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

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.