Posted By
Hans
on 2013-01-04
13:46:43
|  Bard's Tale
Raised this question months ago when the Arok attenders assembled themselves. No answer yet.....
So I'd like to ask again: is there any progress in making Bard's Tale suitable for the CBM 264?
Reg's,
Hans.
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2013-01-04
14:54:54
| Re: Bard's Tale
Fair question! Let me try to write up all the known facts and the lay out where we stand.
- We're talking about Bard's Tale and Bard's Tale II. The 3rd one works.
- Those two games don't load past the beginning. The games ask for the Character Disk but they refuse to accept them.
Why don't they work? Possibilities:
a) It's a problem with emulation. I think this one can be eliminated because people have tried those disk images on the real iron and the same thing happened (please confirm).
b) The disk images we have are broken copies. This is likely.
c) The game never correctly worked. This is unlikely, but until someone can confirm playing them back in the day (anyone has a contact with Csory?), I wouldn't eliminate it.
So, assuming we have broken disk images, how can it be fixed?
1) Someone turns up a good copy and gives it to us. This would be nice.
2) If it's only the character disk, maybe it would work with the character disk from the C64 version. Worth a try.
3) Someone sits down and debugs the game. Once they know what the exact cause is, they will be able to tell us if it can be fixed, and what kind of effort it would require.
All we need is someone with the knowledge, free time and will to do 3). Realistically, the hopes of it happening are not high, but I'd love to be proven wrong.
Did I miss anything?
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Posted By
Gaia
on 2013-01-04
15:08:15
| Re: Bard's Tale
Fair summary, Csabo  I recall we discussed this very thing almost exactly 10 years ago around May 2003? I think I did try the character disk of the C64 version but it did not work (I wouldn't swear though). Someone mentioned once that Csory applied weird copy protection schemes (?) that the D64 format could not handle (Luca can you confirm?) and that could be a cause for the failure. If memory serves the D64 images do have more than the usual 35 tracks dumped with additional sector error info which implies either 1) faulty image 2) copy protection.
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2013-01-04
15:23:33
| Re: Bard's Tale
Yeah, we did talk about this before... apparently
forum/19833
I guess siz never found his copy. So the current best guess is copy protection issue, which could possibly be worked around. I think I'm good with debugging/reverse engineering games, but I suck when it comes to I/O (never really learned or looked into it). I'd love to see these games work as well, BTW.
Off topic: I just also saw Hans' note in the Arok 2012 topic (which seems to have been completely overlooked by everyone). You didn't come to the party, did you?
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Posted By
Gaia
on 2013-01-04
15:33:23
| Re: Bard's Tale
Well spotted that Csabo! Totally forgot about it.I guess siz should visit Luca that is our only hope Seriously, I think Luca shouldn't have removed the error code information from the files. These copy protections (the simpler ones anyway) usually read a certain sector which is intentionally "bad" and expect an error or a bit pattern that is specific to a certain type of sector error.
Here's a lowdown on the various sector error types (scroll way down until 2/3rd of the document):
http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~schepers/formats/D64.TXT
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Posted By
siz
on 2013-01-04
15:52:30
| Re: Bard's Tale
I've just checked my copy of Bard's Tale II: it's in plain D64 format (created by me with NilbTools using a ZoomFloppy and a parallel 1541-II).
It does accept my character disk and I was able to start a game.
About Bard's Tale 1: I did not found my copy. It should have been on the adjacent disk beside Bard's Tale II's disk but it was not there. Since then I looked through my disks several times but no signs of that game.
(Sadly I've deleted my IWIW.hu registration some weeks ago just to realize some days later that I had Csory in my contacts there)
update: I've looked at the Bard's Tale II zip: the disk images named bt2[a-d].d64 are the ones I've created.
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2013-01-04
16:10:55
| Re: Bard's Tale
Oh cool, and you're right, BTII runs just fine now. One down, one to go!
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Posted By
Hans
on 2013-01-06
10:35:36
| Re: Bard's Tale
If I understood the current state of BT correctly, we're here:
Part 1 (Tales Of The Unknown) = software available but still not working
Part 2 (The Destiny Knight) = working
Part 3 (The Thief Of Fate) = working
Dragon Wars (unofficial Part 4) = missing software.
To the best of my knowledge. BT and Dragon Wars were never released for the CBM 264 series officially.
So I assume the Plus/4 files were converted from the official C64 disks?
I'm not very experienced in converting, let alone in ML, but there certainly are members here who have been successful in conversion from the C64/128 platform to our system.
Who within our community does know more about this issue?
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Posted By
Luca
on 2013-01-06
11:13:25
 | Re: Bard's Tale
Hans converting (mostly) C64 games to Plus/4 is a distinctive one along the Plus/4 scene history, and sceners like Pigmy, Csory, TGMS had been real pillars of games' conversions. Even several demoparts have been straight converted (see some demos by Callisto or FYC).
Any info written here is correct, I can only add the copy tools specifically used by Csory in order to copy the disks of Bard's Tale I and II: Bard's Tale I Copy, Bard's Tale II Copy.
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Posted By
Trypticon
on 2013-01-08
23:08:02
| Re: Bard's Tale
I think Centauri Alliance
http://plus4world.powweb.com/software/Centauri_Alliance
isort of fits into this as well - it was designed by the original developer with the obvious difference of a space theme. But, it's also supposed to allow import of BT characters (and even from other series - Ultima and Might & Magic) in the original C64 version.
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Posted By
Degauss
on 2013-01-09
05:15:12
| Re: Bard's Tale
A bit off-topic maybe: I always wondered why no installment of the ultima series has been ported to +4. From the looks i guess the older parts are some mixture of Basic + ML and no sprites. So there are no "show-stoppers" for a conversion, but somehow nobody did one. Any idea why?
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Posted By
Luca
on 2013-01-09
15:55:55
| Re: Bard's Tale
Mh, the same reasons you raised for Ultima could be simmetrically shifted over several strategic games, for example. I have always thought that conversions to Plus/4 were decided 50/50 by feasibility and interest the coder did put into that, probably neither Pigmy or TGMS loved the fantastic Ultima series.
Apropos, I would have suggested the IV chapter
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Posted By
Pigmy
on 2013-01-09
16:36:43
| Re: Bard's Tale
Hello! Luca is right, I was looking at the Ultima series for a long time, collected the parts, and I cannot remember any reason not to convert them. Or I just do not remember well enough, but I think the only one was that the inspiration just did not come...
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Posted By
Patrick
on 2013-01-10
08:08:18
| Re: Bard's Tale
wow, pigmy is here!! thanks for all the nice software you made for our machines!
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Posted By
Luca
on 2013-01-10
10:13:37
| Re: Bard's Tale
Yes, having Pigmy on this forum is a honour
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Posted By
Litwr
on 2013-01-10
11:32:41
| Re: Bard's Tale
Ultima is one of the greatest computer game forever. I want to find time to replay parts III and IV. PC versions are without music. I am going to use C64 version... It is a bit odd that this game was unpopular among C+4 users.
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Posted By
Pigmy
on 2013-01-11
16:04:53
| Re: Bard's Tale
Patrick: you are welcome or what to say this time...? It was a hobby that I loved and it was and it is always good to see that others also loved it. Everyone is happy.
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Posted By
siz
on 2015-08-15
06:32:08
| Re: Bard's Tale
Resurrecting this old thread: I checked Bard's Tale 1 again to see what can be the problem. It seems that the character disk image is damaged. I went to the official site at http://bardstale.brotherhood.de/talefiles/1/files/ to download the C64 version and check it's character disk: it's also not accepted. 
And I think we have a bigger problem: we don't have the 3rd disk, the Dungeon disk. So repairing the current version seems impossible. But I hope we will find it laying around on some disks.
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Posted By
MMS
on 2015-08-15
15:01:42
 | Re: Bard's Tale
Well, the Character and the Dungeon disc should contain purely raw data (gfx bitmap and layout, text) in the form Interplay planned to have it, why the guy who made the magic to converte the game should touch it?
(Except if the GFX have specific loading addresses the +4 version do not support. But as I saw the loading, it has it's own loader routine, just takes the raw data of the frames, loads it to the proper place)
So, if there is no such specific content the C64 discs should be OK.
A possible confirmation of this idea: if the properly working Bard's Tale 3 may accept the C64 versions discs, then from the same authors the Bard's Tale 1 should work in the same way.
If the Bard's Tale 3 works in this way, but Bard's Tale 1 and 2 does not, then most probably just the intro was converted, and the rest of the content remained untouched.
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