The Bard's Tale Construction Set

The Bard's Tale Construction Set is a computer game creation system that allows for the creation of dungeon crawl video games based on the Bard's Tale game engine. It was developed by Interplay Productions in 1991 and distributed by Electronic Arts. It was released for the Amiga and MS-DOS.

The Bard's Tale Construction Set
Developer(s)Interplay
Publisher(s)Electronic Arts
Producer(s)Thomas R. Decker
Programmer(s)Tim Cain
Greg Christensen
John Philip Britt
SeriesThe Bard's Tale
Platform(s)MS-DOS, Amiga
Release1991 (DOS)
1992 (Amiga)
Genre(s)Role-playing, game creation system
Mode(s)Single-player

Unlike other similar engines, it was not required to own The Bard's Tale Construction Set in order to play games which were created with it, while also allowing designers to add in their own custom title screen. This made it possible for anyone to share and distribute their own constructed games using the system, and a number of freeware and shareware titles were developed using the system and released.

Sample scenario

Included with the software was a sample scenario for the purpose of playing and learning from, entitled Star Light Festival.

Set in the small rundown village of Isil Thania, a band of adventurers has traveled from afar to witness the annual Star Light Festival in which an eerie light comes down from a star for one night only making the night into day.

While awaiting the Festival at the Rainbow Bar, a small twisted man leads the characters into the sewers (which feature the same maps found in the original Bard's Tale game), and from there the characters engages upon a quest that takes them from one location in the city to the next, eventually to find the secret truths behind the Star Cult and the town of Isil Thania.

Created games

Commercial games created using The Bard's Tale Construction Set are:

  • The Bard's Quest, a game series in three parts by Alex Ghadaksaz of VisionSoft (PC, 1994)[1]

The following non-commercial games are known to have been created using The Bard's Tale Construction Set:

  • The Bard's Lore: The Warrior and The Dragon, by John H. Wigforss (PC, 1998)

The following games were started but remain incomplete:

  • Nutilan, by Dennis Payne (PC, 2000)

Reception

Computer Gaming World's Scorpia criticized the small number of graphics and damage spells, but still recommended the program to those interested in designing their own computer role-playing games.[2] The game was reviewed in 1992 in Dragon #183 by Hartley, Patricia, and Kirk Lesser in "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers gave the game 5 out of 5 stars.[3]

Developers

Feargus Urquhart served as a play tester for The Bard's Tale Construction Set, and went on to found the game companies Black Isle Studios and Obsidian Entertainment.

gollark: Also, you can contribute code to it. Just send me random bits of code you like and I'll put them in somewhere.
gollark: The string metatable bug uses our highly advanced superglobal technology.
gollark: Also, it has the string metatable bug and can dump to tapes and also cannot be removed without solving a small mathematical problem.
gollark: Oh, and try the `b` command and whatever command views the privacy policy and licenses.
gollark: Well, yes, but it detects *specific* unsafe programs.

References
  1. "The Bard's Quest 1: Dungeons of the Unknown". Internet Archive. Retrieved 9 July 2018.
  2. Scorpia (February 1992). "Scorpion's Tale". Computer Gaming World. p. 38. Retrieved 24 November 2013.
  3. Lesser, Hartley; Lesser, Patricia & Lesser, Kirk (July 1992). "The Role of Computers". Dragon (183): 57–62.
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