The Bard's Tale Trilogy Patch v4.29 Available

The Xbox One release of Krome Studios' remastered The Bard's Tale Trilogy was accompanied by a fairly sizable patch for the PC version of the bundle that among other things expanded its language support and added some new visual effects. And now, we get a new patch that focuses on bug fixing but also lets us override the language settings and introduces some minor gameplay changes. Here are the patch notes:

LANGUAGE SELECTION

There is now an option to override the selected language (the one set by the "Language" tab on the properties of the game in your Steam library).

If you launch the game with the "-lang=" commandline (without quotes) you can select English, French, German, Spanish, Polish or Russian language by adding the 2 letter code, ie

-lang=en
-lang=fr
-lang=de
-lang=es
-lang=pl
-lang=ru

Additionally - once this new build has been run for the first time, there will be a new file called "lang.txt" created on your PC, in the "%appdata%/../locallow/InXile Entertainment/The Bard's Tale Trilogy" folder on your PC. If you edit this file, you will be able to then override which language the game is displayed in; following the directions found within the file.

GENERAL FIXES
  • Performance improvements throughout the game.
  • Stability improvements throughout the game.
  • Fix for performance issues when transferring characters from BT1 to BT2.
  • Identifying an item at Roscoe's now counts as "using" the service, for a variety of achievements.
  • Enable tooltips for legacy mode options on the main menu; even if you had disabled tooltips in-game.
  • Fix for some commands being able to be activated and inappropriate times, eg “view inventory” while in combat.
  • Lighting fixes for when inside Casinos.
  • Fix for some taverns using the incorrect animation on their window, in BT3.
  • A variety of language translation fixes.
  • The entrances to dungeons in BT2 now fade as you enter/exit, to make the transition nicer.
  • Removed ability to select equip/unequip when in battle, if there are no items in the inventory.
  • Fixed PartyAttack so that it can target non-controllable characters.
  • Fixed for cameos being able to get stuck at slightly wrong scale, when combat effects play.
  • Fixed gate opening issue in BT1 on reloading a save game.
  • Fixed issue where the treasure screen can get skipped by when pressing keys at the end of combat.
  • Fixed for bug where player map would be switched off if you exited to main menu while in the AG, and then loaded straight into a map, instead of back into the AG.
  • Added new purple textures for mountain walls to match the text description, for various levels in BT3.
  • Fix for town gates rendering incorrectly from various angles.
  • Fixed death snare timers from being able to be activated multiple times.
  • Fixes for some minor clipping issues in the various Wilderness terrains.
  • Fixes issues where AntiApar to other dungeon levels was working but shouldn't be.
  • Using the joystick/keyboard to select next/prev character while viewing character profiles will now wrap top bottom.
  • Added carpet spell effect to “Major Levitation”
  • Fixed the teleport not fully fading out to black.
  • Fixed items getting lost when changing class in individual inventory Legacy mode.
GAMEPLAY CHANGES
  • Harmonic Staff effects are now persistent when in Legacy mode.
  • Changed Alliria's last ghost so that it only accepts the rainbow rose now. It was accepting white rose also before which allows you to skip a large part of the puzzle.
  • Added support for “something odd” tiles. These reduce detection of traps/special/secret doors to 1 square instead of 3 and has its own automap icon and journal legend.
  • Health and spell drain ticks faster and takes 5% of the players health/magic per tick (rather than fixed amount dependent on difficulty). Taking a percentage means it will balance across BT1 -> BT3 properly.
  • BT2 - swapped path clues 1 & 7 in destiny stone so 7 is by the exit, and added a warning message before entering the snare, as per feedback from users so as to make things a bit more clear
  • Removed the bottom center door from Oscon's fort lv3 that leads the player to the portals that they should never be able to access. We believe this was a bug in the c64 and all versions of the original game as the design clearly is trying to just tease the player with those portals, but their positioning suggests they are never meant to be used.
  • Moved Alliria tomb entrance from N6,E0 to N0,E0; to match to the original hint book notes
  • Moved Werra battle to the south east room, where it was clearly intended, judging by the text pretty much saying its there, and the room is the only anti-apar area on the map. Constructed a small room for the shield, since the text also says that it is in the next room.
  • Status effects created by item magic now A) cannot be persistent -- automatically downgraded to 148 min timed; B) only has half-duration to normal spells - this makes items much less powerful and much more rewarding to find one.
  • Invisible walls now use a normal wall icon since they are not passable and knowing they are invisible is not useful when examining the map. Railings - which are visible but can be passed through - use the same icon as crumbling walls, since they function the same. Invisible walls and railings can only be discovered by walking into/through them. Crumbling walls now appear solid until you walk through them.