(Photo courtesy of Michael Cranford himself.)​

I loved the game, and spent many long hours playing it in my apartment in Berkeley. As a programmer, the limitations of the game were obvious to me (largely a result of the fact that it was programmed in Pascal on a computer with 48K of memory). I had already begun to develop videos games in assembly language, and it struck me that I could provide a much bigger, more graphical, memory-efficient, and detailed game than Wizardry. While I couldn’t then play and enjoy it myself, I knew that I would reach and enthrall tens or hundreds of thousands of people like me, if I did build something better.

I’ve also been an artist and writer most of my life, and an avid reader of fantasy fiction, and I had previously created and illustrated numerous D&D dungeons (for friends, nothing that was ever published). I knew that I could develop a plot for the game that was going to be more interesting than simply locating and finding a sword with a higher hit and damage rating.

I had a vision for abandoning Wizardry’s wireframe corridors and introducing framed animation of textured walls that moved toward you (a pseudo-3D effect). I wanted a world that looked more real than Wizardry’s. That was my primary design departure. I also wanted more magic involved in the game; hack and slash wasn’t as interesting to me.​

Wizardry III (1983) vs Bard's Tale I (1985), both for DOS. Even as late as 1987, at the time Bard's Tale II had already been released, Wizardry IV still kept the wireframe dungeons.​

I don’t remember that it started that way. I had worked for a few years for a company in the San Francisco area, doing platform conversions of arcade games, and during that time, there was a guy (Larry Holland) who was a musician and programmer, and he was the go-to guy for sound effects and music behind video games. I already had developed code to “stream” music by putting it into the interrupt on the Apple II (basically, a timer event that you could stuff code into), something I really hadn’t seen anyone else do. So I had it in my mind that I would have a bard class in the game who would cast a “spell” over a time duration with different effects to help the group, and that spell would be audible (background music). It’s possible there was a book that I read that inspired it, but if so, I don’t remember. It was just a natural combination of the code to stream and play music on the Apple, and a desire to emphasize interesting magical effects in the game. I also love music. This particular class simply stood out the most during development, because of the unique nature of the class and the musical aspect of the game, and we had a consultant who named the game after the bard class. I didn’t name the game. So the bard became central because people at Interplay and EA loved it.​

I personally didn’t play the game a lot; I guess what I came to learn was that developing games (and programming generally) was a lot more fun to me than playing them. Especially my own stuff. So I was constantly developing back then. I created a dungeon editor that made it possible (by BT2) for anyone to create dungeon levels and populate them with monsters, for example. I always had some new thing to work on, some problem to solve. I really should have spent more time playing my own game. I didn’t have any idea it would be that difficult. And I was a kid, you know? This was long before I learned that the best things in life are simple.​

I think all my dungeons were pretty challenging (but fun, because I could illustrate key characters, rooms, passageways, traps, etc., and use the illustrations to hide clues that people had to look for). Back in those days (in high school and at Berkeley) I really only played with people who were hardcore. Nowadays, it’s a different proposition, because the market for gaming is massive, and most of those people are not hardcore. If I were a consultant to Blizzard, for example, I’d recommend making the vast majority of the game accessible to housewives and 12 year olds. Then provide some rabbit holes for people who want something tougher, but I wouldn’t use those people as a starting point. I would start with something beautiful, otherworldly and engaging for the masses. I’d avoid the zombies, go action-adventure as a priority. I myself have been hardcore at points, but in the final equation, bringing joy to the greatest number of people is more rewarding than providing a virtual life for the few. More rewarding personally and spiritually, as well as financially.​

Apple II title screen for Tales of the Unknown: Vol. I - The Bard's Tale, as the first game in the series was officially called.​

I don’t remember this, no. Everything was pretty much a closed box at the time, the platform was so limited, and there wasn’t an internet, to speak of. BT2 wasn’t a thought in my mind yet, and there wasn’t an obvious way to extend the game (as there would be now, in an online RPG). My guess is that this was just a plot twist or a shortcut so that we didn’t have to come up with a horse animation. BT1 was almost entirely my plot. We had a consultant but his ideas were pretty silly, and we abandoned almost all of them. On BT2 there was some input, as a result of my dungeon editor.​

At the time I thought the snares were awesome, and I don’t remember receiving any negative feedback. But again, I think the playtesting was lacking. It was a few years later that someone told me that they were extremely difficult and frustrating.

My original name-concept for the game was “Shadowsnare,” I had a thought of a number of challenging and visual puzzles (to the limits of what a system could do at that time). Wizardry was just about finding and picking up items. I have always been intrigued by solving puzzles.​

Just a creative idea that came to me, as best I can remember, in light of the capabilities already in the codebase. I was always trying to think of more magic to incorporate into the game. The idea of having a familiar or some entity that was controlled by magic was an idea from my earlier reading and role playing. The stats for monsters and players were so similar (something obvious to the programmer but not to anyone else), it made perfect sense to do this. I tried to think through everything that could be done, in light of the code, to make the game more interesting. When I was finishing BT1, I already had a lot of new ideas for the next one.​

It didn’t occur to me, my thinking was more dungeon-centric. The idea of any adventure in the outdoors wasn’t really in my conceptual framework then. When I got to BT2, and recognized (with the dungeon editor) I had the capacity to create so many more dungeons with ease, it made sense to also build cities and spread them all out.​

Apple II title screen for The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight, the second game in the series - and the last one designed by Michael Cranford. For The Bard's Tale III, Bill "Burger" Heineman took over after Cranford had a falling out with Fargo and left Interplay.​

I work very quickly, I always have. I can see programming problems in my head from beginning to end before I even sit down and start typing. On any scale. I don’t generate many bugs in my code, I can visually simulate the performance of code blocks in my mind, and check the output as I go. Then I can do it on a meta level also, for the entire project. I don’t really know how to explain it. I have no difficulty finishing projects as a result. Programming is time consuming but effortless for me, most of the time. It makes it harder to work with other coders on the same application without clear division of labor, because it doesn’t work the same for me with other people’s code. As for the creative concepts in BT2, many of these came to me toward the end of BT1. I probably also had some interaction with Brian Fargo, he always had great ideas. (He and I played D&D together in high school.) But a lot of it was simply knowing what was hard and what was easy, given the codebase. The code I had built made some of these things trivial additions to the game logic.​

I can’t recall anything about the dungeons now, lol. So long ago, and so much code generated since then. But I had built this dungeon editor, which was a top-down maze view of the dungeon level, and you could add walls, puzzles, traps, and monsters anywhere, visually. I am a creative person, it was easy to build the levels with the help of the editor. (Some other people contributed levels to BT2 as well.)​

Well, first off, Heineman wouldn’t know anything about it, except perhaps what Brian might have told him. He was a quirky guy who sat in the corner of the office and had no role in the business operation of the company. Everything that happened was between me and Brian; there was no one else ever present.

When I first came to work at Interplay, I already had a game concept and a working prototype that looked like Wizardry. I built it when I was at Berkeley. I was debating if I should even show it to Brian, rather than just going to Brøderbund or EA or Activision on my own. Brian was a high school friend, so I decided to trust him with it, and I showed it to him. He said he could sell it, and we had a vague verbal understanding of what I would receive. I threw out some numbers and he was positive and agreeable. There were no written terms of any kind. I was a young guy without business experience, and Brian was my friend. It never occurred to me that I might be making a mistake.

Late in the development, I realized I had made one. I had a couple nights where I couldn’t get to sleep, I was so anxious. I was not in a position to enforce our verbal understanding, and I realized that I could have easily brought this to EA on my own. It was sold based on the prototype. I had built every part of the game single handedly, with the exception of composing the music. (My friend Larry Holland did that.)

When the game was nearly done (or maybe entirely done, actually; hard to remember now), Brian produced a contract. I do remember asking for it a number of times and feeling like I was being stalled. I had no idea what he was going to put in it. My memory is not spot-on from 28 years ago, so I am only speaking in general terms. If I am getting any part of this out of order, it’s not intentional. The rest of it is accurate.

The contract (in its initial version) offered me a fraction of what I was expecting, and there were some conditions that would limit my earnings. I talked it through with my friend’s dad, who was the CEO of a large civil engineering firm; he thought it was unacceptable, and urged me to hire an attorney. We ended up spending a significant amount of time negotiating, and in the final equation, I think both of us thought the resulting deal was unfair. I have no doubt that Brian was doing what he thought was right, and that he felt that what he offered me was reasonable. There was a lot of emotion at the time, on my part, but he is a good guy and a smart businessman. I have no resentment against him; I’m just frustrated I wasn’t smarter about all this. I heard his rationale in this very clearly at the time, and I understood where he was coming from. If the deal that we agreed on was presented at the beginning of the process, however, I would not have brought this to him at all.

Now, this story that I held a disk hostage to extort someone – that didn’t happen, I would never do that. Sitting on the source code until the deal I was promised was finally put in writing and honored – that is possible. I honestly can’t remember. But again, there was no pressure to change any terms. The deal I ended up accepting was not what I understood I would get, and not what I would have agreed to if I had. I am a person of my word. I didn’t make very much money from these games.​

It was mostly great. A great team, led by a guy that I admired and who was a true friend to me through high school. I was doing something that I loved. Hanging with a small, tight band of programmers was fun. We did a lot of things together. Nothing in particular stands out, but I enjoyed the time, until we got to the contract negotiation and negativity that I already mentioned. It was a little personal at the time, but then I grew up and let all that go. Just a lesson in life learned. I didn’t handle my part of all that well.

Brian asked me to leave after Bard’s Tale II, he was not happy with the process we went through to arrive at a deal. He told me he wanted me out for BT3 (which would put me at a lower royalty rate, and the fact was that with the tools and code in hand, they didn’t need me for it). The process also burnt me out, and I wanted to go back to school and do my next project on my own anyway.

There is some regret that we didn’t work things out, and that I didn’t stay to see Interplay grow into what it eventually became. That would have been fun. But I chose another path that was fulfilling.​

As I mentioned, a story was spread about me, that made me out to be a bad guy. I never heard the whole thing, but when you tell me that someone says I extorted Brian to change the terms in our deal, the picture gets clearer. I also took an unscheduled trip late in the development process for a week and a half (it had been planned for 6 months, but I didn’t bother telling Brian until the contract was signed, as I was not sure we would come to agreement and that it would be relevant). The slander was disheartening for me. I’m a person that values and practices integrity; being characterized this way hurt me. I didn’t want to be part of it anymore, though I did do a deal with Brøderbund, and I worked with some wonderful people there.​

I never played them.​

Centauri Alliance came in a hexagon-shaped box which included a manual, a field guide, a psionic ability chart and a huge star map.​

I can’t remember the specifics, but I had a concept for a game similar to Bard’s Tale but much bigger and with a sci-fi theme. I likely made some calls, and they were interested in working with me.​

I had never developed for a PC at that point, so it was unknown territory for me. The big problem was that the development got stalled, and by the time it was finally done, the Apple and C64 had started to drop off. It wasn’t like that when the project started, the decline happened quickly. We may have discussed a Dos version, I don’t remember.​

There was a huge delay having the artist handle the animation. The way we did it, back then, was basically like a slide show; the animation required subtle changes to be made in a series. And the game was so big, that meant a ton of art. I think their resources were limited, and there were higher priority projects. Plus, I made the game too big anyway. So there was a very long wait for the artwork.​

Goodness, I cannot remember their names. They were terrific people. One guy in particular was in my area a lot, and was a real friend during the process. I don’t know that I was up there more than one time during the development, so I didn’t have a sense of the company’s commitment to RPG. They seemed very supportive, but there were production delays around getting the graphics/animation done that stalled the project by almost a year, I recall. They told me they were working on something called Carmen San Diego. : )​

Centauri Alliance's combat screen as seen on the C64. Combat areas in the game differ in size; black squares are obstacles that cannot be crossed.​

It was simply a code compromise. There needed to be a spatial dimension to combat; having a list of characters like in BT (with 3 on the front line to take physical damage) was too simplistic. I went with a compromise that was still simplistic. If there had been a SQL it would have evolved further.​

I was an avid sci-fi reader. I can’t pinpoint where my influences were. Shape changing was something characteristic of characters in a number of books, and again, it was something that made sense in light of the code, to permit “magical” enhancements. I can’t remember much else leading to this. I obviously think in narrative. I have a sci-fi book partly written, in fact. No connection to Centauri Alliance. : )​

The book is set a few hundred years from now. It deals with a certain mutation or punctuated evolutionary turn that humans have taken which allows them to survive and fight back against a race that came here to take over and transform our planet. But the evolutionary turn happened decades before the aliens arrived, which allowed a generation of our species to survive. But that raises a question of how such a thing could have happened, in advance of the threat. There’s a smaller story of specific people in the broader tale, of course. That’s the broad strokes, wait for the book. And hopefully the movie. : )​

Four of Centauri Alliance's races: Arcturian, Praktor, Donsai and Manstrak.​

This is probably the case, that the release on two platforms that were dropping out probably made this a disappointment. I don’t remember making money on it. If I had been up to speed on PC development, I might have been able to turn this in a direction that would have led to a second version. But hard to build a second if everyone running Dos never saw the first.​

Absolutely. I mean, my goal was always to simulate real-time. I just didn’t have a way to do it, or a vision for it, given the limitations of the platforms I was developing on. If I had stayed with this, I would have ultimately developed something like the big MMORPGs.​

Hmm, I don’t remember the exact rationale. Again, though, I wanted to simulate reality. There was obviously a need for some tuning on this, though!​

There is an aspect of it that the typical first-person shooter games can’t capture. Something like WoW has done a good job bringing strategic elements into gameplay, but the ability to sit and think and plan really does meet a different need than blowing things up that run at you.​

If it had been under my control, it would have had new versions and new worlds, and would have evolved and, I think, become an MMORPG. I’ve been doing internet application development now for many years, I might have been first to market on the concept, if I hadn’t walked away from game development. I can’t comment on the design in hindsight, it was the best we could do at the time. If I’d been on version 3 and later, it would have gotten even better.​

I’m open to it. I’m so busy doing other kinds of development, I haven’t been keeping up or determining where I can play a part. If someone out there has a suggestion, shoot me an email.​