Try out the Bard's Tale, an action game in which the player takes on the role of the Bard - a sardonic and opportunistic musician and adventurer.
The Bard\'s Tale Demo
Table of Contents
System Requirements. 3
Introduction to the Demo. 3
The Story and Characters. 3
Installation Notes. 3
Video Setup. 4
Controls. 5
Keyboard/Mouse Controls. 5
Known Problems. 6
Hints and Tips. 6
The Bards Tale Preview Walkthrough. 7
System Requirements
In order to play this preview of The Bards Tale, your computer system must meet
the following requirements:
CPU: Intel Pentium III 800 Mhz or better
RAM: 256 MB or more
OS: Windows 2000 or XP
3D Graphics Card: GeForce 3, ATI Radeon 8500 or better
(Please note: card must support DirectX Vertex Shader version 1.1 or higher)
Sound Card: DirectX-compatible
Peripherals: Mouse and keyboard
Introduction to the Demo
The Bards Tale Demo delivers a fully playable excerpt of The Mountain Tombs
area of the game in a pre-beta state of completion vis-à-vis PC
conversion/customization.
The Story and Characters
In The Bards Tale you play the role of the Bard, a vagabond with an amazing
ability to play magical tunes on his musical instrument that summon up
creatures to help him in his quest for coin and cleavage. You start out able
to summon a lowly rat but you acquire more tunes as you progress through the
game and the ability to summon more than one creature at a time as you acquire
better instruments.
In The Mountain Tombs chapter of the story featured in this demo, the Bard
finds himself trapped in an ancient Viking burial complex. The Bard must
somehow find his way out. The tomb is filled with traps that protect the
burial chambers from looters and, oh, did I mention the undead Vikings?
Installation Notes
This demo is delivered as a self-extracting Zip file. It requires 325
Megabytes of free space on your hard drive. You may install it to any location
on your hard drive that has at least that much free space.
To run the game, double click on The Bards Tale.exe in the folder where you
extracted the demo.
To uninstall, simply delete the folder that was created when you extracted the
demo.
Video Setup
Before you run the game, you may wish to run The Bards Tale Setup.exe that is
in the same location as The Bards Tale.exe. This utility allows you to select
various video options including the screen resolution. By default the game
will play at 640x480. Running this utility is not required but the game looks
MUCH better in higher resolutions. Of course running at too high a resolution
will also slow the game down, so feel free to run The Bards Tale Setup.exe to
choose the highest resolution that will still deliver a good playing
experience.
Controls
The game defaults to Keyboard/Mouse controls. The final version will also
support the Logitech Rumblepad and other pads, but is currently disabled in
this demo version.
Keyboard/Mouse Controls
In Book Menus
Use mouse pointer to click on menu entries, OR:
Arrow keys = move highlight / change state of item
Enter = Select Item
Esc = Close book menu
The Help option on the in-game book menu (accessed with the Esc key) gives an
overview of the following keyboard controls:
In Game
You will be able to remap these keys in the final version but this feature is
not available in this preview version. The idea behind this default layout is
to let you keep your left hand in one place (over the WASD keys) on the
keyboard and your right hand on the mouse and be able to do everything without
moving either hand off this home position.
Left Mouse Click is Attack:
* If your mouse pointer is over an enemy it will target that enemy for the
attack
* If your mouse pointer is not over an enemy it finds the closest enemy with
preference for ones in front of you.
* Note: Attack does not move you towards the enemy. All movement is controlled
with the Right Mouse (see below)
* Hold Left Mouse to charge up special attacks.
Right Mouse Controls Movement
* Click and Bard moves in a straight line to the place you clicked and stops
there.
* Hold down and Bard continuously moves towards the mouse pointer, running when
far from the pointer, walking when near the pointer, stopping when very near
the pointer. Let off to stop bard following the pointer and move to the spot
where the pointer was when you released.
* Double Click locks pointer-follow mode, i.e. Bard will follow the mouse
pointer without you having to hold down the right mouse button. Click to
cancel the lock and Bard will walk to where you clicked and stop.
You may find it very effective to lock into movement with a double click of the
right mouse button and just leave it that way as you travel around and during
combat. It keeps the Bard moving towards enemy you attack-click if he is not
already close to them.
Known Problems
1. The mouse interface has some issues in the book menus. Using the keyboard
to navigate and select menu options works better in most cases.
Hints and Tips
Make use of the Caleigh Artifact to heal yourself when you get into trouble.
The quickest way is with the R key for a Quick Heal. However, while holding
down the Left Shift key, the A key brings up the Artifact Hot Menu, then the S
key selects Caleigh. While continuing to hold down the Left Shift key, a press
of A, W, or D will power up Caleigh with 1, 2 or 3 adderstones:
1 adderstone gets a full heal
2 adderstones gets full heal and a blessing
3 adderstones gets full heal, blessing and temporary invulnerability.
Save your game at every save point (i.e. the floating Books). Save points are
marked as blue dots on the hud mini-map.
Keep the Trap Finder summoned character out and listen for him saying I smell a
trap or some such comment. When you hear it, dont go running ahead, let the
Trap Finder go ahead to disable the trap first. Whenever the Trap Finder sets
off a trap, it is disabled for good. When others set off a trap, the trap may
trigger on the next fool that rushes in.
The Bards Tale Preview Walkthrough
Front End Shell
Select Help to see an overview of the controls, or
Select Play Mountain Tomb to begin playing the demo.
Landing in a Viking Burial Chamber, the Bard will need to find a way out of the
Tomb.
He can explore the tomb and find an explorer, Dolyn, trapped behind the ice.
The Bard can be snarky or nice to him, it will affect how much help he gives
the Bard after he gets him out. After talking to Doyln, the Bard can find
Dolyns camp site and acquire the map of Dounby and the raven key stone. Use
the stone to open the door to the Burial Chamber. The Bard will need to go to
the Burial Chamber to receive an item that will allow the Bard to free Dolyn.
