Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!rutgers!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!fluke!kurt
From: kurt@tc.fluke.COM (Kurt Guntheroth)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Bards Tale == Bug Town
Message-ID: <1716@sputnik.COM>
Date: Thu, 10-Sep-87 11:45:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: sputnik.1716
Posted: Thu Sep 10 11:45:47 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 12-Sep-87 08:52:54 EDT
References: <655@sugar.UUCP>
Sender: news@tc.fluke.COM
Organization: John Fluke Mfg. Co., Inc., Everett, WA
Lines: 28

Actually, I have been rather interested in Bard's Tale as a study of the
type of bugs that get left in production software.  Have you noticed:

1.  That dead 'specials' don't always go away when they're supposed to.
2.  That the coding for the he/she/it in the text description is screwed up
3.  That pictures of creatures offering to 'join your party' don't always
    come up.
4.  That you get disk access to replace pictures of creatures with the same
    picture.
5.  The system sometimes runs out of memory and suddenly returns you to the
    AG.  (Actually, I was pleased that it at least tidied up in this way
    rather than leaving you with a wrecked character disk, as it would do if
    it died suddenly.)

I also am infuriated that the game doesn't do more to cut down on disk
usage.  You would think they would either have cached pictures in memory or
used one of the standard tools that caches disk sectors.

I hate the CP too.  I havn't bought Marauder yet.  Does it break Bards Tale?
If it does, I would like to try the following modifications:

1.  Get rid of the dreadful font they use.  I think they are using a
66-char-per-line font, and I would try an 80-char-per-line font, but if that
didn't work out, at least a nice clean sans-serif font.

2.  As someone else suggested, more disk buffers.

Sigh.