Gdm June 1994

June 1994

G A M E D E V E L O P E R M A G A Z I N E

Now that game developers arefaced with the largest storagedevice in the history of theirindustry, what are they goingto do with it. Just as the com-mand line gave way to theGUI, this shiny ethereal disk ismuscling its dull, flimsy, mag-

netic ancestors out of the way. Lowermanufacturing costs were one of the firstbenefits, as low as a dollar a unit. Theywere lighter to ship and harder to dam-ageno more damaged PC disks. Theycan be repackaged without threat of cor-ruption or infection. And, as far as piracygoes, in the words of one developer,Nobody ever downloaded 500MB froma BBS.

But are they, as they are marketednow, a software platform separate fromdisk-based games, or are they merely astorage medium and should be treated assuch? When I ask developers what plat-form theyre writing for, more are sayingCD-ROM. When asked to clarify, theyusually say, Well, MPC2 and Macin-tosh first, then Sega CD and maybe3DO or CD-I. Clearly, theyre talkingabout high-end authoring systemsmanipulating either captured video orrendered images with CD-quality soundfilesa development process where themain emphasis is on raw data that can beused across a variety of platforms.

PlayabilityThe problem is, many newer CD-ROMgames have the playability equivalent ofPong games with captured video imagesof professional tennis players and CDquality sounds of bouncing balls. This isbecause high-level authoring systemsavailable can deliver the kind of perfor-mance that is needed on every platform,so most cross-platform CD-ROMs relyon a variety of kludges, just to get a sim-ple game manipulating video to work.

Games need to be more tightly integratedinto specific platforms to get good playa-bility, and more of the CD-ROMs crossplatform identity will be lost.

Stand or Fall?The potential of the CD-ROM as aplatform is tremendous because it isviewed as a superset not subset of theexisting computer game industry. Every-ones hoping that nontechnical peoplewho would never buy an Ultima, flightsimulator, or Doom will be willing to buya CD-ROM game designed to appeal toa wider audiencechanging the comput-er into interactive VCR. If these techni-cal neophytes first experience is a badone, for $60 a disk, theyre not going tocontinue making the same mistakes.

It will be this next year as these con-sumers make their first CD-ROM pur-chases that will determine the shape ofthe industry. If CD-ROM games areable to vary more in subject matter thantraditional computer games, retain theirplatform independence, and capture newdemographics, they will attain the statusof new platform. If not, they will just beanother means to get product to marketand will just be another label on the sideof the box. Regardless of the outcome, itlooks as if the CD-ROM is here to stay.

Alexander AntoniadesAssociate Editor

CD-ROM: Packageor Platform?

G A M E P L A N

2 GAME DEVELOPER JUNE 1994

Editor Larry [email protected]

Associate Editor Alexander [email protected]

Production Editor Barbara [email protected]

Editorial Assistant Andrea [email protected]

Cover Photography Carter Dow Photography

Publisher Veronica ConstanzaProject Coordinator Nicole Freeman

[email protected]

Group Director Regina Starr Ridley

Advertising Sales Staff

New England/Midwest

Angela Barnett (415) [email protected]

West/Southwest

Yvonne Labat (415) [email protected]

Marketing Manager Susan McDonaldArt Director/Marketing Christopher H. ClarkeAdvertising Production Coordinator Denise TempleDirector of Production Andrew A. MickusVice President/Circulation Jerry M. OkabeGroup Circulation Director John RockwellCirculation Manager Gina Oh [email protected] Assistant Philip Payton [email protected] Manager Pam SantoroReprints Andrea Varni (415) 905-2552

Chairman of the Board Graham J.S. WilsonPresident/CEO Marshall W. FreemanExecutive Vice President/COO Thomas L KempSenior Vice Presidents H. Vern Packer, Donald A.Pazour, Wini D. RagusVice President/CFO Warren (Andy) AmbroseVice President/Administration Charles H. BenzVice President/Production Andrew A. MickusVice President/Circulation Jerry OkabeVice President/Software Development Division

Regina Starr Ridley

MGA EGAME

MillerFreemanA MEMBER OF THE UNITED NEWSPAPERS GROUP

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Get Your Gameon a CD-ROM

C D - R O M G A M E S

The concept of developing gamesspecifically for CD-ROM orporting existing products ontoCD-ROM is appealing and a bitfrightening. There are advan-tages to using the CD-ROM asa delivery platform, and there aretechnological barriers as well.

Your managers see CD-ROMs as aneconomical alternative to floppy disks,and the lure of 550MB of storage to playaround with makes programmers drool.

Unfortunately, most companies areunfamiliar with the practical step-by-stepprocesses involved with actually produc-ing a discand what the pitfalls are. I

will guide you around some of the pitfallsinherent with CD-ROM developmentand demystify the process somewhat.

Not Just forAerosmith AnymoreWhile CD-ROMs have been aroundsince the mid-1980s, most products pro-duced for the medium have been fairlyplain, unimaginative text-based referenceworks. Almost 90% of the discs availableare plain-vanilla DOS products with nographics, sound, and animation. Only inthe past few years have CD-ROM play-ers penetrated the market enough tomake broad-based consumer-orientedsoftware financially viable.

Not that a single dominant platformhas emerged. CDI, 3DO, SegaCD,CDTV, CD-32, Jaguar, FM-Townes,and a few other TV-top or stand-alonesystems are still trying to establish afoothold in the home market (none is aclear winner yet), while Apple, IBM,Tandy, Atari, and Commodore all sup-port CD-ROM drives as add-ons totheir PC products.

There are also hybrid systems likeLaser Active just introduced last fall thatplays video laser discs, game cartridges,and CD-ROM-based software. All thesesystems have their idiosyncrasies when itcomes to writing code for them, but for-tunately there are some commonalties.

One common thread that runsthrough these systems is that the discs alladhere to the ISO-9660 standard. TheISO standard describes the physical lay-out of data on the surface of the disc andsome of the structure the data must con-form to. Beyond that, it is up to the indi-vidual system firmware or device drivers

Cool graphics are just one advantage to writing your game specifically for CD-ROM. But ahigh-end clip like this can cost a lot in terms of money and staff resourcesseveral hun-dred clips can put your project out of business. Carefully planned and placed, though, youcan make efficient use of your resources and still come out with a visually superior game.


to read that data and translate it into aform the native operating system canunderstand.

In other words, all CD-ROMs thatadhere to the ISO-9660 standard can beread by all CD-ROM players. Thats thegood news. The bad news is that, likeApples to IBMs, just because you canread the disc does not mean your systemcan do anything meaningful with thedata. Animation files saved in Com-modores ANIM.7 format still cannot beplayed on an Apple Macintosh; codewritten for the Windows environmentwont run under OS9 (the basis ofPhilips CDI operating system).

As the developer, you may have towrite different versions of your programfor each system. You can store multipleversions on the same CD-ROM, andeach platform should be able to use thesame disc. The other bonus to the ISOstandard is that, unless you really need towrite code down to the plastic (for acustom video playback routine or tosqueeze the absolute maximum perfor-mance from a disc), you dont really haveto worry about file structure. (You dohave to worry about track layout andorganization, but well get to that a bitlater.)

The Need for SpeedAnother common element to all CD-ROMs is that they are slow. A singlespeed CD-ROM drive boasts a whop-ping data transfer rate of just under150K per second. Compare that to amedium speed hard-disk drive withtransfer rates approximately 10 timesfaster. Another perhaps more cripplingfactor is seek times. When CD-ROM

drive vendors claim a 150K transfer rate(or double, triple, or quadruple rates),they somehow conveniently neglect tomention that almost all CD-ROM dri-ves have atrocious seek times. If you arejust loading data from a text-only refer-ence CD, it doesnt make that much dif-ference. For game developers who wantto load sound, animation, video, anddata in as close to real time as possible,those seek times can be a nightmare.Also, different systems vary the defaultchuck sizes.

Lets look at a worst case scenario.When you send a read command to thedrive, it must first move the read head towhere it thinks the file probably is. Itreads a 4K or 8K header chunk (depend-ing on the firmware or hardware config-uration) to see if its got the correct file.If its the right file, it has to wait for thedisc to spin around again, then reads80K chunks (regardless of how big thefile is) until the entire file is read.

Lets say you are reading a 30K file.Seek times on some CD players, goingfrom the outer edge of a disc to theinner, can take up to 1.2 seconds! Yes,seconds! (I have personally worked onsystems like this. TV-top systems tryingto appeal to the masses and are highlycost conscious tend to put the least-cost-ly and thus least-efficient drives in theirmachines.)

So, 1.2 seconds plus .03 sec. for theheader read, plus .5 sec. for the actualdata (remember, it reads an 80K chunkno matter how big or small the actual filemay be), and we are at 1.73 seconds toread a 30K file! All this is assuming ithit the correct spot the first time. If not,add a bit more time. Suddenly our 150K

CD-ROMs have blown

open the game mar-

ket with the potential

for high-end sound,

video, even multime-

dia. But beware the

pitfalls of technolo-

gy! You need to plan

carefully to create

a superior game.

by Guy Wright

GAME DEVELOPER JUNE 1994 5

per second transfer rate has dropped to20K per second. Imagine you are tryingto double-buffer sound files while load-ing something else, and you begin to seewhere the biggest CD-ROM bottleneckoccurs.

Granted, this is a worst case situa-tion, but ignore this warning at your ownperil. You may think your program isfine until you start getting irate callsfrom people who say that the audio isgarbled or the QuickTime videosequence is annoyingly jerky on theirsystem.

If you are producing a product for aTV-top system like 3DO or CDI, thereare ways to get around some of theseproblems. You can force the drive to readcertain size chunks (assuming you knowexactly how big each file is before youissue a read command) or just tell it tostart dumping raw data into RAM whereyour code will sort everything out on thefly. But if you are developing for a PCplatform where you dont know whatkind of CD-ROM drive the user is likely

to own, you have to resort to other tricks.The first, simplest, and most valu-

able trick for teasing performance out ofa CD-ROM drive is physical layout ofthe data on the disc. If you are carefulabout the physical layout of the files onthe disc (keeping sequential files close toeach other), you can minimize the seektime problems. If the read head doesnthave to travel as far, it wont take as longto start transferring your data into RAM.

Of course, you must change sometraditional ideas about how you organizeyour data during development. Forinstance, dont put all your sound files inone directory, your pictures in another,and your animations in a third. Whenyou transfer those directories to a CDdisc your files will end up far apart on thedisc, causing longer seeks.

Instead, put sound, picture, andanimation files that will be used at thesame time in their own directory. Thatway you can be certain they will be neareach other on the disc when it comestime to read them. For some systems,there are even optimization utilities thatwill track file use during emulation andtell you which files should be closer toeach other.

Down to the Plastic This is a good time to run through thetraditional steps in making a CD-ROMdisc.

Step 1: Design your product. Youshould already have a good idea abouthow to do this (if not, you probablyshouldnt be in the business). What doyou want? What will it look like? Createa wish list and go back and modify itbased on cost, resources, developmenttime, and so on. Its tempting to thinkof a CD-ROM as a panacea for all theproblems you face with traditional gamedesign and production. But before youfinish your design, look at your originalidea and some of the cold, hard numbers.

If you want video in your product,you must invest in a whole new world ofhardware that most of the programmerson your team dont know anythingabout. There are VCRs, editing decks,SMPTE time code generators, editor-controllers, cameras, and, of course,

actors, costumes, scripts, lighting, audio,directors, and video editing. Im not say-ing you shouldnt include video, butthink back to those cheesy car-dealercommercials on your local TV channel.Those obviously shoe-string budget,low-quality, 30-second spots cost tens ofthousands of dollars to produce!

If you think you can do it for less,take a look at your own home videos anddecide if that is the quality you want inyour new game. Call a few video produc-tion companies, costume houses, and soon, and run some of the numbers your-self. You may end up spending $100,000or more for a few minutes of video beforeyou get it into the computer.

Once you have the video, you haveto capture it and convert it into a videoformat for your particular platform.QuickTime and Video For Windowscharge a run-time fee per product (andyou cant count on your buyers alreadyhaving them). In addition, there is thecost of the video capture equipment andits learning curve. You can plan onadding a few months to the developmentcycle if you are including video in yourgame.

If you can overcome all these obsta-cles and manage to get the video into thecomputer, a good rule of thumb is to fig-ure on a megabyte of storage for eachthree to five seconds of video. You canhave a spiffy intro video of two minutesthat should only take about 60M (in asmall window, that is, not full-screen andnot quite VCR rental movie quality).

If you consider that a 70-minutemovie can barely squeeze onto a CD-ROM using MPEG hardware compres-sion, you begin to realize why therearent a lot of interactive video games outthere (exactly none at last count). Butdont let all this discourage you. A fewwell-placed 10-second clips here andthere can mean the difference betweenaward-winning software and just anothershovelware port. Investigate the prob-lems, costs, and eventual benefits ofvideo, and then make up your mindwhether to include it or not.

If you want a complete CD-qualitysoundtrack, there is more bad news andgood news. CD-quality audio (at a



A few well-placed

10-second

clips can mean

the difference

between award-

winning software

and shovelware.

22KHz sample rate in stereo) ends upgobbling CD-ROM space as hungrily asvideo. (Thats why you can only fit 70minutes of music on a CD-audio disc).

There is another problem with CD-audio. Because of government regula-tions brought about by the record indus-try, there is a special hardware featurebuilt into all CD-ROM drives. Whenthe drives switch to CD-audio playbackmode, they automatically cut in digital toanalog converter circuitry before the sig-nal gets to output. This was done so noCD drive would send out pure digitalsignalsif they did, people could makeperfect, digital byte-for-byte copies ofCDs.

When you issue a CD-audio play-back command to the drive, it switchesinto an analog output. In simple terms,while the CD-audio is playing, you can-not read any digital information off thedisc at the same time. So, you must pre-load all the code, pictures, animations, orwhatever before you start that totally hipsoundtrack playing and wait until it fin-ishes before you can load anything else.

The good news is that 95% of thepeople who will be running your gameon a PC or Macintosh will not have theirsystem hooked up to a $4,000 audio sys-tem. More than likely, they will just havea SoundBlaster card running throughdinky little Radio-Shack speakers that, attheir best, can only reproduce audio inthe 8KHz to12KHz range. (For a pointof reference, a telephone earpiece speakeroperates at about 6KHz or voice quality,AM radio is about 8KHz to 10KHz, avery high-end stereo system can only goup to about 18KHz, and most normalhuman beings can only distinguish dif-ferences in sounds up to about 20KHz.)

Why is that good news? You canhave your digitized audio, music, voice,and sound effects and sample it at12KHz to 14KHz, which is more thanadequate for 95% of the systems outthere. You will have remarkably cleansound in digital format that you can loadfrom disc and play back at the same time.Sound still costs about 1MB for eachminute, but you dont need to overdo iton sound. (If you are just doing explo-sions and laser blasts, you can easily drop

down to 8KHz sample rates with no lossof clarity and still sound better than disk-based games.)

You will however have to be carefulduring the recording and sampling stagesof development. You should do a num-ber of tests first to determine recordingformats, sample rates, and so on. Its alsoa good idea to digitally audition yournarrators because there are some humanvoices (particularly womens voices) thatrequire 15KHz to 16KHz sample ratesto reproduce clearly.

It is also a good idea to get youraudio recording done in a professionalsound studio. The costs are not that high($50 to $100 per hour), and you wontend up with an hours worth of audiotape that has the hum of an air-condi-tioner in the background, cars driving bythe office, or 60-cycle florescent lightsbuzzing throughout. You need to investin decent sound digitizing equipmentand software, although sound editing isremarkably easy in digital form asopposed to traditional sound-editingtechniques.

You can store hundreds or eventhousands of images and animations on aCD-ROM disc, but where are you goingto get them? I know of companies thathave spent $1,000 for a single computer

graphic screen. It was nice, but imaginebuying hundreds of them. Maybe youhave an in-house graphics department.How many screens does it produce in aweek? One...two...ten? How long will ittake to generate a hundred...three hun-dred...a thousand? How much would itcost to buy a hundred graphics screens?How long will it take your people togenerate 20 animation sequences ormore?

More and more companies are turn-ing to stock houses for images, and someof the smart companies are looking intolicensing existing artwork. Some comicbook illustrators get paid very little com-pared to traditional computer artists, andtheir talents rival the best computergraphics anywhere. It might be worth-while to investigate hiring traditionalartists and scan their pencil, pen, and inkwork into the computer. It would meanbuying and learning the intricacies ofscanner technology, but it may be worthit in the end.

Your design specifications nowinclude a few dozen animations, somewell-chosen video clips, 10 to 20 minutesof sampled sound, and something lessthan a hundred graphic screens. Onceyou are ready with a full design specifica-tion, you are ready to move on to the


Civilization of the Future or Memory Eater?

next step.Step 2. Develop your product. Here is

where the hard-core programming,graphics creation, animation, music,sound effects, digitized voices, and every-thing else gets done.

Step 3. Hard disk image. Create animage of the product on a separate harddisk partition, complete with boot code,installation code, and so on. This is avery important step in devel-oping for CD-ROM becausewhat you put in that parti-tion is what will end up onthe disc. This is a goodtime to clean up unusedcode, tools, errata, pro-grammers notes, inter-nal documentation,trapdoors, and all thethousand-odd filesthat end up on ahard disk duringthe developmentprocess. Remem-ber, if you acci-dentally burn acopy of yourc o m p i l e r ,source code,font, or favorite paintprogram onto the CD-ROM,you might be in for some legal problems,the least of which would be paying a roy-alty to the originator of those products.

Just because all those files appear innice alphabetical order when you do adirectory listing does not mean they aresequentially laid out on the drive. Somepremastering software creates a completebyte-for-byte image of the hard drive asit stands, not as it appears. Rememberthat file number 2.pic appears between19.pic and 20.pic, so you may want tonumber files 001.pic, 002.pic, and so on.This may not be a problem for you oryour system, but some people spendweeks trying to figure out why the CD-ROM image is different from what theythink is on their hard disk.

Step 4. Hard-disk testing. At thispoint, its a good idea to test the productfrom that hard disk partition. If possible,boot straight into that partition and see ifeverything works. You may have to cre-

ate a floppy boot program that simplytransfers control to that partition and seeif it works. You will probably find thatwhen booted from that partition, theprogram fails because you omitted aDLL, initialization process, or somecode that exists on your developmentplatform but may not exist on your targetplatform.

This testing will also help you buildyour install routines (if you have any).

This is particularly important onTV-top systems, many

of which

t r a n s f e rtotal control to the CD-ROM and count on it to do every-thing including boot the system. Onceeverything seems to work off the harddisk partition it is time to premaster thedisc.

Step 5. The gold disc (premaster).Before you actually start producing discs,you go through a premastering phasethats divided into two steps: a build anda premaster or gold disc.

After you have your program fin-ished and all the picture, sound, andother data files just the way you wantthem, you go through a build phase. Abuild is where a separate program readsthrough your hard disk and creates abuild file, which is simply a text file withthe proper header information and a listof all the files on the hard disk drive thatyou want copied in the order that they

will appear on the CD.Once the build file is created,

another program creates an ISO formatimage of the data, ordered according tothe build file. That image is then writtento a write-once disc. This is called thepremaster or gold disc. These discs use avery, very thin film of real gold and alaser to create the pits. The gold disc isthen used for final testing in a real CD-ROM drive on a real system.

There are two ways to create a golddisc. You can either send your data to aCD-ROM mastering house or you cando it yourself. Most CD-ROM master-

ing facilities can accommodatedata in just about

any format,such as

s t r e a m i n gtape, Syquest

data cartridges,Bernoulli drives,

even hard disks.They will, of

course, charge youfor a premaster

(usually under$100), and some

houses will let youapply that charge

toward the actual mas-tering charges later.

You should alreadybe checking into mastering

and duplication charges bythis time anyway, so perhaps

you can work out a deal. If you are let-ting a CD-ROM mastering house do thepremastering for you, be sure that itknows what format you are sending andwhat the target platform is. Most CD-ROM duplication houses are more thanhappy to accommodate you no matterwhat the technical considerations are(after all, they want your business whenit comes time for duplication).

If you plan to do a lot of future pro-jects on CD-ROM (or a lot of premas-ters), its probably a good idea to lookinto the purchase of a WORM drive ofyour own. Write once drives fall into the$2,000 to $5,000 range, with various fea-tures and software. It is probably worthlooking into the various configurations



LucasArts High-End CD-ROM Game Rebel Assault

carefully before you purchase one. If yougo the do-it-yourself route, you must dothe build phase on your own, whichactually does give you more control overthe finished product.

If your premastering or build soft-ware is good, it will let you edit the buildfile. Here is where you may find fileorganization and ordering problems. Youmay also be able to correct them here byediting the build file. Remember to keeptrack of your changes because, no matterhow smoothly things have gone up tothis point, you generally have to gothrough the build phase at least a fewmore times. When you have the buildfile the way that you want (organized sothat frequently used files are groupedtogether and near the beginning of thefile), you can cut a gold disc with a com-mand or two. Depending on theWORM drive, this can take minutes orhours.

Step 6. Testing. When you get yourgold disc back from the duplicator orfrom your WORM drive, it is time forreal-world testing. Here is where youwill find CD-ROM specific problems,read and seek time bottlenecks, andother things you never counted on. Thegold disc is in every way exactly like thedisc that you will be shipping to yourcustomers, so if it doesnt work on yourtarget platform system at home, it cer-tainly wont work on your customersmachine.

Test the gold-disc version to deathbecause this will be your last chance tosolve any problems. Try it on an actuallow-end system that doesnt have yourdeveloper tools loaded (or anything elsefor that matter). Test it at home. Test itin the field. Test it everywhere you canthink of, even if you have already gonethrough beta testing on hard disk.

If you end up having to makeanother gold disc, go through the wholetesting process again with the new disc.You would be amazed at how often fix-ing one problem causes three more tocrop up. Even if you are under the gun,its 4:45 and the UPS truck is about toleave, dont give into the temptation tosend out a new gold disc that hasnt beentested! Gold discs are not perfect! A sin-

gle speck of dust at the factory can createa flaw in the disc, and gold discs arent asdurable as final CDs. One bad byte inthe wrong place can destroy a program,and, if its bad on the gold disc, youllend up with a thousand copies of a baddisc.

Step 7. Mastering. If the gold discworks the way you want, you can thensend the gold disc, (or magnetic tape, orBournelli or Syquest cartridge, or evenyour hard disk drive along with yourbuild file) to a duplicator who thenmakes a master. You cant make yourown CD-ROM master discs. CD-ROMmastering is one of those dark, arcaneartforms roughly equivalent to mass-pro-ducing VLSI chips that only a few com-panies in the world can accomplish.

It involves millions of dollars worthof highly specialized equipment, highlytrained engineers dressed in air-tightspace suits and a class 2 cleanroom. For-tunately, duplication houses only chargeabout $1,200 for each master. Dontexpect to get the master back either.Most duplication houses will store themfor you if you need another run, but nor-mally they dont give copies back to thecustomer.

Once a master is created, the dupli-cation process is pretty much like stamp-ing out a vinyl LP record. The master ismounted on a press, the CD-ROMinner layer is stamped, the plastic coat-ing, label and whatnot applied, and thedisc is popped into a jewel case (or what-ever you specify). Depending on thequantity and turnaround time, CD-ROM discs can be produced for under$1.50 each. If you want the duplicator toinsert your discs into jewel cases, insertinstructions, and shrink-wrap them foryou, each disc will cost about $2.00 each.The duplicator will even ship the productfor you.

You must work out the particularswith your individual CD-ROM duplica-tion house, and all will be very happy tomeet your needs. You may be able to geta dime or two with a volume discount,but disc prices are pretty low, so dontexpect 50% off if you order 10,000copies. If you are developing for somesystems you may find that the duplicator

will charge you an additional platformlicense fee that goes back to the systemmanufacturer. You may also encounter asetup fee of a few hundred dollars. Someduplicators will wave this fee the firsttime, but charge you if you need to goback on press at a later date.

Treasures and TrapsSo, while CD-ROM may seem like theend-all, be-all for software developers, itis a mixed blessing. Yes, you do get tonsof storage space, but you have to counton additional load times. Yes, it is almostlike shipping your product on a very largeread-only hard disk and yet, because ofphysical layout constraints, you have tobe careful how you premaster for opti-mum performance. Yes, you can addvideo, digital audio, animation, andskads of graphics, but each comes withadded development costs, headaches, anddesign considerations.

If and when you decide to jumpinto the CD-ROM development venue,you are bound to find hidden treasuresand traps. There is a whole new world ofinteractive entertainment waiting to beexplored. You will find those rewardsand pitfalls sooner than any other soft-ware developers because, as you and Iknow, it takes 10 times more sophistica-tion and elegance to develop a goodgame than it does to develop just anotherword processor or spreadsheet. Gamedevelopers are the ones who test the lim-its of technology. No other software pro-ducers can do that or have to live up tothe standards that game buyers anddevelopers set for themselves. n

Guy Wright has designed, producedand developed nearly a dozen interactivemultimedia CD-ROM products for variouscompanies. He has designed games, videoproduction software, and multimediaauthoring languages and founded two soft-ware companies. He has written two bookson desktop video and is currently workingon a killer CD-ROM cyborg simulationgame that should put all others to shame.He can be reached via e-mail [email protected] or through Game Devel-oper magazine.


Target YourGame: Computervs. Console

C O M P U T E R V S . C O N S O L E

Want to quickly compare homevideo and computer games?Tally up sales. Six to sevenbillion dollars worth of videogames were sold in NorthAmerica in 1993 vs. $410million in computer games,according to the Software

Publishers Assoc. That ratio, about 15 to1, is an order of magnitude and a half.

But waitnobody counts retail salesof IBM compatibles and Macintoshes oreven joysticks and soundcards, yet SuperNintendo Entertainment Systems andSega Genesis and Sega CD units are

lumped into the home video game or con-sole totals. And arent the chip innards ofcartridges more properly counted as hard-ware? Maybe we should factor out theirdifference in cost from all the floppy disksin an average game box or the stampingcost of a CD-ROM. More to the point,how do computer and console games dif-fer, and how are the two suddenly grow-ing together?

The Two WorldsThe biggest difference between computerand console games is the people who playthem. Their preferences appear to dictatethe kinds of games you find on eitherplatform. Part and parcel of that contentare the interfaces, which differ strikingly.The hardware available is largely responsi-ble. It accepts player inputs, generatescompelling graphic output, and processesthe one while supporting the other.

Any console developer must pur-chase a development system to accommo-date that dedicated CPU and its architec-ture, but every developer employs somevariety of software tools and a balance oftwo separate languages. Finally, theprocess by which a video or computergame, once commissioned, reaches thehands of consumers also subtly differs.

Younger people play video games,while older people play computer games.Nintendo Power editor Scott Pelland callsthe core video game-playing group 12- to14-year-old males. At Sega of America,associate director of third-party licensingSteve Ackrich offers 6 to 16 vs. 18 to 35as a ballpark age breakdown.

The game platform of choice foreconomically dependent consumers isclearly the video game console or set-top

Games like Sega of Americas Eternal Champions will sell to millions (zillions?) of consumersthis year, but is it a video or computer game. With delivery mediums like the CD-ROM, tradi-tional video games are crossing the line and being played not only in the arcades and on TV-top consoles, but on the PC and Macintosh as well. As the computer and video markets con-verge, opportunity arises for everyone!


box. Right now computer games seem tobe more involved, more complex, andmore for older people just because of thetarget platform. Its an older audience.You dont have 10- to 14-year-old kidsgoing out and spending $2,000 on a PC,says Robb Alvey, a producer at VirginInteractive Entertainment.

The dominant appeal of video gamesis the promise of instant gratification.There are indeed two different types ofgamers, claims Maxis producer MichaelPerry, who began his career at HudsonSoft USA in video games. Video gamersare action or sports oriented. They wantto put the cartridge into the machine, turnit on, and play without having to read amanual, or study it, or know anythingabout the game. They just go for it.

Sega producer Tony Van has alsoworked in both worlds, including Activi-sion and LucasArts. He says, The PCand video games are different markets.On the PC side, they are more forgivingbecause most of them are hackers. Youcannot install a PC game these days with-out hacking your AUTOEXEC.BAT andCONFIG.SYS files.

One thing video gamers are not ishackers. As investors in their own enter-tainment, one experiential venture at atime, they are risk-averse. One unpleasantepisode with a faulty product, and theirpleasure capital could be wiped out, asNintendo learned from the early 1980sAtari market and created zero-defect fun.

Video games are fad items, based onfast-moving technology, and even the bestcan be outdated within a year. You canhold a cartridge in your hands, but makeno mistakevideo games have been suc-cessfully transformed from a good into a

service, like all entertainment always wasand like more and more software is. Andas any good service-provider knows, anannuity is better than a lump sum. Therecent stir over video cartridge rentals isironic because a video game console isreally just a subscription and cartridges therenewals. With video games, we alreadyrent our fun.

By comparison, computer games aremore opportunistic; few would admit tobuying a PC to play games. As a market,they are an afterthought. What can theyoffer an audience of greater wealth, matu-rity, and sophistication? Tony Van knows:The trade-off is instant gratification vs.variation and depth of play. They all wantthe best game experience, on both sides.The PC side is willing to wait for it.

Michael Perry agrees, it is depth ofgameplay. A lot of video games are verytopical. You have a very simple purpose.In a fighting game, its to beat the hell outof the other guy. On PCs, you can justdive in deeper and deeper. Users like that;they spend a lot of time with the game,seeing how deep they can go. Its not aone-shot thing like a video game.

Successful console game categoriesare action and puzzle: sports, fighting,racing, side-scrolling and vertical shooters,and platform versions of the adventuregenre. PC games are more typically simu-lation, strategy, role-playing, and first-person graphic and text adventures, aswell as solitary sports like golf. After pro-ducing more than 30 cartridge games,Alliance Interactive president GordonWalton has chosen to return to the plat-form with a keyboard: PC games aremore fun anyway. You see a lot more cre-ativity, more robust games. There is a

Whats the best plat-

form for your game?

Consoles are in the

limelightbut wait

isnt there a PC in half

the homes in Ameri-

ca? Market strate-

gies play an impor-

tant role in where

your game ends up.

by Jim Cooper


limited input bandwidth that constrainswhat you can do with a console game.This limits size not so much as depth.

DesignYet the keyboard is not the key. SaysWalton, The mouse has a practicallyinfinite input bandwidth to click on. Itsthe size of the screen in pixels divided bysome size factor. A mouse interface is alsomore intuitive than Y-button plus Uparrow. The margin for error is awfullyslim without that mouse; ask Alexandriadesigner Paul OConnor. You cant besloppy when youre doing a console game.Youve got three to six buttons, maxi-mum, plus the directional pad. On a com-puter game youve got a keyboard withhow many keys, a mouse with how manymouse buttons, and maybe a joystick ontop of that. What it comes down to is theinterface. Its almost the differencebetween a short story and a novel. Theother half of an interface is the outputthe graphics.

Rich OKeefe of the Starwave Corp.explains the difference between characterand bit-mapped displays, starting withvideo games. Character-mapped displaysbreak the screen down into 8-by-8-pixelcharacters and put those characters in tilepositions on the screen. You can reusecharacters in drawing the screen; thats

where you save the memory. Computers,on the other hand, tend to be bit-mapped(unless youre talking about the Amiga).What that means is each pixel on thescreen has a location in memory. Com-puters have character modes, they justdont get used because they are two-color:black and white. Video game characterstend to be multicolor.

OKeefe continues, Sprites are aspecial case of character that are indepen-dently placeable over the top of that back-ground, to a pixel boundary. Sprites aresupported in hardware; that is, they have apriority, and its usually based on whatscalled their sprite number. Whether theyappear on top of the background orbehind the background, or one spriteappears on top of another, is basicallydependent on some attributes you can setor their sprite number.

To emulate a sprite on a computerdisplay, say I have this character that Iwant to walk across this background. Ihave to draw the sprite and then, before Imove him, erase the sprite, fill in thebackground, then move the sprite, savinga copy of the background where thatsprites going to be drawn. This is a verysoftware-intensive chore. With realsprites, in a video game, the hardwaredoes it all. Its completely unnoticeable.When the scan line is being drawn, it

draws the background scan line, then thefirst sprite if it happens to be there and ontop, and then layers it up like a sandwich.It happens automatically, and thats whyyou very rarely see real nasty shootinggames on computers: the amount ofprocessor required to do the erase and fill-in and move-the-object and all that iscostly. It takes a lot of CPU cycles and alot of memory.

Perry offers one design implication:On a video game platform, you typicallydesign your characters at least a fifth to aquarter the size of the screen. Say yourscreen is 224 pixels tall; you want yourcharacter to be 55 pixels in height. Justbecause of the low resolution of the TV,you want to be able to see that guy. Buton the PC, since the resolution is muchmore dense and sharper as an image, youcan use smaller graphics and get a lotmore on the screen.

Consoles dont just come withoutkeyboards or a mouse, they have to bor-row your TV. This difference in resolu-tion is key. One medium can be symbolic,using fine details of expression. The otherhas been necessarily literal, based onaction; the only nuance is kinesthetic andgoes by the name of gameplay.

Perry continues, NTSC is not asdense a resolution as the typical computermonitor. On a PC in DOS, we can have640-by-480 pixels. On television, we areback down to 320-by-224. That makes abig difference when you design games forboth platforms, especially if you are usingsomething like a toolbar. On the DOSmachine, that toolbar can be the fulllength of the screen. On a video gamemachine, youve got to really be carefuland slice that toolbar up about a quarter ofits size to fit. And then will the buttons bebig enough?

Text in games demonstrates this dif-ference, in Tony Vans experience, Onthe PC, text is O.K. Adventure, the origi-nal role-playing adventure game, was text-based. But it doesnt work on video, andthats one of the reasons role-playinggames are nowhere near as popular onconsoles as you would expect. Text is justnot fun. But it is important in a game ofany depth.

When I showed Shadowrun, a role-



Segas Ren and StimpyInteractive Hollywood

playing game, at the Consumer Electron-ics Show, what do you think were the firstwords out of a reviewers mouth? Sure is alot of text. And you cant blame people.On TV, pixels blur! Computer VGA ishigh resolution. Somebody put it this way:you dont sit seven inches in front of theTV when you play on the Genesis. Thismedium, defined by action and hostile tothe written word, is home to pictograms,multimedia ones.

Consoles are built with just twothings in mind: to entertain and to do itinexpensively, says Steve Ackrich. TheSega Genesis uses the old Motorola68000 running at 12MHz with 512K ofRAM. The Super Nintendo Entertain-ment System uses the 65816, an older,slightly inferior chip. Both are proven,available, inexpensive, and quite a bitolder than the Intel 80386s, 80486s, andPentiums that drive PCs today.

Development SystemsJust as video gamers have to own a con-sole, developers must buy a developmentsystem, although it need not be from theactual platform provider. Systems for the16-bit platforms from Sega and Nintendocost around $15,000. According to GregTavares of Crystal Dynamics, they havethe best hardware, which is required toperform tracebacks, but their software isso poor they are not the best systems towork on. Among the newer platforms, aSega CD development systems costs$40,000; 3DO costs $15,000. Rumors ofthe price tag for Nintendo Project Realityand Sega Saturn are in the $100,000range. By contrast, Atari development kitsare $7,500 for the Lynx and $5,500 forthe Jaguar.

In both worlds, the software engi-neering technology is constantly evolving.Console developers once started out equal,but every shop has built up its own arsenalof tools. Steve Ackrich is well positionedto observe the field: You dont haveeveryone going down one clear path. Youwalk into one shop, and they have thisbizarre setup. And you walk into anothershop, and they have this completely dif-ferent bizarre setup. In general, the puredevelopers have very clean environments.We couldnt keep track of what everybody

is doing even if we wanted to. After all,even we [Sega of America] are consideredthe competition. Sharing is limited; com-munication has a long way to go, but it isgetting better. The industry is a veryclose-knit community.

Sculptured Software has even startedselling parts of its own proprietary devel-opment technology, although director ofsoftware development John Emerson addsit sells only to approved developers of theSega and Nintendo systems.

The first thing to realize is that videogames quote their size in bits of memory,while computer games are quoted inbytes. A bit is one eighth of a byte. Videogames are small; Street Fighter II, a mon-ster cartridge at 24MB, would almost fiton two floppy disks. Gregg Tavares ofCrystal Dynamics: With video gamesyou have to squeeze so much into a smallamount of space that you take a vastly dif-ferent approach. PC developers dont haveto deal with it, so they dont even try.

How much can be squeezed? SuperMario III from Nintendo was a 384Kcart, and it had 88 levels. By comparison,Aliens Ate My Babysitter from Apogee,available for download from any BBS,takes up 2.3MB, and it has 13 levels.Thats the difference, says Tavares.

This incredible parsimony is moti-vated by the memory cost. As RichOKeefe says, Silicon memory is veryexpensive per bit. Cartridges costbetween $15 and $20, compared to 75 to$1 for a floppy disk or CD. Using a1.44MB floppy as the baseline, cartridgesare 10 times more expensive per byte (orbit). CD-ROMs are 400 times cheaper.

According to Clyde Grossman, vicepresident of publishing for SpectrumHoloByte and former group director ofsoftware development at Sega, this is thedifference: Gee, product got a little bitbigger? Guess we have to go to anotherdisk. 8MB and 1 byte means the next sizecart. What does that cost? Lets just say itmeans another $10 to the consumer atretail. It happens often enough. You wantthem to fill the cart, after all. The 7thGuest shipped on two CDs; the secondwasnt planned, but didnt kill the project.

The two primary computer lan-guages for games are assembly language

and C. Assembler is the machine codenative to a particular processorno codeis tighter. John Emerson says most PCcode is in C, which is easier to work with.Any high school kid could do it, he says.

Sculptured Software cartridges arewritten 75% to 100% in assembly lan-guage. In fact, all its Super NintendoEntertainment System games are 100%assembler. Maxis uses assembler whentarget platforms are 286 or a 68000-basedMac, and thats just because of speed, purespeed, says Michael Perry. On the DOSside and Mac side and in Windows, wealways program in C and use assemblylanguage just for some of the bottlenecksto speed up some graphics process orsome intense calculations. But as we getthese more powerful machines, like thePowerMac, we can use straight C or C++,and it will run fast enough.

Anarchy vs. the StateThe Software Publishers Assoc. does notpolice PC software content. Among con-soles, however, Sega and Nintendo arecandid about doing so. Steve Ackrichexplains Segas reasoning. People dontrealize this, but we have a very fragilemarketplace. Weve seen what can happentwice, once with the [Atari] 2600 andonce with the 8-bit Nintendo. Nintendolet down their guard. Our customers dontknow when a game is done by Sega andwhen its done by a third-party publisher.We get letters all the time about JohnMadden Football [published by Electron-ic Arts].

Ackrich continues, Becoming alicensed publisher or developer is free, butnot easy. We make it very hard to becomea licensee. SOA [Sega of America] needsto see everything: the ability to developgames, the ability to distribute, market,and support games, and the ability tomake quality games. We exercise twochecks on individual game quality: first atthe concept approval stage, and then intesting before final approval. We assignpublishing slots; there is no limit to theslots, but the quality has to be there. Allthis is not to stifle competition becausethat competition gives you the best games.Most people at Sega come from third-party licensees, so they appreciate that we


are supporting them.Atari vice president of software

business development Bill Rehbockdescribes a laissez-faire approach toJaguar licensing, for those who have alsosatisfied the stringent standards forbecoming licensees. We do not requireour licensees to let us know what theyredoing, but we request it. We keep a scat-ter chart of typesnot titlesof gamesbeing worked on by all our licensees. Wedo not prohibit anybody from proceedingon a title, but we will be honest: AcmeSoftware, we recommend you dont pur-sue this tennis game because it is worsethan the three already in the works. Ifthey go ahead and proceed, God blessem. If they get eaten alive, thats O.K.too. Buyers for the big chains like ToysR Us know quality when they see it. Theindustry is a little more self-regulatingthan it used to be.

We also wont rejector slowlyapproveyour 3D polygon racing gamebecause ours isnt ready yet. All third-party games get tested independently of

our own projects. In fact, on the day thatTradewest announced their Jaguar TroyAikman football game, we canceled ourin-house football project.

Testing is easier for the more stan-dardized video consoles, although nottrivial. With direct responsibility for test-ing alland onlySegas third-partygames and experience as a producer ofPC as well as cartridge titles, Steve Ack-rich says, Testing is a nightmare on thePC, not as much so on the Mac, andalmost but not quite painless on consoles.At Sega, we want to make sure that anygame that comes out is compatible notonly with all our existing machines, butwith all future machines.

Rehbock describes a less ambitiousprocess comprising all Jaguar title testingand approval. It begins when a publishersubmits the code to Atari, where wesimply do 100 staff-hours of what we callsanity-check testing. The game just hasto meet our cursory style outline: theReset button works, Fire buttons aresoftware-reconfigurable, Pause pauses

the game, and while the game is pausedyou can adjust the soundtrack and soundeffects volume levels. We turn over thecode in two or three days.

Says Michael Perry, We do reallybig simulations on the PC side. With ourquality assurance process, sometimesproducts can stay in there for months.Weve got a strict QA department.

Of course, updates to released prod-ucts are unique to the computer gamerealm. You cannot download a patch toyour cartridge from CompuServe. Gor-don Walton says, Carts have to be per-fect. PC updates are cheaper, and theinfrastructure is set up for it; people aretrained in software updates. Its under-stood that everything is a work inprogress.

A unique lag exists between when acartridge game is finished and when peo-ple buy it. Clyde Grossman notices thedifference: You lose the immediacy ofreleases with video games. At Sega, Iwould honestly lose track of what wasshipping because we had finished with it



three months before. With a floppy orCD game, it can be on the shelves in twoweeks from QA.

The FutureConsole and computer games are con-verging. Today, they share the CD-ROM delivery vehicle. Soon, they willshare full-motion video via compressionand decompression technology; witnessSigma Designs ReelMagic PC add-onboard and an MPEG adapter slated forrelease for the Atari Jaguar later this year.

Gregg Tavares ventures the opinionthat there are now three categories ofelectronic games: cartridge, PC, andCD-ROM multimedia running on a PC,Sega CD, 3DO, or whatever. The chal-lenge is to fill up a CD-ROMwithgameplay, not just memory-hungry digi-tized soundand access all that dataquickly.

Hugh Bowen, of the Bowen Associ-ates multimedia video game marketingconsulting firm in Half Moon Bay,Calif., would agree: The PC CD marketis exploding in sales. It used to be minus-cule compared to video games. RebelAssault from LucasArts has sold 400,000worldwide since last fall. ActivisionsReturn to Zork sold 300,000 in the lastsix months.

At this years March Symposium ofthe Software Publishers Association inSan Francisco, Calif., he chaired a panelon multimedia platforms that rankedtheir attractiveness to developers in thefollowing order: Sega Saturn, PC andMacintosh CD, Nintendo Project Reali-ty, Sony PS-X, 3DO, Jaguar, and SegaCD. In the PC world (including Macin-toshes), five to seven million CD-ROMdrives are expected to be in Americanhomes by the end of 1994, and 10 to 12million by the end of 1995; there arealready 700,000 Sega CDs.

Nintendo has announced that itsProject Reality machines will use high-capacity data cartridges instead of CD-ROMs. Gregg Tavares is skeptical:Their carts are supposed to hold 150MBto 250MB? Crash N Burn took up300MB without the animated sequences,and Total Eclipse took 40MB. Its notthat hard to fill a CD-ROM.

And Rich OKeefe recalls his expe-riences while in Japan for Atari, Elec-tronic Arts, and NEC: The PC Engine,what we call the Duo over here that playscarts and CDs, sells almost no cartridgesany more. CDs are cheaper, and you canget them back overnightin a week inthe worst case. You can gauge the mar-ket, take fewer risks, and theres no gam-bling on inventory.

On the other hand, in the not toodistant future: with a set-top box, thereis no reason for CD-ROM: you get itthrough cable. Cable delivery is going tobe much more important in the next 10years than CD-ROM delivery is now. Ithink theres going to be this conver-gence of cable boxes, telephones, PCs,and video games. Its going to be aninteresting little mixture. Right now,video games lack two-way connectivity.And you can get that over a cable systemat a high enough bandwidth to be trulyinteractive. Not 9600 baud modems;that is too slow, except for very simplegames and strategic games. To do theVR thing, you need high-bandwidthcommunication.

If you ask Gordon Walton foranother reason why he got out of videogames, hell say the console market isabout to crash, and the new platformswill arrive too late. If you are currentlyin the 16-bit market, thats fine as ittrails down. But if youre not developingfor these new platforms right now, itstwo years before any product comes outfor them3DO, a year and a half.

Robb Alvey would not argue: A lotof people dont understand that it takes awhile for people to develop on and learna system. When the Sega CD first cameout, everybody was saying, Oh, this is adead system. Noones going to buy it.The games are horrible, and they were.It always takes something on a system tomake me want to buy it. With the SegaCD it was Silpheed. I played Silpheed ata friends house and said, I gotta have aSega CD now.

And he is clearly eager to use whatcomes along. For Aladdin [a Sega Gen-esis cartridge], we had to say, O.K.,weve got a limited amount of RAMbuffering, and weve got a limited


amount of cartridge space, just dependingon how good compression routines areand how much stuff we can cram into a2MB cartridge as opposed to a 600MBdisc. We sat down with the Disney ani-mators and said, Alright, you have tocreate feature film quality or at least thefeel of it, given all of our limitations:characters cant have facial expression,and they cant have fingers or toes. Thatwas a blow to them; theyre used to beingfree with their animation and artwork.But: if we were to do a CD-ROMAladdin, in the same form that youwould do a Dragons Lair and have theluxury of MPEG out there now, we couldhave done anything we wanted with theDisney animators. We could have letthem run wild and be free with it.

Into OvertimeWhatever comes along, designers andproducers and technical directors will bebending it to their creative visions. PaulOConnor is typical: As a player, I enjoycomputer games more because they pro-

vide intellectual challenge, and they havedeeper levels of play. But for a racinggame or a fighting game, its hard to beatthat oomph of a top-flight video game. Ithink computer game designers can learna lot from the interface design of some ofthe best console games because they canget complex designs across. A person canpick up a controller and understand howto play first time through without read-ing any documentation. Whens the lasttime you did that with a computer game,short of Wolfenstein?

There is a crossover between set-top boxes and PCs; theyre growingtogether, says Michael Perry. As set-top boxes and PCs grow more and morepowerful, its going to be hard to distin-guish between the two platforms. Wemay end up in the future being able torun a game on a PC and on a set-top boxwith very few modifications at all.

Looking ahead, David Walker, atechnical director at Electronic Arts, sayshe used to place computer and videogames along a continuum of complexity

versus simplicity. That is changing withthe introduction of full-motion-videoand MPEG chips. Were seeing a newgenre of game, the interactive movie.Nobody knows what it means, but every-body is using the term. And it can live onboth the PC and set-top boxes. n

James Paul Cooper sold decision supportsoftware to institutional investment managersfor a global consulting firm. In 1978, hejoined an Arizona computer game companyinstead of matriculating at the University ofCalifornia. Since then, he has founded or co-founded several game and software venturesand acquired an M.S. in Industrial Adminis-tration from Carnegie Mellon University,where he taught marketing. He can be reachedvia e-mail at [email protected] orthrough Game Developer magazine.

F E A T U R E H E A D I N G


The FatMan Sings

T H E F A T M A N

Nestled in Texas hill country,Austin is a city jam-packedwith musicians, but its notnecessarily an easy town for amusician to make a living in.In fact, for the amount ofmoney they make, some musi-cians might as well be playing

music as a hobby. George Sanger hasgone about the whole business of makingmusic and making money in a completelydifferent way. Now, hes making moneyplaying music, and hes making money athis favorite hobby: playing games. Infact, he and the three other musicianswho work with him carry a lot of weight

in the game business. They are the FatMan. Were huge, says Sanger.

Fat Man central is Sangers small,tree-shaded red brick house in NorthAustin. The entire front room is takenup with computers, sound equipment,and Sangers collection of guitars.Swiveling around in a high-backed blue-padded chair behind a giant desk, Sangerbarks into the phone, fiddles with equip-ment, and, in general, lives large.Sangers family reigns in the rest of thehouse, where Linda Sanger manages thehousehold, the couples two kids, and theFat Mans books.

Family is important to Sanger. Hegot his start in the game business whenhis brothers roommate Dave Warhol,who was writing games for Intellivision,commissioned him to write a 10-secondtune for $1,000. The tune was calledCarnival of the Penguins, and it wasused in a game called Thin Ice. Sincethen, games boomed and busted, andtheyre booming again.

Georges brother David Sangerbecame the drummer for GrammyAward winning Asleep at the Wheel,and George Sangers career in the gamebusiness took a hiatus. As he puts it, Iwasnt writing 12 seconds of music for athousand dollars anymore, I was writingsomething like up to three minutes forcommercials for $79.95. At that time,Sanger was also running a recording stu-dio for Austin musicians, which is howhe met the musicians he now collaborateswith. At his brothers wedding, he raninto Dave Warhol again, and, onceagain, he got a break. Warhol put him incontact with Brian Moriarty, who askedSanger to create music based on Swan

The Fat Man might not be familiar to those of you who follow the pop charts, but this Dallas-based band has been heard by millions if not billions of game players. From writing three-minute jingles for commercials to nominee for best soundtrack at the March GameDevelopers conference for Origins Wing Commander, George Sanger and his team providemusic for the game players of the world. The Fat Man is (from left to right) K. WestonPhelan, George Sanger, Dave Govett, and Joe McDermott.


Lake for the LucasArts game Loom.The next big break and a big evolu-

tionary step for the Fat Man came whenSanger was asked to write music for Ori-gins Wing Commander. He didnt havetime to work on it, so he subcontracted itto Dave Govett who, conveniently, hadthe kind of grand World War II meetsStar Wars theme Origin wanted alreadyfloating around in his head. It was some-thing Govett had worked out in highschool. Then, Origin producer ChrisRoberts made several decisions that madeWing Commander a significant mile-stone in gaming history and also helpedpropel the Fat Man into the big time.

Roberts decided to make WingCommander more interactive with theaddition of characters and a storyline.Also, Origin refused to compromisegame quality for the lowest commondenominator market. Wing Commanderrequired a Sound Blaster, the best com-mercial sound board available at thetime, and it required at least a 386 com-puter, plenty of room on the hard disk,and a reasonable amount of RAM. Itwas a huge success. That year, two titlesSanger worked on, Loom and WingCommander (nominees for best soundtrack at the Game Developers Confer-ence in San Jose, Calif.; Origin won thecategory), were Sanger clients, and theFat Man became the biggest name inmusic for multimedia.

The Style is No StyleSanger says there is no such thing as apatented Fat Man sound. For one thing,he says, he doesnt have the chops (amusical bag of tricks to fill in any blank),but also because the Fat Man is really

four people: Joe McDermott, K. WestonPhelan, Dave Govett, and Sanger. JoeMcDermott has produced several albumsof childrens music. He was also a mem-ber of Grains of Faith, one of Austinsbest undiscovered bands and, saysSanger, hes created some of the mostear-bleeding music for Nintendo games.

Kevin Phelan used to run sound forAustin musicians including Asleep at theWheel, was a member of the punk/funkband One Bad Pig, and he still special-izes in the eclectic, weaving world ofmusic with jazz and pop. (McDermottand Phelan are now members of a newband called Caterpillar.) Dave Govettspecializes in grand epic themes la JohnWilliams or Danny Elfman. As forGeorge Sanger, the original Fat Man, hesays his job is to bring it all together. Ispecialize in music salad. I dont ever justplay whats under my fingers becausetheres nothing there.

Sanger says he does not play key-board well, and he deprecates his guitarplaying talents. What I have, he says,is the ability to drink a beer and lead ajam so that everyone has fun. On thekeyboard side, I have the ability to feelan emotion and slowly and painstakinglysculpt it out on the keyboard and thecomputer. Also, I have the ability tocoach other folks through the process ofperforming it.

Depending on the developers, theFat Man can enter a project at any stage.In the case of IndyCar Racing, the gamewas already completed, and the Fat Manwas hired by the developers at Papyrus tocome up with a theme. To illustrate howearly he can come into a project, Sangerreaches across that broad expanse of a

Ever wonder who

writes those nifty

soundtracks, heart-

pounding scores, and

catchy tunes for your

favorite game?

Read how one man

and his band are

shaping the future of

music in gaming.

by KathleenMaher


desk and comes up with a thick script fora new project and flips throughpages of index,story-

lines, andstoryboards. This is a

little more than we need, but it gives usthe fall and lay of the land. Obviously,Sanger and the Fat Man would rathercome into the project as early as possible.

In the case of Putt Putt goes to theMoon, the Fat Man worked with thedevelopers at Humongous Entertain-ment every step of the way. They wouldsend us a new update of the game withthe music integrated. That was a won-derful way to work because I didnt haveto work with any fancy technology at all.I didnt have to use any screwy tools andkill my computer by loading up proto-type software. All I had to do is put thegame on and see how it was playing sofar and send them feedback.

The sound environment for Elec-tronic Arts SSN-21 Sea Wolf created incollaboration with John Ratcliff is oneSanger and his team are most proud ofbecause it uses sound in such an innova-tive way. I wish I had been even moreinvolved in creating sound for that one,says Sanger wistfully. All the sound asso-ciated with a real submarine has beenrecreated and helps create a three-dimen-sional sound environment. Sound is alsoused to lead and misdirect the player. Forinstance, if some threat passes by thesubmarine, the music might change to an

omi-nous

s o u n dand then, as it passes,

the sound environment mightrevert to normal. The player who paysattention to the sound will do better atthe game.

Sanger is also pleased with theeffect of the music for 7th Guest, sincethe music throughout most of the gameis not stereotypical scary music butrather cool jazz. In this way, Sangerhoped to heighten the effect of the gameby working in a counterpoint to thegames ostensible horror aspects.

Methodology inthe MadnessAn interesting element of writing musicfor games is the structure of the game. Ingeneral, says Sanger, the team is asked towrite a few themes: you win, you lose,you wander around. Consideration has tobe given to what happens when the play-er changes course. In Wing Commander,the style of the music allows changes tooccur without too much distraction. Itdraws on the conventions of early film-making that also had the same problemin terms of cutting film together. There-fore the music is a pastiche of bombasticwarlike themes and lyrical transition pas-sages. Likewise, 7th Guests jazzy stylelends itself well to changes in tone that,while sometimes abrupt, are not undulydistracting.

In contrast, game developers at Ori-gin are taking a different approach. They

are going for a Disney model that relieson in-house talent. At the South bySouthwest music conference in Austinthis year, Richard Garriot chronicled theprogression of sound in his titles anddescribed a system called NIM (NenosIntelligent Music) developed at Originby Nenad Vutrinic that incorporates atransition theme to move the user, theaction, and the sound to a new course.

As Garriot describes it, when a usermakes a decision or chooses a new courseof action, the music plays to the next bar,picks up the transition theme, and movesto the theme appropriate to the userchoice without any jarring shift inmood. The difficulty of working this

way, according to Randy Buck, a pro-grammer at Origin, is that instead ofworking in a linear fashion, music iscomposed in a matrix.

For his part, Sanger believes fastchanges emphasize the players controlover the game, and therefore he prefersit, though hes also investigating otherapproaches. Transitions are cool, hesays, if the composer writes them. But ifthey get into the hands of the program-mers, they can lose some of their musicalimpact. The Fat Man can write transi-tions, and the members are discussingthe development of tools to make it easi-er to write music in a matrix as Buckdescribes it. We want to make surewere not getting lazy and fat. Just fat.

Sanger believes his success in thecomputer game business is directly relat-ed to his liking for games. He can identi-fy with the player of a game hes workingon. Some poor schmuck is stuck in aroom with my music, and I want it to begood music so they dont hate me.Many musicians, he feels, hold games incontempt, and theyre not interested inwriting music for games because of thelimitations of the hardware and software.

Sanger seems to welcome limita-tions as a challenge. Perhaps thats whyhes such a game player. No doubt learn-ing from Origins experience with WingCommander, Sanger encouraged thedevelopers of 7th Guest to write to Gen-eral Midi standards, giving the game anextension on life as sound boards adopt-ed the new standard and actually

T H E F A T M A N


improved the sound of 7th Guest.Nevertheless, given present levels of

development, a sound board in a com-puter can only sound so good, and not allsound boards, even those that conform toGeneral Midi standards, sound alike.Sanger says that in his early work withcompanies such as Trilobyte, LucasArts,and Origin, the developers would takehis music and optimize it for all soundboards. I thought I was really good,says Sanger. But then, on another pro-ject, Sanger was horrified to start up thebrand new game and the music literallysounded like farts, squeaks, and beeps,and there was my namemusic pro-duced by the Fat Manand all of a sud-den I realized I have got to get into thesound business.

Sanger and The Fat Man are enter-ing the sound business in a couple ofways. Not content to simply supplymusical themes for game players, the FatMan and primarily Kevin Phelan aredeveloping a library of tones to ensure

that games players, developers, andmusicians are working with the samebasic elements. Yamaha has licensed theFat Mans General Midi patch set for theopl2 and opl3 FM synthesizers, whichare the heart of Sound Blasters. The FatMan is working with Yamaha on thedevelopment of drivers to be includedwith boards using the opl4.

The Sound BusinessAlso, the Fat Man has become a consul-tant. Board manufacturers can hire theFat Man and win a seal of approval thatpromises users the boards will producethe proper tones for specific instrumentsand make no demands on the CPU. For,as far as Sanger is concerned, if thesound board slows down the CPU, it canstop a game dead without one explosion,dead Nazi, or passage explored.

In addition to ensuring that com-puters play the game and music correctly,the Fat Mans entrance into the realm ofstandards and hardware has another


Some poor

schmuck is stuck in

a room with my

music, and I want it

to be good, so they

dont hate me.

advantage. We get our name plasteredall over everything. If theres not some-thing in it that feeds my ego, I just cantget out of bed in the morning. In otherwords, says Sanger, Im doing the rightthing for the wrong reasons, and thatswhat I like to do.

Sanger now composes on theRoland Sound Canvas, and he encour-ages other composers to use it. Not onlydoes he believe that it is the best wavetable synthesizer (so far), it is now thede facto standard that gives manufactur-ers a common ground to work on. Ifmanufacturers develop products with theexpectation that most composers will becomposing on the Sound Canvas, thesound balance will work as they intend it.Im trying to turn the tide on this [theproliferation of sound boards and varyingstandards]. Instead of having softwaredevelopers burdened with having to sup-port lots of different cards, I want thehardware companies to support the waydevelopers are writing music.

Turning the Tide?Sometimes when The Fat Man playersget together, they play surf music. WhenGeorge Sanger was asked to perform atthe Interactive Conference in San Jose,Calif., this year, he wasnt able to bringthe rest of the team with him. So, hebrought his guitar and got together withkeyboard player Dave Javelosa of Sega,bass player Michael Land of LucasArts,drummer Neil Grandstaff of Sierra On-Line, guitar player Dave Albert of Sega,saxophonist Albert Lowe (who is notonly Sierra On-Lines first composer, butalso the man who created Leisure SuitLarry), and independent composers JimDonofrio on guitar, and Don Griffin ontrumpet. And yes, they played surf music.

Its appropriate. George Sanger isone of many trying to stay on top of avery quickly changing market. Hesdoing it by branching out rather thanprotecting his turf. Every time I givesomething away I get more back.Enthusiastically describing the jam in

San Jose, Sanger confesses to being ini-tially nervous about meeting and work-ing with competitors but, as it workedout, I made some very nice friends andcemented some very good relationships.

Likewise, Sanger admits, I wasnervous when I started giving jobs to theguys on the team, but thats what turnedit into a team instead of just one com-poser. Staying on top, staying ahead ofthe trend, thats surfing. Its that ability,over and above songwriting, that hasallowed George Sanger to make moneyat something he loves. n

Kathleen Maher is a freelance writerin San Francisco, Calif., specializing inmedia and culture. She is also the executiveeditor of Cadence Magazine. But, Kath-leens true talent may be her ability to findthe best barbeque in Texas and LucindaWilliams on the jukebox. She can be reachedvia Internet at [email protected] [email protected].

T H E F A T M A N


In the past, game players faced quitea dilemma. Im sure you knowwhat Im talking about. Yourestanding there at the counter,preparing to plunk down yourhard-earned money for a video car-tridge. Only one thing left todecide. Do I want a game I can

play at home? Or do I want a game Icarry with me and play when Im stuckin traffic? A minute seems like an eter-nity. You finally make what seems to bean intelligent choice, but suddenlyeverythings in black-and-white, andRod Serling is saying something aboutsome poor sap entering the TwilightZone. Hey, wait! No need to sweat orhallucinate any longer.

Nintendo has announced the releaseof Super Game Boy, which transformsGame Boy cartridges into full-size, colorvideo games. Super Game Boy is a SuperNintendo Entertainment System (NES)cartridge that contains a Game Boyadapter. When you insert a Game Boycartridge into Super Game Boy, it istransformed from a 2- by 2-inch, black-and-white game to a bright, multicoloredimage on a big television screen. It even

has stereophonic sound. In other words,you can now play over 350 Game Boycartridges on Super NES.

Super Game Boy displays all GameBoy action in varying shades of four col-ors. And, as if this instant colorization ofblack-and-white Game Boy cartridgesisnt enough to make Ted Turner green(with envy, that is), players may cus-tomize several prestored color palettes tochange the appearance of the screen andmay place different, animated, decorativeborders around the central game-playscreen. Using a Super NES control or aSuper NES mouse, players either selectone of several prestored designs or createtheir own through a paint-type program,drawing not only on the borders but onthe game-play screen itself.

New titles specifically designed forSuper Game Boy will be able to displayup to 256 colors. All of you popular-cul-ture theorists out there know what thefirst new Game Boy title to capitalize onSuper Game Boys capabilities will be.Yes, its time to relive the magic onceagainDonkey Kong, bigger and badderthan ever, will be released at the sametime as Super Game Boy. Thats right,the big, hairy ape returns to video gamescreens in a set of new adventures.

In the new Donkey Kong, Mario (Ithink we can safely say that the poor guyhas some really bad karma) must onceagain fend off the advances of his oldnemesis, Donkey Kong, in an effort torescue damsel-in-distress Pauline. Marioreturns first to the familiar surroundingsof a construction site complete with lad-ders and speeding barrels. Then, he mustchase down the gorilla through a varietyof urban obstacles as Donkey Kong is let

The Return ofA Legend

New releases. New

versions of

old releases.

Books, gameware, tips

from the gurus. All this

and more in a

roundup of

whats hot in the game

industry

right now.

by Andrea Pucky

B I T B L A S T S


Donkey Kong is back in a Game Boy car-tridge that goes from hand-held black-and-white to a full-size, color game.

loose in the Big City. Okay, its not exact-ly the same game we remember from theearly 80s, but still, it seems that DonkeyKong is well on his way to closing thegeneration gap. (Hey, at least I didnt sayanything about the missing link or thePlanet of the Apes.)

More games will soon be on theway, as Nintendos licensees and gamedevelopers will receive development specsimmediately. According to Nintendo,Super Game Boy will be available June 6,at a suggested retail price of $59.99

For more information contact:Nintendo of America Inc.4820 150th Ave. N.E.Redmond, Wash. 98052-5111Tel: (206) 882-2040

Push Your Sega to the LimitAnd now, the winner of the God, I wishI could upgrade my car that easily cate-gory is Sega of America Inc. How wouldyou like to upgrade your 16-bit hardwareto 32-bit and get arcade-quality gameplay for less than $150? Sega of Americacan help you do just that. Sega hasannounced introduction plans for theGenesis Super 32X hardware upgrade,allowing video game fans to get 2 by 32-bit arcade-quality game experiences fromtheir existing 16-bit Genesis hardware.

Genesis Super 32X is the first prod-uct from Sega that will use the HitachiSH2 RISC chips destined for Saturn.(No, thats not some new conspiracy the-ory. Its the code name for Segas futurehardware platform.) The two SH2 chipsin Genesis Super 32X will complement anewly-designed video digital processor(VDP) chip to bring to the Genesis thefast processing speed, high-color defini-tion, texture-mapping, improved comput-er polygon graphics technology, ever-changing three-dimensional perspective,software motion video, enhanced scalingand rotation, and CD-quality audio thatgamers have come to expect from arcademachines and the most advanced homesystems technology on the market.

Genesis Super 32X will enhanceboth Sega CD discs and Sega Genesiscartridges designed and developed toincorporate this new technology. Con-

sumers can still play the more than 500games available for the Sega Genesis andthe more than 100 games available for theSega CD, while the Genesis Super 32X isattached to the Genesis hardware unit. Inother words, its an instant upgrade.

Sega has more than 30 titles underdevelopment and expects its softwarelicensees to add a similar number in thefirst year of the new products introduc-tion. Titles playable on Genesis Super32X are expected to be priced for con-sumer sale at levels comparable to currentsoftware prices for Segas home systems.According to Sega, the Genesis Super32X hardware booster will be available inthe fall of 1994 and will carry a recom-mended retail price of $149.

For more information contact:Sega of America Inc.130 Shoreline Dr.Redwood City, Calif. 94065Tel: (415) 508-2800

The Wise Ones Tell AllGuru: a personal spiritual teacher or arecognized guide or leader. (Just a note toany hip-hoppers out there. Were nottalking about Gifted Unlimited RhymesUniversal.) I think we can safely say thatif youre going to call yourself a guru, youreally should know what youre talkingabout. Although the title may simply be amarketing ploy, the authors of Tricks ofthe Game Programming Gurus really dohave the experience and knowledge to fitthe definition of guru.

Ken Allen is currently programmingwith Spectrum Holobyte and is on thedevelopment team of its latest combatflight simulator. Andr LaMothe, whospecializes in graphics and animation, hasbeen employed by Visions of Reality, Alli-gator Communications, ConcurrentLogic, Versasoft, and NASA Ames(RIACS). Graeme Devine, who is writinga chapter on multimedia for the book, isthe president of Trilobyte, makers of The7th Guest and the upcoming The 11thHour. Devine also designed and pro-grammed the arcade version of AtarisPole Position while in high school. (Doesthat make him a guru or a genius?)

The book provides the building

blocks necessary to create your own inter-active games. It explains the basic andadvanced ideas and topics behind thedevelopment of a flight simulator, athree-dimensional walkthru game, andmany utilities used to manipulate video,audio, and input devices. The book alsoincludes a foreword by John Carmac,Technical Director of ID Software, mak-ers of Castle Wolfenstein and Doom.

Tricks of the Programming Guruscomes with a CD ROM that includes allthe source code from the book, sharewaregames, commercial software demos, andutilities for game design and imagemanipulation, including paint/texturesoftware, sound editors, sprite editor,screen map designer, Castle Wolfenstein,Doom, and The Commander Keen seriesfrom ID software.

The book includes: building anauthentic flight model, the physics offlight, graphics behind the simulator, air-craft avionics, building a user interface,assembly language basics, I/O basics, two-dimensional graphics, VGA card manipu-lation, three-dimensional space, bitmapgraphics, sound and effects, game struc-tures, synthetic intelligence, user-definedgraphics, adding multiplayer capabilities,and testing the game. We can only hopethat these gurus have a few more tricks uptheir sleeves for their next book.

Tricks of the Game ProgrammingGurus will be released in July 1994 andwill be priced at $49.95.

For more information contact:SAMS PublishingPrentice Hall Computer Pub.201 W. 103rd St.Indianapolis, Ind. 46290Tel: (317) 581-3500

Practically Total RealityAre you an unsatisfied game developer?Yes, even game developers get the blues.Wavefront Technologies may not beable to offer you a magical cure-all, butthey have introduced GameWare, asoftware package designed to satisfy thedemands of game developers. Game-Ware runs on Silicon Graphics worksta-tions and, according to WavefrontTechnologies, provides developers with

B I T B L A S T S


graphics tools for creating games withrealistic three-dimensional objects andterrain, three-dimensional syntheticactors with realistic motion, and stun-ning special effects.

GameWare addresses the colorbandwidth problem of game consoles byallowing the developer to render toreduced color palettes. It resolves geome-try bandwidth problems by providingthree-dimensional geometry reductionalgorithms and a flatten tool that con-verts a three-dimensional object into anidentical two-dimensional version. Openarchitecture allows developers to integratetheir existing software tools with Game-Ware to an extent that is not possiblewith systems based on a proprietary archi-tecture and data structure.

In addition to modeling, animation,and rendering capabilities, GameWareprovides synthetic actor animation byintegrating forward and inverse kinemat-ics with skin behavior. For those of youwho havent brushed up on the jargonlately, animators can bring a static modelto life by directly manipulating a user-defined skeleton like a marionette. Tomaintain a natural form as the skeletonmoves, GameWare incorporates abehavioral model, called Smart Skin,that can be taught to behave accordingto skeletal position. Clothes can betaught to bunch up as a character flexes

its arm, for example. Wavefront Tech-nologies says that GameWare combineseverything character animators needthree-dimensional kinetics motion,skeletal intelligence, and skin behaviorin an intuitive system.

GameWare Hyper Plug-ins areavailable to provide advanced levels ofspecial effects, compositing and paint-

ing. GameWare Dynamation is a HyperPlug-in that uses the principles ofphysics to ensure that special effects arehighly realistic. Dynamation allowsusers to create realistic, natural imagesof dynamic events. The animator

defines the laws of a particular dynamicworld and releases objects into it. (Dontyou wish you had this to play with inyour high school physics class?) Thesoftware can create realistic effects sothat players in a race-car game, forexample, can drive through a realisticbank of fog or a burst of exhaust fromthe car ahead. Dynamation comes witha library of prebuilt effects, called ClipF/X, that makes it possible to createphysically based phenomena, such asexplosions, cloth modeling, terrains, andplants. Other Hyper Plug-ins areGameWare Composer, GameWarePaint, and GameWare Hidline/Reline.

GameWare is available for all SGIworkstations, including the entry-levelIndy. It is priced from $15,000.

For more information contact:Wavefront Technologies Inc.530 E. Montecito St.Santa Barbara, Calif. 93103Tel: (805) 962-8117

Director, Director!So, have you guessed the leitmotif? If youguessed upgrade, youre right. Macrome-dia recently announced (whats the secretword of the day?) an upgrade to Directorfor Macintosh, an authoring tool for cre-ating multimedia productions. Hereswhats up with the new version.

The scripting language, Lingo, iscompiled for faster script execution, andthe improved memory management pro-

vides developers with control over remov-ing cast members from memory. Accord-ing to Macromedia, the new version opti-mizes data retrieval from storage devicesand a revised file layout reduces disk accesstime. Plus (yes, theres more), withinLingo, new object-oriented commandsprovide reusable code and simplifiedscripting. The new movie in a windowfeature allows multiple Director movies toplay at the same time while each individ-ual movie maintains full interactivity.

Further, within the Score, the num-ber of channels increases to 48, doublingthe number of interactive elements onthe screen at one time. The number ofcase members per movie has increasedsignificantly from 512 to 32,000, and thefile size has grown from 16MB to anunlimited size.

Director 4.0 has a few moreimprovements worth mentioning here. Anew security feature eliminates the view-ing of proprietary Lingo code. Color hasbeen added to the Score (okay, maybe theleitmotif is Ted Turner) to help organizeand track cast members within a produc-tion, and users can drag-and-drop castmembers directly from the Cast into theScore for faster animation creation andproduction development. Version 4.0 hasa binary-compatible file format with thesoon-to-be-released Director for Win-dows, providing cross-platform authoringand playback.

But thats not all! You also get step-by-step tutorials, sample movies, on-linehelp, and Lingo Expos, which highlightscommonly used Lingo in real-worldexamples.

Macromedias suggested retail pricefor Macromedia 4.0 is $1,195. The reallygood news is that all registered users ofDirector (versions 2.0, 3.0, or 3.1) or evenits predecessor, VideoWorks, mayupgrade to Director 4.0 for $199. (Butyou have to do it before August 31, 1994;starting September 1, 1994, the upgradewill cost $249.)

For more information contact:Macromedia Inc.600 Townsend St.San Francisco, Calif. 94103Tel: (800) 457-1774


Zap! Bang! Yow! No Batman effectshereHyper-Plug-ins create realistic,natural images for maximum animation.

Live video of an office interior, combinedwith computer-generated animation,creates a new horizon in special effects.

The latest development in thePC audio arena is the standard-ization efforts of the VideoElectronics Standards Associa-tion or VESA. This standard-ization effort called the VESAVBE/AI (VESA BIOS Exten-sion / Audio Interface) has

recently been approved. Initially, thisstandardization effort was broughtabout by the requests of the entertain-ment industry that creates products forthe DOS environment.

At the April 1993 Game Develop-ers Conference in Santa Clara, Calif., agroup of prominent entertainment soft-ware developers held a meeting to dis-cuss the problems in developing audiosupport for game titles. The quagmireof existing audio hardware architecturesand the introduction of new ones, all ofwhich compete for attention, was morethan most developers and their compa-nies could afford to bear. In somecases, adding support for each audioboard represented about 15% to 20% ofa total game development project instaff resources.

Until recently, audio standards forthe PC consisted of a loose interpreta-tion of an old industry standby: Cre-ative Labs first Sound Blaster architec-ture. Based on 8-bit digital mono audioand two-operator (OPL2) FM synthe-sis provided by Yamaha, this pseudo-standard has been in place since the late1980s. However, feeling the pressure ofconsumers, most developers couldntafford to support just this one simplearchitecture.

It is not uncommon to find 16-bitCD-quality stereo digital audio andhigh-quality digitally sampled instru-

ments replacing the lower quality andperformance of the original SoundBlaster architecture in PCs. Thesehigher performance and usually moreadvanced feature set PC audio add-inboards have met consumer expectations,but with a higher price tag. Clearly astandardized audio API for the enter-tainment industry is required to endurethe explosive growth of the past twoyears.

The Standard Takes ShapeThe VESA VBE/AI work group leaderis Rick Allen of Media Vision Inc. Thegroup consists of 30 representativesfrom PC audi

Gdm June 1994

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