Greetings, fellow Bard's Tale fans! I'd like to introduce myself.
My name is Scott Nelson, and like you, I'm a big Bard's Tale fan.
Well, when it comes right down to it, who isn't?
I played Bard's Tale on the Commodore 64 back in the 80's, while
listening to such 80's groups as Falco, the Jets, George Michael,
and whatever else was on the radio at that time. I started with BT2.
I was 13 at the time, and had no clue what I was doing. It took me 1
month to realize that the map of Tangramayne in the book was the same
Tangramayne that I was in. It took me another month to find the starter
dungeon. Well, needless to say, once I found it, I never got that far.
All my friends were in the Destiny Stone, and I was still looking for
the Winged Creature. I came up with the name "Rubis" one rainy Friday
afternoon on the school bus ride home. My cousin, and fellow Bard's Tale
Maniac Peter chose "Peter the Great", but because it only let you use 14
letters to use for your name, it always came out as "Peter the Grea".
I got BT1 a year later for Christmas. That was pretty cool. As bad
as I was though, I never passed the sewers. Shortly thereafter, my dad
threw the game into the fireplace, claiming it was satanic.
Ten Years later, I found BT3 for the PC in a bargain bin at Best Buy.
Oh, the memories...
In 1998, I started doing a lot of web development, and I bought my first
domain name (www.AcidOffice.com).
It's all about office humor. I thought to myself, it would be totally
cool to have a BardsTale.com site. The game was so cool that I knew it
deserved at least its own domain name. Since no one else was doing it,
I jumped on the ball, and on January 1st, 1999, www.BardsTale.com was online!
It was my idea to offer other Bard's Tale fans web-space to host their
own Bard's Tale sites, like www.ClassicGaming.com hosts tons of other game sites. So, I took
of with the idea of creating my own Bard's Tale realm, starting of
course with Tangramayne. I started creating maps, cities, wildernesses,
buildings, dungeons, crypts, and what not. As of now, I am no where
near complete. I believe I have less than 10% of the places built yet.
However, I figure that I have between now and the end of time to complete it,
so I'm going slowly. I try to work on one thing a week, spending
about 3-5 hours on it.
There are so many well-designed BT maps on the net already. I don't
want to redo all that work, so I ask people if I can link to their
already created maps. If they don't want me to, I won't. I do however
create all of the other artwork here myself. My favorite part is
adding textures and more color to the old C64 graphics. They could
only use 3-4 colors at a time, and they did quite well with what
they had! Now, it's fun to add more colors to them, and give them new life.
So, what's the feedback? I've gotten good responses from the web-surfers
so far, with about ten complimenting E-Mails, and
one not-so complimenting E-Mail. Oh well - you can't please everyone!
When I'm not working on Bard's Tale stuff, I'm hanging out with my
wonderful family. I have 2 sons, Timothy and Jaiden. Little Timmy
is 2 years old today (April 3rd), and Jaiden is 4 months. My wife's
name is Heather, and she spends most of her time either with the boys,
or on the
ParentTime message boards. That's why I can only give 3-5
hours a week on the site - because she's always online IM'ing someone,
or posting new messages about childcare.
If you'd like to learn more about me, visit my homepage.
What's next for Bard's Tale.com? Look for a new Bard's Tale Character
editor in mid-April. It's not as elaborate as others already on the net,
but its advantage is that it can edit BT1, 2, and 3 characters. It lets
you change the basic things, like HP, SP and items.
The next addition to the BT1 site will be Harkyn's Castle. Coming up in
the BT2 realm will be more inns with more songs, the Bank, the city of
Thessalonica, and with it, the Maze of Dread. Lastly, in the world of BT3,
we'll be exploring Arboria.
You can contact me at WebMaster@BardsTale.com.
Until next month, farewell fellow Bard's Tale fans!
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