I didn’t know anything about the real interior workings of the CD-i player, so we used a library of routines called Balboa from a company called Viridis. They enabled me to read the data off the CD and so on without having to write assembly language.

How long this game took to be made? What was your budget and did you finished it over or above this budget?
I’m not sure… it was a long time ago. I think about a year. Besides, I left before it was finished. I suspect it went over budget, but I never had anything to do with the money.

Is there something you wanted to add into the game that you couldn’t due to system limitations?
Witch was the difficulties found, the limitations of the system?
We designed the game around the system limitations, so that wasn’t a big program. I wish the machine had more RAM. The dev kit had 2 MB, but the released machine only had 1 MB. That was a nuisance. It would have been great to do real video, but it would have cost a lot more. It would also have been better if it had more than one controller.

You worked on “Dungeons & Dragons” (D&D) in 1991, only a few people know about this project.
Could you please explain what it is?
D&D never got beyond the concept phase. It was just an idea. We didn’t have the D&D license, and we never actually wrote any code. You would play the role of a single adventurer in a dungeon. We were going to use the machine’s ability to display high quality still images. I looked at how swordfights are filmed for the movies, checking camera angles and things like that, to see how we might photograph the fights.

Did you got a testable demo of “D&D”? Any screenshots or artwork?
No demo. The only artwork was a storyboard created by my partner, Michael Becker, but I’m sure he didn’t keep it.

How did you made those games?
I mean any authoring tool?
Coding in 68000?
I wrote in C and linked in the Balboa library, as I described in an earlier answer. I can’t remember much about the authoring environment. I seem to recall that I worked on a Macintosh, but that’s all. I’m not an assembly language programmer, which is unfortunate because the 68000 is a nice architecture.

Is there any project for CD-i that never started?
We abandoned the D&D project because we were really too busy with 3rd Degreeto start another project, and in any case I think AIM didn’t want to do a license deal for the name.

You wrote several books, did you wrote a book specifically for CD-i programming?
I am asking this due to the conference you gave in April 1992 at the 6^th Computer Game Developers (CGD) with the theme “Programming the CD-i Player”.
No, I wasn’t writing books back then. And I don’t write programming books. My books are about game design. I did give a lecture about it, though, and it was pretty well attended–about 75 people.

The people present in this conference was all interested into the CD-i titles development?
Any know companies or developers?
They were all interested in optical media development (CD-ROM), whether it was CD-i or anything else. It was new at that time and had a number of limitations that programmers had to plan for, like a very slow read rate. So I mostly discussed the issues related to the CD drive. I know that Electronic Arts was there, because the guy who hired me into EA was at that lecture.

In 1995 you gave another conference related with interactivity, this time the theme was “The challenge of the Interactive Movie”.
This one was also directed to the CD-i games (and other platforms using Full Motion Video (FMV)?
This wasn’t about FMV specifically. It was about interactive storytelling, and the fact that the term “interactive movie” was very popular at that time, with games like The 7th Guest and others. But the lecture was a theoretical lecture about game design, and about what “interactive movie” really means.

Games made by Capdisc like Mad Dog McCree™ series, Crime Patrol series and other movie shooting games was related to this conference?
This wasn’t a CD-i conference, but a general developers’ conference. We had talks on many subjects. Most of them were not related to optical media machines.

Did you own or used to own a CD-i player at home?
If yes, can you tell us which model(s) and accessories?
Any games or movies?
I never owned a CD-i player of my own. I bought a used copy of 3rd Degree, but I never actually played it, because I have no machine to play it on.

You may have heard about the Zelda’s, Link and Mario games for so many reasons, what is your point of view about these games?
That’s too general a question! You have only named Nintendo games, and I can say that I think they are always very well made, with beautiful artwork. Shigeru Miyamoto is a very talented man.

Did you follow the CD-i timelife over the years? What is as developer, your opinion the hardest CD-i game or title ever made?
What is for you the best and the worst game on CD-i?
Sorry, as I said, I never owned one and never played any other games for it, even my own once I left the company. When I went to EA I went into PC programming and never looked back.

What CD-i should had to be a better game console at that time?
It was far too expensive and the idea that it could be a general-purpose entertainment machine was innovative but ultimately a failure. They should have concentrated only on games, and kept the price down.

How difficult is (I am talking in the present because the system still exist) to program a CD-i title (game or multimedia)?
I didn’t think it was that hard, but we weren’t really pushing the machine. No 3D, no fancy animation. Our game was really very simple. I don’t think I would want to program for it again. I’m used to having more memory!

As programmer of many platforms, how many years do people have to wait until the source code of a game can be accessible to other companies or for fan to create new levels or maps of there favourite game?
A large publisher such as EA or Nintendo will never, ever release the source code for a game. They just consider it too valuable as a matter of principle. But smaller companies, such as ID Software, might do so after 10 or 20 years–for example, they made the original Doom available.
Most modern games permit fans to create new levels or maps immediately, or within 2 or 3 years. That’s how they keep the game in the public’s mind.

In the early times of CD-i, EA was interested into CD-i, but for some reasons they jumped out of the boat. Do you heard anything about it?
Yes, there were two reasons they abandoned CD-i. The first and most obvious was that EA’s founder, Trip Hawkins, was setting up 3DO to make its own console that would compete with the CD-i player. EA was committed to supporting the 3DO Multiplayer, and it didn’t want to support both. Second, they thought that the CD-i Player would be unlikely to succeed in the market and wasn’t worth the money needed to research it and develop games for it. They were right about this (They failed to realize that the 3DO Multiplayer would also fail.).

A CD-i demo called “Welcome To Electronic Arts”, from 1988 exist. You had to rescue the CD-i team from being turned into female androids. EA founder Trip Hawkins and the CD-i dev tool Demulator II appears on a magazine to prove it. Did you knew this?
Nope, I’m sorry, I never saw the CD-i demo. But I didn’t start work at EA until 1992, by which time they had already abandoned the CD-i Player (I think) and were concentrating fully on the 3DO.

Thank you very much Dr. Adams, it was a plaisure for me.
Dr. ErnestAdams was interviewed by Omegalfa on 10th September 2018.

Here is a paper, Programming the CD-i player Ernest Adams wrote when he was programming 3rd Degree and kindly offer to us.
He kindly

You can visit Dr Ernest Adams website at: http://www.designersnotebook.com/

Ernest Adams bibliography:

Jeffrey aka TwBurn is the man behind the USB2CDi adapter and the homebrew CD-i game called Nobelia.

As a professional programmer, he choose to give a “little” of his time to the CD-i scene, and hopefully for us, he is pretty good in what he do.
We all know the USB2CDi adapter that let you connect many modern controllers to your CD-i, but lately, he decided to start programming a CD-i game.
A Demo version will shortly see the day and it is the perfect time to interview him and see what is in his mind!

Omegalfa: Hey Jeffrey! How are you? For the people who still don’t know who you are, can you let us know a little bit more about you?
Where are you come from and what is your experience in the homebrew scene?
TwBurn: I’m Jeffrey, from the Netherlands. I don’t really have any experience with the homebrew scene, or game/hardware development. We had a CD-i player when I was a kid (my dad worked at Philips, he brought one home one day – first a 180/181 and later we got a 470, which I still have), I always loved that thing. A few years ago I bought two more players and a lot of accessories and games. During COVID I was looking for a new hobby, and remembered the boxes on the attic, it all spiraled out of control from there.

Omegalfa: You are the creator of the USB to CD-i adaptor (USB2CDi).
You can’t imagine how incredibly important it is for the interactive community.
You published your work on The World of CD-i Forum and we thank you for that.
Tell us more about that, what kind of hardware can you connect to the CD-i player?
TwBurn: The USB2CDi project is actually two parts. First there is the Arduino Library I created, which acts as an interface to the CD-i player. Then I connected an USB Host Adapter and wrote some examples, that translate input to the CD-i. The USB Host adapter also supports Bluetooth, so wireless controllers are supported as well.
So basically anything that you can connect to an Arduino can act as a controller for the CD-i. Stuff like joysticks, keyboard, mice. I also experimented with using a WiiMote as a sort of “peacekeeper”
You’re not limited to USB/BlueTooth input, you could also hook up a NES/SNES or the newer Wii-adapter like controllers (used by the NES/SNES mini for example).
In the current version I also support two players; if wired up correctly, and to a CD-i player that supports the splitter adapter, the USB2CDi can act as a splitter and provide input for two players, using a single Arduino/cable to the CD-i.

Omegalfa: Do you have a compatibility list?
TwBurn: I’ve got “production like” code for mouse, keyboard, WiiMote and Wii U Pro controller using Bluetooth, and a Magic NS stick, which you can connect all kinds of controllers to.
The main issue here is that for each kind of controller you need to load new code to the Arduino.

Omegalfa: Are you thinking in increasing the compatibility? What about a PlayStation or Xbox controller?
TwBurn: I don’t own those myself, so it’s hard to test it out. But with some programming knowledge it should be fairly straightforward to get them to work.

Omegalfa: You faced many difficulties for sure until you got a satisfying result. Can you tell us the biggest ones?
TwBurn: The biggest issue was getting the USB controllers to work without lag. The communication to the CD-i player is very slow (in the order of 40 updates/second) so the USB buffer would fill up while transmitting the current state, introducing “lag” – ie the cursor would keep moving for a bit even if you let go of the stick.
In the end I solved this by implementing the communication to the CD-i player myself, instead of relying on a serial library. The serial library would block while transmitting, while my own code works of timer interrupts, which doesn’t block the execution of code.

Omegalfa: How difficult do you think it is for a rooky to build one using your open-source in a scale between 0 to 10? How long would it take?
TwBurn: Provided you got the parts, basic soldering skills are required to build an adapter, shouldn’t take more than an hour or two. If you use controllers where there’s already code for, no programming experience is necessary, only install the Arduino suite to load the software onto the Arduino. If you have a controller that’s not yet implemented, a bit of programming experience is handy, but I’d be happy to help in those cases.

Omegalfa: Do you sell them? Already mounted?
TwBurn: I’ve sold a few so far, I still have parts left, if anyone is interested, I’d be happy to build a few more. I put them in a small case and a CD-i connector, so they’re ready to use. You’d only need a micro-USB cable to supply power to it.

Omegalfa: For many people, just making the USB2CDi would be a giant task, for you it wasn’t enough. So you decided to jump into a new challenge, create a new CD-i game!
The 1^st homebrew CD-i game was Frog Feast back in 2005 by Charles Doty (Rastersoft) and many years later Gameblabla made Super Quartet in 2019, still under work (need to solve sound and other minor issues).
Why?
TwBurn: Because it seemed a nice and fun challenge, It hadn’t really been done before, and I was curious if I could pull it off.

Omegalfa: We are talking about a Bomberman style game but with a female character. Did you had already the idea in mind of this kind of game?
TwBurn: No, Initially I wanted to build something else first, but that would need more features, like scrolling. So I decided I’d make a more straight-forward game first, Bomberman seemed like a good idea, tile based, no scrolling, simple gameplay. While making the game I’d get more ideas and added those into it as well. So even at the moment there’s a lot more in the game than I originally planned.
I’m bad at graphics so I used open game assets, and I liked the style of both the tiles and the game character, so I took those.

Omegalfa: Nobelia is the game’s name. Any reason for this name?
TwBurn: It’s a wordplay on “Nobel” – as in Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite. Nobelia can either refer to the female protagonist or to the mystical land she finds herself in – you can pick which you prefer for yourself 😉

Omegalfa: As professional programmer, this is your 1^st game attempt?
TwBurn: Yes and no. I once made a version of Pac Panic for a 8k (iirc) javascript challenge (8K for the HTML, Javascript and images combined) – and at university we made a (multiplayer) game with cars that shoot vegetables at each other. But those are all ages ago.

Omegalfa: The game looks amazing!
A Demo version will be very soon available publicly with a free download and burnable on a CD-R.
Are you thinking in publishing it?
TwBurn: I might, I’m currently still thinking about where I want to take the game. The demo has 4 levels, each with it’s own “gimmick”, I’m not sure how many levels I’d want for a full game, and how I can keep them all interesting given the limited size of the screens. I might make a boxed version if there’s interest in that.

Omegalfa: I just can’t imagine how difficult it has been to just reach the 4 playable levels.
Can you tell us the biggest difficulties you faced?
TwBurn: Biggest hurdle was getting started, getting a development environment running and setting up the code to boot into a game. All the tools are severely outdated.
The rest was pretty straight forward, though the loading of assets and sound/music were the biggest problems.

Omegalfa: Cdifan, the man behind the CD-i emulator did helped you on both Nobelia and USB2CDi, would it be possible to, at least, make Nobelia?
TwBurn: Well, it certainly would have taken a lot longer, and I might not have figured everything out by myself.
Cdifan helped a lot with the coding aspect, giving hints on how to tackle certain problems.

Omegalfa: The documentation are enough? What would you like to see available to turn it easier for future people interested in making a CD-i game?
TwBurn: Once you have found all the documentation, and have a reasonable programming experience, it’s pretty understandable. The main issue is the outdated tools and compiler and such. They don’t run on modern PC’s, require a 32-bit Windows (VM) – and the compiler can be quite finicky/buggy at times.
Also testing the game can be tough. CD-i Emulator is a great help, since I don’t want to burn a CD-R for each build.

Omegalfa: How many levels the game will get?
TwBurn: I’m not sure yet, will depend on how many levels I can make without them becoming stale/repetitive.

Omegalfa: Are you going to add extra features on it?
I mean 2 players (head-to-head)? High scores? Options (music/SFX on/off and difficulty)? Credits page?
TwBurn: This one will remain one player, it’s more of a single-player-adventure kind of game than actual Bomberman at the moment. No scoring system, I wouldn’t know what would be an interesting way to assign scores to this. Options maybe if they would add something. I do plan on adding some buttons to the title screen, maybe a level select or a save feature. The demo doesn’t have lives, I don’t think I’ll add those because I feel that’s just artificial difficulty. I will remove the “resurrection” feature that’s currently there (if you press button 2 when you died, you’ll resurrect at the same place)

Omegalfa: Is the final version going to need the Digital Video Cartridge (DVC) for the extra memory?
TwBurn: No, I don’t think there will be a lot of things added that will require more memory. Levels are very small and only loaded in when needed.

Omegalfa: You are known as TwBurn on the web. The Discord server did helped in getting fast answers. How do think the people’s involvement and reaction about the Philips CD-i is getting outside the community?
TwBurn: The Discord really helped, I love that as a way for fast communication, so I was lucky that started around the same time I started building the game.
There are some phenomenal people on there, with very intimate knowledge of the hardware and software side of the CD-i, a great love for the system and the willingness to share and help others with their knowledge. Those really make the community.
The CD-i community seems quite segmented, there are a few different sites, Facebook and discord, for the (small) total size of the community this can be a bit challenging, to reach the right people.

Omegalfa: Thank you very much for the time you spend answering the questions.
What would you like to say to future interested people in developing CD-i homebrew titles?
TwBurn: Give it a go, it’s a lot of fun and if you get stuck there’s a lot of people, including me, that are willing to help! In all honesty I hope to inspire other people to take up the gauntlet and do some hardware/software development for the CD-i.

Thank you very much for your time Jeffrey, good luck with the development of this game and who knows… maybe another one in the future!

omegalfa 08/05/2021

Hi reader, this is the CD-i Queen. As you may know, I consider myself to be one of the most dedicated and passionate fans of the game Laser Lords, most notably for my Zendo maquette.
In the last year, I was lucky enough to get in contact with Keith Lehman and Paul Day, two fellows who worked on the production of the game. They agreed to answer a plentiful array of
questions related to the game, Dale Desherone, Startribes and a few other topics. Keith was my main point of contact and answered the majority of the questions.
It was an honor to be able to pick these guys’ brains. They were working on these games before I was born!

I hope you all enjoy reading my interview as much as I enjoyed coming up with the questions.

CDIQUEEN: Keith, you told me that you were an engineer for Spinnaker software. You were the first CD-i “Wizard” there, so you were involved with the technical aspects for their games, including for the production of Laser Lords. While the game is not as notorious as The Faces of Evil or Hotel Mario, Laser Lords is definitely a fan favorite. What the fanbase lacks in size, we make up with our passion.
Anybody reading (or watching) this interview will already know how big of a Laser Lords fan I am, and so I’m going to ask you many questions about the story and the characters, knowing
that you might not be able to answer them. I hope that we can generate some interesting conversation, whether it’s here or in discussions about this interview.
Some of the questions are admittedly a little out there, because they are things I’ve always wondered about, figuring I wouldn’t ever get answers. I’ve also had some questions asked on
behalf of Omegalfa, the frontman for The World of CD-i site, and a personal friend of mine. You’ve given me some background on your work, but would you like to give an introduction for your fans?

KEITH: It really seems like an overstatement to call them “my fans” – but my ego thanks you nonetheless. I was using C and 68000 assembly language to write programs (this was before C++ even), working with the Sun systems we used for emulation, and eventually these very large, very noisy CD-i emulators (about 6’ tall and 4’x4’ wide – my ears are still ringing from the noise they made when we turned them on!). Since then, I’ve been sort of a serial technical entrepreneur and for the past 20 years I have focused on what I like to call the intersection of
the green economy and IT. Back when it all started, CD-i was really way ahead of its time. You have to realize that the CD-ROM hadn’t really taken off yet, so the idea that a set-top box could have such rich content was truly revolutionary. At the beginning though, all we had was a specification: there were no emulators, no hardware that could run CD-i software. At Spinnaker, the initial team was very small. At first, I was the only programmer there involved in CD-i at all. Michael Edge joined at about the same time we received the first emulators, and others soon after.

CDIQUEEN: Michael Edge is a name you mentioned a lot in our conversations. Also Dale Desharone, the creative genius behind Laser Lords who, sadly, is no longer with us. Paul Day, who we are lucky enough to have answer questions here, as well. Also of note is Ron Valentine Joyce, who created all the clay maquettes. Unfortunately, Ron is also no longer with us.

KEITH: Michael Edge joined about the same time we received the first emulators. He’s brilliant, and was the real expert responsible for the video compression technique we used for the clay animation. He went by “Medge” back then, and I still call him that. He and I went on to found Ledge Multimedia not long after Spinnaker exited the game industry. I’ll have to check with Paul, but I am pretty sure he joined Ledge when we were finishing up Laser Lords and the other CD-i titles we did for AIM. I should also mention John Wheeler and Normand DesMaris. John did much of the programming on Laser Lords. Of the four of us (me, Medge, Norm, and John), he was the only one who stayed with gaming. In addition to working with Dale, I am pretty sure he worked at Papyrus and then founded Blue Fang Games.

PAUL: Medge is old friends with my wife. I was an unsuccessful actor with a new child. I knew Medge from [the] South Carolina crowd. It was brought up that Spinnaker needed
someone to test Laser Lords and I got hired. The whole Davey and Goliath meets Interstellar god-knows-what unsettled me. The game shocked me on occasion, especially with “I gotta take a leak.” I know there are a few bugs that crash the game that involved jumping into walls in certain places. I’d write them up and they’d come back to me and say, “we can’t make this happen.” I’d pick up the controller and crash the game. I guess I was the only one who could do it. I felt pretty ignorant of the technology. The whole games-on-CD thing seemed odd to me.
Keith and Medge left to form Ledge Multimedia. They got a contract to do Spanish and Dutch versions of Laser Lords and also Alice In Wonderland and, since I knew the games, brought me along . As a result, I know that “effe pissen” means “I’ve got to take a leak” in Dutch. Also, after I was given a CD-i machine to take home, I could stay up as late as I wanted and when my wife would complain, I’d say, “Well…if you want our baby to starve….”

CDIQUEEN: I’m going to dive right into the questions about Laser Lords. Later, we’ll talk a bit about Dale DeSharone, other games and the CD-i, too.
Did you have anything to do with Philips, or were you strictly employed by Spinnaker?

KEITH: Initially, I worked for Spinnaker. They decided to leave the gaming industry in 1991, so I started freelancing for Philips. My first two contracts for them were to finish Sargon Chess and to port the GNU C compiler to OS-9. Those contracts allowed me to set up Ledge Multimedia in 1992, and Medge and others came on board soon after.

CDIQUEEN: I know this is a broad question, but generally speaking, what was working on Laser Lords like?

KEITH: We had a lot of fun. Once we really got into production, there were artists, a writer, voice actors, a sound booth, and musicians. Working with such creative people was exciting. We were also pushing the envelopes for what was technically possible. I am pretty sure that Laser Lords was the first computer game to use stop motion animation, blue screen, and lots of other techniques. Medge had to write his own screen grabbing and animation software, which was pretty awesome. While it might look old today, there really was nothing else like it back
then. I am fairly certain that Laser Lords was the first game to ever use clay animation and blue screen video techniques.

CDIQUEEN: How big was the entire staff, and were you all in the same facility?

KEITH: We were working on 5 titles at the same time: Laser Lords, Sargon Chess, Paint School, Alice In Wonderland, and Story Machine. There were never more than three or four
programmers, plus one to three artists, a sound technician/musician, the writer, and our game designer/producer (Dale). We were all at Spinnaker’s offices in Cambridge, but we were spread
out and with the exception of me and Medge, rarely worked in the same room.

CDIQUEEN: The music was composed by Toni Trippi. Did you work with him at all?

KEITH: Toni had a small office of his own where he could work on his music, so we didn’t spend much time together. He and Bill Havlicek did the music and sound effects for Sargon Chess and most of the other CD-i games, and I worked with them fairly closely on those.

CDIQUEEN: I’m sure you know about the CD-i Zelda games, and how they had sublet the animated sequences to Animation Magic. Was any part of Laser Lords sublet to another company?

KEITH: Spinnaker exited the contract with Philips before any of the CD-i titles were completed. We all worked as contractors to finish them, and most of the final work was done at Ledge Multimedia. Ledge also did the foreign language ports for all of Spinnaker’s CD-i games and a few others, so Laser Lords was a big part of that company too. Dale went on to start Animation Magic. Most of the work for Zelda was done in Russia – probably the first foreign software company to work there after the collapse of the USSR.

CDIQUEEN: How long was it in production? Do you know the day it was completed?

KEITH: It took a very long time. Probably 5 years from conception to completion, perhaps even longer. I would think I would remember the day we sent off the final tape for the “gold master”, but I don’t. Medge, Paul, or John might.

PAUL: Really, the thing I remember most was how finicky the burning software was and how the hard drive had to be completely defragmented or it was an 85% failure rate.

CDIQUEEN: It’s been about 30 years since the game was released. How does it feel to know people are still loving and playing it?

KEITH: I think it’s great! I wish I still had a working player and could have played it with my daughter. I’ve also really enjoyed watching your videos on it. I’d forgotten all of the double entendres and innuendo. But there are some interesting stories I remember that go along with a few of the props…

PAUL: Every year or two, like The Godfather III, Laser Lords pops up and sucks me BACK IN. It’s almost always Europeans. I remember one said “we played it as a family during winter break.” Keith will email “Do you still have the maps of…” or “Do you remember how this worked?” At first, I sort of did but age is making those memories fade. I should look for the
maps.

CDIQUEEN: Yes, yes you should. I know I speak for the rest of us Laser Lords fans when I say we would love to see any kind of obscure relic!
During these last few decades, have you spent much time thinking about the game, or is it just another gig that’s faded away?

KEITH: It’s still the most fun I’ve ever had working in software. I keep a framed poster on the wall of my home office. I wouldn’t say I spend much time thinking about it though – my life is busy and very full.

CDIQUEEN: How was work given out to you? For example, was Laser Lords something you chose to work on, or was it just another assignment from Spinnaker; “You’re working on this
game now.”

KEITH: My primary focus was actually Sargon Chess, but there was no real engineering or technical management, and I’ve always had a tendency to simply set about solving problems when I can, so I ended up writing bits and pieces and helping out with all of the titles.

CDIQUEEN: Do you have any idea what the game’s budget was?

KEITH: Budgets back then were a small fraction of what they are today. It started out at about $200,000. All of the early titles went way over budget. Fortunately, Philips stepped in and helped out so nobody went out of business.

CDIQUEEN: Do you know how many copies were sold?

KEITH: I don’t, but I don’t think it was very many. Certainly not enough to cover the costs of Philip’s investment.

CDIQUEEN: Does anyone still own the source code?

KEITH: The source code would have been owned by AIM or Philips. I’ve no idea if anyone still has copies though.

CDIQUEEN: Conversations have popped up here and there about an early beta version of Laser Lords called “Startribes: Myth of the Dragon Lord.” There are a couple of supposed
screenshots from this game as well as a printed advertisement, but nothing is concrete and nobody knows anything else about it. Do you know about this? I know there are fans that would
love to hear more about it, myself included.

KEITH: Startribes was written for the PC. John Eric Olmstead wrote the program. We ended up using the game engine, most of the story, and most if not all of the worlds in [Laser Lords]. The outer space gameplay was unique to [Laser Lords] though. The main [Laser] Lords character was also the character from Startribes. He’s buffer than I ever was, but I posed for the Startribes artist so she could create the fight sequences – she was having trouble getting his fighting poses to look anything close to realistic. I’m really not sure if that’s something I should be proud of or embarrassed by…

PAUL: Don’t listen to Keith. He was pretty damn buff. I remember when Ledge got bought he literally did a backflip from a standing position.

CDIQUEEN: The Startribes game appears to be intended for PC. Do you know why Laser Lords was only released on the CD-i?

KEITH: CD-i was far more capable than anything the PC had to offer back then. We could never have produced the video sequences on the PCs or Macs of the day. Nor could we have
counted on players having a CD-ROM drive, so it simply wasn’t possible to produce computer games with such rich stories and graphics – let alone the rich full color stop action animation.

CDIQUEEN: To me, the title “Startribes: Myth of the Dragon Lord” suggests it was going to be a series. Do you suppose they intended to make more than one game in that universe?
Considering how much is going on in the game, I think it could easily have a sequel or prequel at the very least.

KEITH: A sequel or prequel would certainly have been fun, but I don’t think any of the ideas for either of those were ever fleshed out to any degree. There are enough questions left unanswered though that either one could have been made. Where do the Star Lords reside?
Have these cycles occurred before? Will they occur again? When and why did the rules prohibiting a Star Lord from manifesting come into being? Those rules can clearly be broken, which implies a reason for their creation in the first place.

CDIQUEEN: What is your favorite part of Laser Lords?

KEITH: The interstellar animations – there’s no contest.

PAUL: I always liked the sound of the guy walking. I need to go back and watch your videos to refresh myself.

CDIQUEEN: Which story do you think is the most tragic?

KEITH: Dale’s. He was a really good friend. I was in Japan when he passed away, and am sorry that I couldn’t be there. Ron’s story is also tragic. He passed away before the game was released.

CDIQUEEN: Do you have a favorite character? Personally, I like Colonel Hemeprotus. I think he has a lot of potential to be an interesting character with many rich stories to tell.

PAUL: The mechanic was my favorite and although I don’t remember the exact dialog, I still think of it about once a month.

CDIQUEEN: For those of you reading along at home, you may recall Astal saying, “Where the zook is that soot-sucking, nose-thrasin’, mother spittin’ tool?”
What element of the game, whether it be a character, a planet, an item, etc do you find to be the most unique and intriguing?

PAUL: The claymation was wild. I have to go back to Davey and Goliath which always kind of creeped me out.

CDIQUEEN: I think the backgrounds are well designed. What software was used to make them, and how did you get them to animate?

KEITH: Do you mean the backgrounds for clay animations or for the on-planet adventures? The world building engine was a custom engine created for Startribes. I am pretty sure that it included a simple paint program for creating the individual building blocks used to draw the scenes. Medge might remember how the backgrounds for the clay animation sequences were
created. My recollection is that they were all drawn or painted by hand, then combined with the animation sequences using a custom production tool that Medge wrote. There was nothing
comparable back then. We wrote our own software to grab the images from a digitizing board, strip out the blue backgrounds for the clay animations, and stitch it all together.

CDIQUEEN: Who came up with the concept of the elevator-like beams that you use to go up and down floors? Did they have a name?

KEITH: Floor to floor elevators were a pretty common technique in 2D games back then. I don’t think we ever named them.

CDIQUEEN: Again on the backgrounds; I like the color schemes. Who decided to make Tekton all pink and purple? I would generally lean towards a droid-world being all gray.

KEITH: Ron provided artistic direction for all of the visuals, although Dale likely had final say.

CDIQUEEN: Who drew the Bel Air and the desert from the opening sequence?

KEITH: I think that was done for the original Star Tribes. We had an artist named Corey, and another named Tanya working on that project. I believe that one of them might have made those graphics..

CDIQUEEN: Are there any secrets, any easter eggs hiding in the game? I know there’s a secret door to the Gongor’s fountain hiding in the Bibliotech bookshelf, but that’s all I’ve been able to find.

KEITH: I asked Medge and John this the other day. As far as any of us can remember, there are no easter eggs in Laser Lords. There is one in Sargon Chess though. There is even a text file hidden on the disk that contains a clue as to how to find it. If someone asks me, I can give them the hint… although you will need a working copy of Sargon to find the egg.

CDIQUEEN: Do any inside jokes among the staff come to mind?

KEITH: Certainly! The purple crystal that Sarpedon holds in the opening sequence knew many secrets…

CDIQUEEN: The voice acting is all pretty bad. Did you work with the actors? Were they trying to be bad on purpose?

KEITH: We actually built a sound booth and hired professional voice over actors for most (if not all) of the audio. But there was always a playful/silly/sometimes cynical attitude in the air. Before designing games, Dale taught kindergarten, and so I believe the over-acting was deliberate.

CDIQUEEN: I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I only recently learned (from a viewer on my livestream) that you can easily defeat Dysseosus by giving him Nectar. I know it’s digging back into the vault, but do any tips and tricks like that come to mind?

KEITH: I’ll have to pass this one over to Paul and John. They would be the most likely to know what other tricks are available.

PAUL: The biggest tip is to have the maps and scripts in front of you 😀  If I remember, I had to play it through without at first. That knowledge [is] so buried in my subconscious.

CDIQUEEN: You do realize that the in-game fighting is a joke, right?

KEITH: Tanya had a tough time with the graphics for the in-game fighting, the controllers of those days were quite limited, and Dale was almost (but not quite) a pacifist, so… yes, the fighting is a joke.

CDIQUEEN: “All of life is a misadventure” says Jaxus, the captain of the Seminum Omegan. The whole game is pretty much a joke, right?

PAUL: It’s not Breath of the Wild. But it definitely has value since here we are talking about it. I suppose the same could be said for The Room, too.

CDIQUEEN: Are any characters modeled after members of the staff?

KEITH: Tanya, the artist who drew Warrior, asked me to pose for her. As far as I know, that’s about as close as we got to modeling any characters on staff members.

CDIQUEEN: I played the heck out of this game as a kid, so much that I actually managed to find the Bronze Star hiding in the sewers without being told to find it first. I was only able to win it after finding a walkthrough that someone managed to put together. Did you ever expect people to win the game?

KEITH: I was so disappointed by the Philips rollout of the whole CD-i line that I really didn’t think anyone would ever finish the game. It’s really great to learn that you and so many others had fun playing it!

CDIQUEEN: Once upon a time, I got myself trapped by selling the Ship Receipt to the Bizarre Bazaar, thus being unable to get off the Seminum Omegan. There are many instances where you can get stuck. Do you realize how unforgiving the game can be?

PAUL: Yes. I do. Believe me, I do. And this is a good place to do a quick PSA about game testing. It is not glamorous. Kids, testing is a long, hard slog. You will come to hate the game you’re playing unless you really want to get into the industry. Alice in Wonderland pushed me to the point where I was hearing “waarom doe je dat?” in my sleep.

KEITH: LOL! Everyone who worked near me got sick and tired of hearing “It gets dark so early… aren’t you a little afraid?” and other one-liners from Sargon Chess.

CDIQUEEN: I read an article that claims the temple guard on Luxor, Menkh, is married to the dominatrix on the Seminum Omegan. You know the fake password, “Daphne Dances”? They
seem to think you can jog her memory with that password, but I’ve never been able to figure it out. Is there legitimacy to this?

KEITH: I don’t know for certain, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Dale and I were both part of the Dance New England community, so that sounds like something Dale would have fit into the story in some way.

CDIQUEEN: The same article said, in jest of course, that “Laser Lords is the best Star Trek game out there.” Your thoughts?

PAUL: I’ve never been a sci-fi person which kind of makes me an anomaly.

KEITH: The Laser Lords universe has no relation to the Star Trek universe. If anything, it draws more on The Last Starfighter for inspiration.

CDIQUEEN: Okay, I want to talk more about Dale Desharone, the main brain behind the game.
Sadly, he passed away some time ago, but I’ve been told he was the visionary behind the game.
I have heard nothing but good about Dale. What was working with him like?

KEITH: In many ways, I knew Dale better out of the office than in the office. In the office, he was focused on the story and spent most of his time with the writer Jonathan Merritt, the artists (especially Ron), or working hard to get us the resources we needed to complete the titles. I remember he was fairly hands off as long as you were making good progress. Out of the office, we were friends and were both a little active in the Dance New England community. He, my wife Robin, and I would often see each other at one or the other weekly dances.

CDIQUEEN: How much control did he have over the visuals? Did he control every bit, or were you allowed lots of artistic freedom?

KEITH: Dale was not at all controlling. He would push for quality, but everyone had a good deal of latitude to create the characters and tell the story the way they wanted to.

CDIQUEEN: Having worked closely with Dale, how do you suppose he would respond to my absolute love for the game?

KEITH: I think Dale would have laughed a big laugh and smiled. A few summers before I met Dale, I spent a lot of time playing an earlier game of his called “Below The Root.” Dale got a big kick out of it when I told him I had completed that game.

CDIQUEEN: Having known Dale personally, what do you think would be an appropriate way for us, as fans, to honor his legacy?

KEITH: Celebrate Life. Pursue Peace. Embrace Adventure.

CDIQUEEN: Damn, if that doesn’t make you emotional, I don’t know what will. There is definitely a common theme throughout the planets of greediness destroying peaceful societies. Do you suppose Dale was trying to tell us anything, or was he simply making what he found to be an interesting story?

KEITH: Dale was certainly trying to reinforce the message that cooperation is more effective than competition and that greed eventually leads to ruin.

CDIQUEEN: In my spare time, I’ve been working on a novel based on Laser Lords. I’ve been thinking about making a video where I explain the synopsis and what I plan to do with the story, since I probably won’t ever finish it. What are your thoughts on that?

KEITH: You’ve shown that you can complete projects that you start, so what makes you think you won’t ever finish the story? I am confident you can do it – and strongly encourage you to do so. Let the video come later.

CDIQUEEN: How does it feel to know that Laser Lords served as the base inspiration for all of my artistic outlets, and how do you think Dale would feel about that?

KEITH: There’s really very little that would have made Dale happier. Did you know he taught kindergarten before becoming a game designer? He wanted to create games that taught people and encouraged people to have faith in humanity and in life.

PAUL: I am so happy for that! Inspiration is anywhere you look for it!

CDIQUEEN: I find the dialogue system in Laser Lords to be really cool and extremely ingenuitive. Who came up with the idea of continuing dialogue by selecting highlighted words, plus essentially using words and songs as key items?

KEITH: This was a fairly common technique back then. Before CD-i, most games didn’t have voice audio, just silly music and sound effects. So this sort of interface was used. What was really unique for CD-i, was that we could control CD quality audio with sub-second resolution – meaning that we could tell the device to play the audio we wanted.

CDIQUEEN: Is there anything you would like to share regarding any other games you worked on?

KEITH: I’ve been waiting for years for someone to ask me about the Sargon easter egg…

CDIQUEEN: As a kid, I definitely played Alice in Wonderland much more than Laser Lords, but nothing seems too memorable about the game. Is it worth revisiting, or is it essentially just a kid’s game running on a simplified Laser Lords engine?

PAUL: I thought Alice in Wonderland was dull after testing Laser Lords. I don’t remember anything particularly interesting about it. But given your dedication, you never know what you’ll find.

CDIQUEEN: Which title was your favorite to work on?

KEITH: Definitely Laser Lords.

CDIQUEEN: Which do you think is the best actual game, gameplay wise, you’ve worked on?

KEITH: Laser Lords again.

CDIQUEEN: Of course, that’s assuming you’ve played them. Do you actually play the games you work on, and do you consider yourself a gamer at all?

KEITH: I didn’t have much time to actually play any of the games I worked on. My gaming days essentially ended when we finished those games. I did play Zelda on the Game Cube and Wii, and a few other games, when my daughter was old enough.

CDIQUEEN: Obviously, time has proven that the CD-i was a failed system. Working on the inside, what was the climate like? Did people suspect it was going to fail, or were they generally excited to be working on the software, expecting it to be a big breakthrough in the technological world?

KEITH: We knew it was an uphill climb – especially once the Multimedia computers became popular. Most of us thought that AIM, Philips, and Sony were too conservative, and would (at best) end up as a niche player in the educational market. Beta had only recently lost out to VHS in the home video market, and the “dirty little secret” was that porn was always the “killer app” driving sales of most new media technologies. But while CD-ROM and VHS porn began to flood the market, it was completely off limits for CD-i.

CDIQUEEN: Do you know about Nobelia, the CD-i homebrew game created by Jeffrey Janssen? What do you think about people making new CD-i games in the modern age?

KEITH: I am quite impressed. You would have to be very dedicated to collect enough tools and old hardware to pull this off.

CDIQUEEN: Speaking of, how do you feel about the modern CD-i community? It’s not very big, but there are absolutely a lot of hardcore fans out there.

KEITH: I think it’s great! I would love to play with some of the old games again.

CDIQUEEN: I don’t know a whole lot about software and engineering, but what kinds of programs, resources etc did you utilize for CD-i that was a positive experience?

KEITH: Nearly everything, other than the platform itself, had to be written from scratch. So we got to play with aht at the time was pretty advanced tech. We had early screen and audio grabbing hardware, a coaxial TCP/IP network, and “oodles” of hard drives – some even as large as 650 Mb. Today, of course, a tiny sim or $20 flash drive has nearly 2,000 times as much storage – but back then it was unheard of to have that much. As a young nerd, it was really great!

PAUL: Once Ledge started, I learned from the ground up. Keith explained how token ring networks worked, [threw] the cable [at] me and said “Go.” I remember feeding the floppies into our brand new Novell 3.1 server. Later, when it started crashing a lot, I remember going to Keith and telling him it would keep crashing unless we got another 16mb of RAM. “We can’t afford that,” Keith said, “it’s like $3200!”

CDIQUEEN: Same question, only what was negative? What really didn’t work?

KEITH: Definitely the first emulators. We had two of them, and when they were turned on it was like trying to work next to an airplane. Loud didn’t begin to describe it.

PAUL: Burning things was horrific back then. The external hard drives had to be completely defragged first. People were afraid to look at the burner because it seemed really sensitive. We held our breath after each burn. And blank CDs were $10/ea.

CDIQUEEN: How often do CD-i fans reach out to you?

PAUL: I’d say I get an email every year or three from Keith saying “Hey! Someone wanted to know…”

CDIQUEEN: To wrap up, is there anything else you’d like to add that I didn’t touch on?

PAUL: Ledge was an amazing place to work at. It literally started me on an IT career. Keith came to me and said “Hey, do you know how to swap out a hard drive in a Mac?” I said, no, I didn’t. He said, “You do it like this. Now you do it. Are you gonna run?” It was a friendly challenge rather than some kind of power thing. A few months later, I was basically running the network. Keith and Medge were always fun and supportive.

Thanks for your time! I hope you enjoyed answering these questions as much as I enjoyed coming up with them. I know it was a lot, but it’s been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to ask them! It means a lot to communicate with someone who was involved with something I love so much, and to get answers to things I always wondered about.

Good Evening Mr. Olivier Raoul,
I know you have a very busy agenda and so, let me thank you for this very precious time you are according to us.
Before anything, let me make a short presentation to our readers about you and your work on CD-i along the years.
You worked at TF1, a French TV channel since 1992 and 2002 passing through several departments along the years.
You was the chef of the team who worked on Le Journal Interactif 94 TF1, Le Journal Interactif 95 TF1 and a game not very known by people outside France: “Un Indien dans la Ville” taken from the French movie (Little Indian, Big City).
I will start with questions about Le Journal Interactif 94 TF1 and Le Journal Interactif 95 TF1.

– Why TF1 decided to launch Le Journal Interactif 94 TF1 on CD-i? Why on CD-i and not in other consoles of the era like Neo Geo and Playstation?
The main objective of TF1 was to do a CD intend for the general public and for family usage. This definition was just as well to take in consideration for the subjects treated, for the communication or the adopted ergonomics as well as for the exploited park. Well evidently, the product had to touch the users again technologies but without forgetting the remainder of the population (TF1 is a general public channel). Out to the era, the multimedia PC was again of a too exclusive usage (CSP + +), expensive, complicated and rarely positioned in a family mood (example: the living room). On the other hand, the CD-i allowed to do the full screen video (main trade of TF1) and not the CD-ROM (quarter of screen maximum). The market of the consoles 32 bits was just borned. It was not excluded from our analysis. The creation was to much complicate and TF1 was not helped by the builders, in contrast to the CD-i with Philips.
In any case, it was necessary that the “TF1 CD” respects the picture of the channel. This is to say that it had to be broadcasting and use the strong symbols of the channel. The Philips CD-i respected these criterias and it was one of the rare mass supports to allow video full screen, Full Motion Video (FMV) or Digital Video.

– Philips Media France helped TF1 Entreprises in the creation of this title, under which form?
The penetration rate of the CD-i player was about 0.6% (source BIPE – October 1994). At the end of 1994, 100,000 CD-i players of which 20,000 to 30,000 was equipped with a FMV and constituted the French park and close to 1 million in the world. At the end of 1995, Philips had the ambition to attain the 200,000 to 250,000 CD-i players in France and between 2 to 2,5 million unity in the world. To the picture of SONY with the PlayStation, Philips wished to distribute his console by the offers that it put forward. TF1/PHILIPS have realized a co-production.

The mass market for this kind of titles aiming exclusively a French-speaking public did not exist again: it was a matter to occupy the land with quality titles giving envies to the biggest number to invest in this kind of equipment. For this reason, the title was not marketed in “full price” but uniquely distributed in “bundle” by Philips (at last in 1994).

The forces of a distribution promotional by bundle were the following ones:
. Complete or compatibility of the product to the selected machines for the bundle
. The selected machines had access to performance allowing ambitious technical choices (video full screen, …)
. The consumer would discover the multimedia on his new machine while using our product
. The meadow sale of an important volume of titles was assured
. A strong partnership, development tools, promotion, …)
. The costs marketing and distribution reduce
. A possible recuperation by TF1 of data from Philips users

One of the objectives of Philips was equally co-product a title while putting forward the bill-posting possibilities in Full Motion Video (FMV) CD-i players. Who better than TF1 could do video general public in 1994?

– Why decide to create another title in the following year?
The success 🙂 ? On the other hand, the obtained competences could some left to be put back on the next titles being able to be to have realized by TF1 and for other products, as for example, the futures servers video (that them did not be again to the point, but were not going to delay the being)

– How long you needed to program each of them?
Less than a year (everything included, since the first meeting on this subject to the first sales).

– What was the reaction of the TF1’s journalists when they were informed of this project?
Good because the project was centralized by only one big reporter, Henri Chabon (it was an adaptation of the reportage for the transmission “reportage” (A French TV program).

– How many persons worked on these titles? It was the same team for the two titles?
Yes, I was the responsable of the “operational” of this project. But the team grown of a year on the other for 3 titles were realized in 1995: “Le Journal Interactif ’95” more his game, “Un Indien dans la Ville” (Little Indian, Big City) on GameBoy and CD-i. The better, is to look at the generic to determine exactly the number of intervening.

– Does TF1 thought to create “Le journal Interactif ’96 “? If yes, why it was never created, if no, why?
The climbed in too quick power of the costs linked to the multimedia ones (so, some risk) scared to TF1 (3, 10, 15, 25 persons… 3, 5, 20 million francs (French money) by title…). The exponential financial weight on my small shoulders of chief project pushed them to change strategy. They preferred to take 7% of TITUS, game corporation disappeared today.

– The two titles together sold well?
The games of the interactive TV news? Yes. Of memory, about 50,000 pieces by year.

– TF1 had other projects for the CD-i that never was realized?
I do not believe.

Now here is some questions concerning the VIDEO-CD “Un Indien dans la Ville” (Little Indian, Big City).

– TF1 and Philips Media France launch several VIDEO-CD’s between 1994 to 1995. Why to have you created a game fo this movie? Why other VIDEO-CD’s launched by TF1 does not contain based games on the movies?
Two reasons to these questions. A structural one, for all the others CD-i was realized by TF1 video. The other because Thierry Lhermitte had come to see us to do a CD-i game of the movie, as a good experience of the CD-i that we had and with the space remained on the disc 2, we did a rock 2 blows.

– Do you think that the advertising concerning this special VIDEO-CD (for containing a CD-i game) was sufficient?
I do not remind. But I know that I will have preferred that TF1 be more audacious concerning the game for GameBoy that it was very required (1,5 million consoles to the era and a big success of the movie “Un Indien dans la Ville” on the target 6-11 years)

– Is this the same team from “Le Journal Interactif” that worked on this game? How much time it been necessary to program it?
The same from the TV news title. The development was done by IDP. But in this kind of production, the development is of course an important point but not the main one.

– This VIDEO-CD sold well?
I do not remember. But the body of the 3 titles combined was a very beautiful success.

You are free to add any other information you may think be useful for our knowledge.
Surely… but now, it is late and I am tired 🙂 . Maybe another time

Thank you for accepting this interview and wish you a good night full of sweet CD-i players!
Thank you too, good night.

Olivier was interviewed by Omegalfa on 7th December 2005.