator I've found to work on my system, running Vista Home.
You can find it in the Emulators section. It may require a tiny bit of setup for the DOS settings, but I do have BT1, 2, and 3 all working in it.
Okay! Thanks for your patience and support - I've determined the problem with the disappearing scroll in IE and it's been fixed (as far as I can tell). Pesky CSS.
Sorry everyone for any problems you might have been seeing with the website recently. I'm trying to solve a bug that I've discovered in IE, after having implemented the standard Goodle ad code.
I haven't been able to fix it, so I've temporarily disabled Google ads. Perhaps if you're code-minded, you could offer some insight...
Once the page is loaded, any change to the html layout/content causes the scroll TD tag to 'disappear' thus removing the navigation; but this only happens in IE, not Firefox.
I placed a little button below the scroll - "X" that you can click, which displays the HTML content of the scroll. Notice that the HTML content is still there, but in IE the scroll disappears after clicking (whether the inserted code forces a layout adjustment or not - tested).
The Google code alters the HTML after the source has loaded, which is why sometimes the scroll disappears.
Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks! Again, sorry for any inconvenience over the last couple of weeks.
I just wanted to first thank you all for your continued support of this Bard's Tale fansite. While still incomplete (though there will always be room for more!), traffic is increasing daily.
If this is a trend amongst many BT fansites, that's a good thing for Bard's Tale!
My thanks to those of you have donated. You'll notice now that I've implemented google advertising to offset some of the outstanding regular costs.
Please, offer feedback as to whether you feel the ads are instrusive - I want to keep this website's experience as smooth and relevent as possible.
Before I sign off, I'll also just want to wish y'all a Happy New twenty-oh-seven! (if January 1 is indeed the beginning of your new year :P)
I decided to finally get around to including various bard song music files now!
They've been sitting around for some time, so since tomorrow's my birthday, I thought, hey, why not be generous and put them online for the BTO viewers!
So, there you go - you'll find music sections in the Miscellaneous Goods page of each original game.
If you know of any other places that have Bard Songs downloadable, or even music inspired by Bard's Tale, then by all means, pass on the word!
Happy almost-Christmas! And continued thanks for your donations and feedback (though I've still got a load of emails to sift through)! :)
Just so you can be assured I'm still around, I do plan in the future to get maps for BT2 and BT3 available,
as they also are for BT1. At this point I'm in the middle of playing through Elderscrolls IV: Oblivion (amazing RPG!), so once
I've completed that, I'll be moving back into playing through BT2, at which point I'll finalize all the
DHTML maps for the other two games.
Thanks again everyone for your support, both by feedback and financially! :)
Due to a couple of comments regarding some files that weren't able to be downloaded, I've fixed some of
the hosting settings. If you were receiving 404 errors when trying to download certain files, please
try again, they should be fixed. File types in question were .SHK, .PRG and .LHA extensions. Files
with those extensions were returning a 404 for some reason - not any more! The files are now
back to normal.
Thanks for your patience. If you find any file link returning a 404 error, don't hesitate to let
me know!
...I decided to try to figure out how to transfer characters from BT1 to BT2 on PC. Oddly enough, I couldn't find
any references to dealing with BT1 character disks via google or yahoo given my short-lived search. Except
for one bit of instruction on how to create a BT3 character disk I found which jogged my memory (like a BT
player's commandment: never lose your character disk). So I've updated the BT2 and 3
sections with the related instructions. BT3 isn't a problem, but you need a floppy drive and disk for BT2.
In short, just copy the contents of the BT1 game folder to a floppy disk (including your characters), then
follow the menu options in BT2 to transfer the characters.
So, I recently finished inXile's The Bard's Tale, and I must say it's a great game :)
The best parts were the overt references to classic elements - such as the magic mouth, and
anti-magic zones, and more... the tongue-in-cheek humour never gets dry, and if you can guess
the voice actor of the Bard, he's a perfect fit :). It's not a short game, and it definitely
tests some of your game-playing skills; and it takes an extra step in making sure how you play
your character better reflects who you are as a person (that's role playing). Or it is the
other way around? *shrug* Either way, I'd recommend the game for a fun time and a good
play length if you like to really play games through and not just skip story elements :).
Links to inXile and the Bard's Tale homepage are on the left, and a link to purchase the game
from Amazon.com can be found on the Community page.
Also note, there's now a Donations page (last link on the left) for those of you who wish
to help support the upkeep of BardsTaleOnline, as one way of showing thanks. But moreso, I
appreciate your feedback and the support I receive from y'all on a daily basis!
Long live the Bard :)
Signing off for now...
-thebruce
Opening the doors to the public...
[ June 13, 2005 ]
...Keeping the Bard's Tale name alive :)
With help from numerous dedicated fans and website around the net, I bring you
Bard's Tale Online - the next iteration of a website originating from an
amazing fan site built by Tom Greene, The Adventurer's Guild - a single source for all things Bard's Tale.
Please peruse the site, offer suggestions, and if you know of any other
online resource, patches, downloads, corrections to game information - by all
means, let me know!
Gotta make sure everything here is up to date and accurate :)
FYI, the BT1 section is the most complete, with all maps online. I'll be going
through BT2 and BT3 in the weeks to come filling in the additional holes with
all the files and maps. So stay tuned.
Again, thanks everyone for your support and encouragement! This site couldn't
exist without all the hard work so many have put into making their game process
and recordings available for other people.
Don't forget - if you love Bard's Tale, Go sign the petition
to have the Bard's Tale series and style continue in another classic saga! :)