Creating a character disc for Bard's Tale?
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I'm trying to play The Bard's Tale (the original, from the 80s!) with lr-vice. But I can't seem to figure out how to create a blank disk for my characters. The game itself gives me the option to (M)ake a Disk, but when I hit M, it just grinds away, then asks me insert the source disk. Which I can do, no problem, but then it asks for the target disk and...I don't know where the disk I just "made" is! There's nowhere to find the blank.
Has anyone figure this out?
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@billydent You need to insert a "blank disc" to be used for the saves into the virtual drive (like you would do on the original hardware). Take a look at the lr-vice page and read the part playlist support and disc control to learn how to "create" such a disc with lr-vice.
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@ashpool Yeah, I read that, but I saw elsewhere that while lr-vice supports M3U and save discs that this functionality is not exposed in EmulationStation and therefore won't work. Is that not the case?
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@billydent Maybe It is somewhat more limited as documented on the github page? But the m3u support is mentioned on the VIC page of the retropies docs. And a line with just #SAVEDISK within a m3u will create a d64 image with the m3us base_filename.save#.d64 (Though I haven't tried it with Bard's Tale, just a quick m3u test with an arbitary d64 image and that savedisk line added).
Edit: Thanks for the chance to take a stroll into memory lane -> Tried in Bard's Tale 1 and though it is working, I totally forgot that it came with a "source" character disk with the pregenerated ATEAM as a party and that making a character disk only copies that one onto a blank disk, so you can spare that in game procedure by simply playing with a copy of the "character disk"s d64 image ;]
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If you don't use the m3u playlist version..try this.
Create an empty file called something like "bardsave.d64" and put it into the c64 rom folder alongside your roms. It'll be an empty blank file with the .d64 extension at that point.
Then in the game when you press "M" and it asks you to insert a blank disk, use the Retroarch GUI to eject the current disk and select this new empty file. It should start writing to it.
Bard's Tale might ask you to swap between the source disk and this disk a few times .. but I think that'll work. Then you'll have a new save game disk.
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@dmmarti Tried this, and while I was able to navigate to the disc, when the system tried to format it, it stopped almost immediately and said "Copy aborted." No matter how many times I tried, I couldn't get it to work.
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@ashpool Huh! Are you using lr-vice or just vice? And where exactly do you put your M3U file? As I mentioned below in response to @dmmarti, I was able to create a disc file in my C64 directory, but when I "insert" that disc during the "Make a Disc" phase, it aborts when formatting.
It sounds like you're saying I should manually copy the Character disk .d64 file, then...choose (C)opy Char's from the menu instead of (M)ake a Disc?
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@billydent ....hmm....the only thing I can think of that might have happened is the file does not have write permissions.
In the linux terminal window you can type the following:
cd /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/c64 <enter>
chmod 777 YOURFILENAME.d64 <enter>
That'll give full permissions to the file. You could also do it via your FTP program as well.
Other than that, not sure why it failed.
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@billydent I tried it with lr-vice. For the quick test with Bard's Tale I placed the images together with the .m3u in roms/c64. Here's what the .m3u looks like:
Bards Tale 1 (1985)(Electronic Arts)(Disk 1 of 2 Side A).d64 Bards Tale 1 (1985)(Electronic Arts)(Disk 1 of 2 Side B).d64 Bards Tale 1 (1985)(Electronic Arts)(Disk 2 of 2 Side A).d64 #SAVEDISK:But as the created character disk from within the game simply is a copy of Disk A Side B, you can use just copy it yourself or play with it as your character disk (assuming that you keep a backup/archive elsewhere).
P.S.: As .d64 files are binary disk images, simply using a blank .txt as a starter won't work (even a fresh/unformated .d64 is of fixed disk size)
And yes, IMHO it is easier on desktop pcs or with (non libretro) vice to create a new/blank image. -
@billydent said in Creating a character disc for Bard's Tale?:
It sounds like you're saying I should manually copy the Character disk .d64 file, then...choose (C)opy Char's from the menu instead of (M)ake a Disc?
Nope, simply start the game with s... c)opy character will copy characters from one "save" disk to another one. (And the trip into memory lane extents, as i actually went through my boxes with my old computer stuff (disks/manuals/etc.) in my (successfull) search of the game manual ;) )
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@ashpool Much to my chagrin, when I hit S to (S)tart Game...nothing happens. Nothing at all. :(
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@billydent As you got the menu with s)tart; c)opy; m)ake your disk was recognized as the character disk - pressing s)tart should take you (after a minute or so) to the "Guild of Adventurers" ...
Ok, wait... Have you tried it via the virtual keyboard? I never tried with keyboard passthrough enabled so far, doing so now i realized that c and m have no problems with the real kbd, but somehow/on my setup 's' is just functioning via the virtual kbd and not the real one. Now, thats a different problem and at least for now i have no idea how to address it. ... -
@ashpool LOL -- great minds think alike! I tried the virtual keyboard, too, and it works PERFECTLY! For some reason, S, Z, and a couple of other keys don't work on the hardware keyboard, but honesty as long as everything works on the virtual keyboard, I don't mind.
Thanks for helping me figure this out! Off to save Skara Brae...!
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