Interview Matt Chat 295: Rebecca Heineman on the Bard's Tale Trilogy Rerelease + Staglands Review

[Infinitron]

Tags: Bard's Tale; Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight; Bard's Tale III: Thief of Fate; Bard's Tale IV; Dragons of the Rip; Matt Barton; Olde Skuul; Rebecca Heineman; Serpent in the Staglands; Whalenought Studios

The latest episode of Matt Chat is a double feature - a twenty minute interview with Interplay veteran Rebecca Heineman on her involvement with the Bard's Tale trilogy rerelease commissioned by Brian Fargo for his Bard's Tale IV Kickstarter campaign, followed by a 45 minute "review" of Serpent in the Staglands. I'll summarize the former.

The interview starts off with Becky giving a description of the work her team is planning to do for the rerelease. She seems to have this well thought out. It'll be based on the source code of the Apple IIGS versions of the games (including the never-released Apple IIGS version of Bard's Tale III) which she considers to be the best. However, some visually superior graphical elements will be taken from the Amiga versions, creating an ultimate version of the trilogy. They may also redraw some art, but the majority will simply be upscaled. In addition, they're looking into remastering the soundtrack, replacing the MIDI tracks with modern digital recordings, although Becky notes that this may cause issues with the game's bardic music, which used MIDI to play the same songs with many different instruments. Finally, Becky is also going to try to backport the automap feature of Bard's Tale III into the first two games. She's convinced she can get this all done within a few months, or by the end of the year at the latest.

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The second half of the interview gets a bit awkward, as Matt insists on delving into Becky's opinion on various contentious topics, including the Bard's Tale IV Kickstarter campaign and its success or lack thereof, Wasteland 2's quality, Seven Dragon Saga's failure, and Michael Cranford's professional ethics. Things remain mostly professional, although she does confess that she's baffled by Brian Fargo's decision to use Scottish folklore for the new Bard's Tale, saying that the original games were never about that and that she prefers the independence afforded by a completely fantastic world, like the one she's creating for her Dragons of the Rip project. Which, by the way, she's still planning on Kickstarting at the end of the month, despite the new work her team has been given. Hmmkay.

 

[a Goat]

Converting from MIDI to different format is a sign of competence.

In case fellow codexers aren't too much into this stuff - MIDI has compatibility problems with modern soundcards, okay I'll put it differently. MIDI compatibility is half-assed on modern cards. That's why old, MIDI music suddenly started to sound weird. So while it'll be a bit of a problem technically-wise, the conversion is a sign of putting effort into the remaster/rerelease/whateveryoucallit. Which is good.

Also - SitS is finally getting noticed by people outside of codex. Wow.

 

[LeStryfe79]

I was was in the middle of watching "In a Lonely Place" staring Humphrey Bogart, but now I've decided to watch the remake staring Matt Barton instead..

 

[agris]

J_C do you always review games by just recording your first playthrough of them? That was kind of painful.

 

[J_C]

J_C do you always review games by just recording your first playthrough of them? That was kind of painful.

No, I record it while I'm pumping cocaine.

 

[agris]

Ah I see. That makes sense why you couldn't find where to enter your name then. Perhaps Fallout 4 would interest you more?

 

[:Flash:]

That the IIgs version played the midi music differently depending on the instrument you had in-game is simply ingenious. That's the kind of stuff that is lost with modern audio formats.

But I think they should wait with their Rip kickstarter until the conversion of the old trilogy is done. That way they would get way more exposure. The way it's planned now they have to work on two things in parallel while not getting the exposure for their kickstarter.

 

[Dehumanizer]

That the IIgs version played the midi music differently depending on the instrument you had in-game is simply ingenious. That's the kind of stuff that is lost with modern audio formats.

MIDI these days still mostly works, but it's not guaranteed, and even if it does you can't be sure that it'll sound the same on different systems (especially Linux and such).

One way around it would be to use software-based MIDI such as Fluidsynth, and include a soundfont with just the instruments you need (basically, those that exist in the games).

Another way is to use some variation of the old Amiga MOD format, which was basically like a MIDI, but also included samples for each instrument in the file. (Ever played Star Control II on DOS? The (excellent) music was made using this, and you'll note the game came out on floppy disk and wasn't huge in terms of installed disk space.) For the BT trilogy, the game would simply (internally) play the version for the chosen song with the current instrument's sample.

 

[tuluse]

You just include MUNT and emulate a Roland MT-32 you fools (with option to passthrough for people with real ones).

 

[Dehumanizer]

Not only is MUNT quite CPU-heavy, but it requires the MT-32 ROMs, which are illegal to distribute... and anyway Becky's remasters will be based on the Apple IIGS versions of the games, not the DOS versions.

The DOS version of BT3 supported MT-32 music (BT1-2 supported PC speaker only), but only on the IIGS did the games play the songs with the correct equipped instrument (e.g. play song 1 with a flute, and it sounds like a flute, play it with a mandolin and it sounds like one, etc.), which is what we're talking about here.

This is obviously easy to do if your music format separates the notes from the instrument definitions / samples (MIDI, MOD, etc.), but otherwise (e.g. MP3) it'll require recording each song once for each instrument.

 

[Jaesun]

I need to try playing BT3 with my MT-32 one of these days just to hear the music...

 

[tuluse]

Not only is MUNT quite CPU-heavy

This is 2015 upgrade your pentium 3.

but it requires the MT-32 ROMs, which are illegal to distribute... and anyway Becky's remasters will be based on the Apple IIGS versions of the games, not the DOS versions.

Illegal to distribute without license, they could contact roland or whoever about it. I mean gog is selling amiga games somehow.

Also, given that they have the source code and can do anything they want to with it, I want the best possible version that could ever be conceived.

The DOS version of BT3 supported MT-32 music (BT1-2 supported PC speaker only), but only on the IIGS did the games play the songs with the correct equipped instrument (e.g. play song 1 with a flute, and it sounds like a flute, play it with a mandolin and it sounds like one, etc.), which is what we're talking about here.

I understand the concept, I still don't see why this can't be done through software emulation.

 

[Dehumanizer]

Oh, I agree with software emulation. I just think MT-32 / MUNT should have nothing to do with it (and this from a guy who regularly uses MUNT in/with DOSBox and ScummVM).

After all, since BT1-2 didn't support MT-32 and BT3 used it only in a basic way (it didn't play each instrument differently), it would mean that they would basically be composing new MT-32 music -- more than 15 years since the last time anyone did so.

 

[Diggfinger]

Also - SitS is finally getting noticed by people outside of codex. Wow.

Still, reviews from major gaming sites such as IGN and Gamespot are absent - right?

 

[Infinitron]

Matt Chat doesn't count as "getting noticed".

 

[MTwolves]

Not enough bribe money.
Reviews on those sites are more like paid advertisements.

Also - SitS is finally getting noticed by people outside of codex. Wow.

Still, reviews from major gaming sites such as IGN and Gamespot are absent - right?

 

[MicoSelva]

SiTS is even more hardcore than I expected it to be. But yeah, releasing it at the height of Witcher 3 media storm was probably not the greatest move.

Mainstream gaming sites only cover games that will 1. bring them traffic or 2. unknown ones that impressed their reviewers with something. SiTS might fit into the latter category, given the right reviewer, but it will probably just be ignored.