In some of the clue books and references on Bard's Tale site, the authors refer to saving their characters to disk and making a backup copy. This way if you spent countless hours building up characters and then do something unwise or extremely unlucky, all is not lost.
After getting my first 3 party's slaughtered, and spending hours re-rolling for decent character attribute points until repetitive stress injury , I finally gained enough savvy to have a party endure to a humble Level 4.
Does anyone know where those files are on Mac OS X and how I would duplicate this sensible "saving a backup of your characters" procedure?
BTW, I'm a Bards Tale I user from the 80's; used an Atari 520ST. Good fun!
I'm using the The Bard's Tale app from Apple's App Store. It is running on a MacBook Pro running Mac OS X, 10.6.8. Let me know if you need any further details. Thanks.
Ohhhhhhhh! Well, I'll be... I have the iPad version, but I had no idea there was a desktop version. No idea on where to back up the characters, though, I'm afraid. Sorry.
Falls McGee wrote:In some of the clue books and references on Bard's Tale site, the authors refer to saving their characters to disk and making a backup copy. This way if you spent countless hours building up characters and then do something unwise or extremely unlucky, all is not lost.
After getting my first 3 party's slaughtered, and spending hours re-rolling for decent character attribute points until repetitive stress injury , I finally gained enough savvy to have a party endure to a humble Level 4.
Does anyone know where those files are on Mac OS X and how I would duplicate this sensible "saving a backup of your characters" procedure?
BTW, I'm a Bards Tale I user from the 80's; used an Atari 520ST. Good fun!
Thanks! [/b]
The disks referred to are the original 5 1/4 floppy disks or tapes which are prone to being damaged easily, thus the warning! Now, these disks are just files on the MAC HDD and will be stored wherever the Bards Tale game saves or program files are stored. Normal methods of back can be used (ie time machine) but I suggest it is not necessary!
It is much more important to return to the guild and remove your characters from the party regularly , as this is the only method in BT1 and BT2 to save your characters progress. If you get caught in a fight you cant win, or a stasis room you cant get out of etc, and you will have to close the app and reload from your last save at the guild! If you haven't saved in a while then you will indeed loose any progress your characters have gained!
The backup files in the DOS version are numbered, with a .tpw extension. You could do a file search for 1.tpw, 2.tpw, etc and see if they show up.
The backup files are refreshed when you remove the character from the party, or when you leave the game from the menu at the adventurer's guild. If you exit the program by another way, like re-booting the computer or turning the power off, it doesn't update the save character files. Which is a bonus if you are dead or get hit by a spectre and lose a couple of levels. Your characters retain the levels and status and equipment they had last time they were saved. Except the gold. If you reboot while in the game, all the characters in your party lose their gold. I think this is in part to eliminate the ability to "dupe" your gold or equipment by trading it between players and rebooting or whatnot. Not that it isn't simple just by copying the character files, but that's how it is.
If you have a computer or device that tends to lock up, you might want to transfer most of your gold to a mule character that isn't in your party until you need it.
The Mac OS X Operating system using the Mac App version of The Bard's Tales does not have any character files floating around that I could find. After, I Leave a game, I've been duplicating the whole multi-Gigabyte app package, hoping that my character info is not stored in some library file somewhere else. I haven't had the need to try to resurrect a character/party using this technique yet, but I will let you know what happens when I do.
The other thing I'd like to have is the ability to rename a character. Thanks everyone for your ideas and responses.
Huh, yeah, I just had a poke around in the iPad bundle and can't find anything to do with the classic games either. They're presumably in there somewhere, though - anyone else have any light to shed on this?
tpth wrote:Huh, yeah, I just had a poke around in the iPad bundle and can't find anything to do with the classic games either. They're presumably in there somewhere, though - anyone else have any light to shed on this?
Thank you. Remember, I'm using a laptop (MacBook Pro). So, the The Bard's Tale app (3.58 GB) I'm using is from their desktop App Store.
Now, I'm wondering what the Bard's Tale experience is like on the iPad; easier or harder to play with? The desktop version is very keystroke intensive.
I think my party is at Level 6 now; I'm exploring Sewer level 1. Takes a long time to explore just one level, because I have to keep hightailing it out of there and a across town to Roscoe's Energy Emporium; gotta find that Energy Rejuvenation zone. :^)
Yeah, I know - I just thought the files' locations in the iPad bundle might give some sort of indication as to where they might be hiding in the desktop version (iOS is ultimately based on OS X, after all.) But no good, I'm afraid.
I enjoy playing on the iPad. It's not a super smooth multitouch experience - the interface is basically the PC interface adapted for touch - but it works well enough
I'm using the The Bard's Tale app from Apple's App Store. It is running on a MacBook Pro running Mac OS X, 10.6.8. Let me know if you need any further details. Thanks.
Might be similar to the Android version, which stores its files in disk images. The character disk in BT1 is a file called s5d2_bt1. If you have this, make a copy of this somewhere else, and if you lose your characters, delete the file and replace it with the copy.
As for the iPad, you'd probably have to jailbreak it to get access to these files. Blame Apple. No idea whatsoever about the desktop version - I didn't even know it existed!
, I finally gained enough savvy to have a party endure to a humble Level 4.
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