Making of Bard's Tale Construction Set (1991)

Background: From Grad School to Game Dev

In late 1990, Tim Cain's father passed away at age 57. Though they weren't close, the death prompted Tim — then a 25-year-old AI grad student at UC Irvine — to rethink his trajectory toward becoming a college professor. He'd had fun making Grand Slam Bridge (published by Electronic Arts in 1986) and had never stopped making games, including involvement in the MUD (Multi-User Dungeon) scene.

In early 1991, he bought several computer gaming magazines, went through every ad with a company address, and sent out resumes to all of them.

The Interview in a Borrowed Suit

Tim got two responses. One was from 360 Pacific in Oregon. The other was Interplay, located just a few miles from UCI in Santa Ana. He'd heard of them and had played Bard's Tale II.

Nervous about the interview, Tim borrowed an expensive Italian suit from his friend John Roy. When he arrived, the receptionist mistook him for their insurance salesman — "No programmer shows up here in a suit." (Years later, Jesse Reynolds would also show up to an Interplay interview in a suit, and Tim made fun of him for it.)

The THAC0 Question

Tim interviewed with Tom Decker. Another candidate was neck-and-neck with him — she had similar experience and may have even shipped a game. Tom mentioned the project involved Bard's Tale, which was D&D-style, and asked Tim: "Can you tell me what THAC0 is?"

Tim launched into an exuberant explanation: THAC0 stands for "To Hit Armor Class Zero." There were four THAC0 tables based on the base classes (Fighter, Cleric, Thief, Magic User). He recited the specific values for level one against various armor classes, explained how to derive to-hit values by subtracting AC from THAC0, and noted the edge case where the Magic User column doesn't work cleanly because values repeat six times.

Tom had been silent throughout. "Yes," he said. "THAC0 is To Hit Armor Class Zero." That's all he'd wanted.

The other candidate didn't know what THAC0 was. Tim got the contract.

The 14-Week Contract

Tim was hired as a contractor — he wouldn't become a full-time employee until after the game shipped. The deal: 14 weeks to make the Bard's Tale Construction Set using the original Bard's Tale code, described as a "black box" that he could simply feed new data into. His job was supposedly just writing data editors so players could create items, monsters, and spells.

The Code Was Not a Black Box

A few days in, Tim called Tom Decker with bad news. Deep inside the combat code were lines like:

if monster == 59 then do_dragon_breath

There were no enumerations, no type systems, no data-driven design. Monster 59 was hardcoded as a dragon. Rules for ability frequency were baked in. There was no way to make this code generic enough for a construction set.

To make matters worse, Interplay couldn't find the English source code for the version they wanted him to build on. They gave him the German version instead — and Tim doesn't read German. The strings were embedded directly in the code.

The Negotiation

Tim told Tom it couldn't be done in 14 weeks. Tom reminded him he'd agreed to the timeline. Tim's response: "You agreed it was a black box. I will write editors for data and plug it into this code. It won't work, but if you're going to stick to the letter of the contract, so will I."

That worked. They brought in another programmer, Phil Britt, to handle the animated viewport (the picture area showing monsters and NPCs), which also couldn't be cleanly extracted from the original code. Phil interfaced with artists like Todd Camasta, Interplay's 2D art master.

Development Conditions

Tim worked from his dorm room at UCI — he threw everything off his desk and set up the computer Interplay supplied, since his own PC only supported EGA while the project required VGA.

The construction set had to run in three graphics modes:

• VGA — 256 colors (the only mode it looked good in)
• EGA — 16 colors
• CGA — 4 colors (black, white, cyan, magenta — "picked by some insane person")

All three shared 320×200 resolution. CGA and EGA support was purely for backwards compatibility.

The Bounced Paycheck

Tim's very first paycheck from Interplay bounced. The HR person had such a constant payroll amount that she forgot to increase it when Tim was brought on as a contractor. She was mortified and issued a new check plus the bounce fee. Tim played it cool, though as a grad student who'd skipped his usual Teaching Assistant position to take this contract, he was living paycheck to paycheck.

QA and Chris Taylor

The project had a significant bug push at the end but benefited from strong QA. During Tim's biweekly visits to Interplay to meet with Tom Decker, a guy named Chris Taylor would show up and silently stand against the wall, listening. Tim didn't know who he was. It turned out Chris was just excited about the project and loved hearing about new features — maps, spells, traps, monsters — as they came online.

Ship and Reception

The Bard's Tale Construction Set shipped in fall 1991 (Tim believes October). It was his first published game since Grand Slam Bridge in 1986.

A few months later, it received a five-star review in Dragon Magazine. Tim — a Dragon Magazine subscriber — was thrilled to see a game with his name on it reviewed in the publication.

The Aftermath: Getting Hired Full-Time

Tim went home to Virginia for Christmas break, then came back and told Tom Decker he wanted a full-time job in the game industry — preferably at Interplay, making more RPGs. Tom went to bat for him, and Tim got the job.

This was the beginning of Tim Cain's career at Interplay, which would eventually lead to Fallout and much more.

Source

Making of Bard's Tale Construction Set (1991) — Tim Cain's YouTube channel.