The Lee Actor Interview

[HalStep 855]

we have another great interview from Ross Sillifant a.k.a Chryssalid,so please enjoy:

 

    GOG Presents The Lee Actor Interview

 

Q1)Lee, it's my pleasure to be able to put a few questions to you,
would you mind starting us off by introducing yourself to our readers?

A1) I started in the videogame industry in 1982 for a small startup
named Videa, which became Sente Technologies and later Bally Sente.  I
worked mostly on designing and programming coin-operated arcade games,
such as SnakePit, Hat Trick, Street Football, and others.  In 1988
Bally decided they didn't need a design team in California, and Dennis
Koble and I started an independent 3rd-party development company
called Sterling Silver Software, which a few years later became
Polygames.  We created the PGA Tour Golf franchise for Electronic Arts
(the original PC version and 4 versions for Sega Genesis), as well as
numerous Atari coin-op ports to Genesis, Sonic Spinball for Sega, and
other original titles.  In 1997, Dennis and I and our old colleague
Roger Hector started an interactive game division of Universal Studios
in San Jose called Universal Digital Arts, which produced the original
title "Xena" for Sony Playstation.  After 3 years, Universal decided
to just license their properties rather than develop products
in-house, and I left the videogame industry.  Since 2001 I have been a
full-time composer, mostly of orchestral music; to date my works have
been performed well over 100 times by almost 70 different orchestras
and bands throughout the U.S. and around the world.

Q2)I'd like to start by asking about some of your earliest coding (if
you can recall that far back, appreciate it's been a good few years
since), but didn't you work on a couple of promising, but sadly
unreleased games for the Atari 2600 console?.I'm thinking of
'Lasercade' and 'Atom Smasher' aka 'Meltdown'...can you talk us
through both and what became of them?.

A2) I can remember that far back (barely), but I'll point out that my
earliest coding was in 1968 for an IBM 1130 mainframe.  Lasercade and
Meltdown were both produced at Videa, though I was only responsible
for designing and programming Lasercade; Meltdown was the work of Dave
Ross.  Both games were sold to Fox in late 1982/early 1983, just
before the big videogame crash, and I believe Lasercade was later
resold again to Atari.  As far as I know, neither game ended up making
it to store shelves, though I think they might be available through
the Classic Gaming group.  The whole game fit on a 4K EPROM.

 

Q3)Sticking with the Atari hardware, you also went on to develop
various music software for the Atari 800 hardware (Advanced Music 1+2
etc).What were your thoughts on the hardwares soundchip, Pokey...i ask
as over here in the UK, it's very much a respected chip, especially as
it's very versatile and great for sound FX, but other than folks
wishing Atari had included it on a lot more 7800 games, it seems to
come in a respectable second after the might SID chip in the Commodore
64.

A3) Music software actually provided the path for my entrance into the
videogame industry.  I had developed Advanced MusicSystem on the Atari
800 the summer before I entered the PhD program in music composition
at UC Berkeley; it started as a personal tool for me to play with, as
I found the existing music software for the 800 appallingly bad.  It
ended up turning into an award-winning commercial product, through
which I met Ed Rotberg (of Battlezone fame), who had recently left
Atari with Howard Delman and Roger Hector to start Videa.  Ed offered
me a job, and though I wasn't looking at the time, decided a few
months later to take a leave of absence from my graduate studies and
see what working in the fledgling game industry was like.  My leave of
absence is now in its 34th year.

As for the Pokey chip, the one great advantage it had over the SID
chip, if I remember correctly, is that it had 4 voices available
rather than 3.  The sound was certainly inferior -- basically an
annoying square wave -- and it was not possible for every note to be
in tune, but that extra voice makes a huge difference when it comes to
music.  In Advanced MusicSystem, I even jury-rigged a way to do
multi-tracking; I made a 16-voice Pokey version of a Rachmaninoff
piano concerto.  I'm sure that would sound very painful nowadays.

 

Q4)Back onto the subject of Lost Games, i also believe you worked on a
few coin-op projects that sadly never made it (Team Hat trick and an
un-named, 3rd person spaceship game), again ANYTHING you can tell us
about either would be fantastic and also how did you feel seeing the
fruits of your labour sadly consigned to the scrap heap?.If nothing
else at least likes of myself asking mean they are gone, but not
forgotten.....

A5)Team Hat Trick was probably the best coin-op game I did.  It was a
tabletop configuration for 4 gamers (2 players + goalie for each
side), and though any of the players could be computer-controlled,
with 4 humans it was just outrageously fun.  For many months, a group
of 4 of us would play for at least an hour every day in the hallway,
I'm sure disrupting everyone else's work in the office.  It tested off
the charts in Canada and I believe did very well everywhere, but never
made it to production.  I think it had a lot to do with being large,
heavy, and expensive.  It's the coin-op game of mine I most wish I had
a copy of.

The 3rd person spaceship game -- actually, I think it was a 1st person
perspective -- was one of the projects started when Bally Sente got
rid of much of the staff, and signed contracts with several of us as
independent developers.  This game was to be an expanded version of
Jez San's Starglider, but frankly I didn't get very far on it before
Bally decided to buy out our contracts.  No tears shed by me.

 

Addt. Q) There was also talk of a Playstation 1 game, based on Universal
Studios Monsters a subject that's had mixed results over the years, an
earlier Atari ST/CBM Amiga game based on them also never appeared, so
i'd be delighted to hear what became of the PS1 game.

Addt.A) The PS1 game was Xena, produced by Universal Digital Arts.  I
really don't know how well it sold; it got mixed reviews and had some
problems, but there were definitely fun elements in it as well.
Electronic Arts thought enough of it to want to do a sequel, and when
Universal closed down the office I had the team and everything needed
to produce a successful product except the cooperation of Universal,
and after the 2 most stressful months of my life finally threw in the
towel.  Probably for the best; I always far preferred creating
products than managing other people who created them.  The Atari
ST/Amiga project you mentioned doesn't ring any bells.

 

Q5)Moving onto perhaps your best known platform, the Sega Genesis
(Megadrive here in UK), you were 1 of the few to attempt the insanity
as it were of attempting to do 3D Polygon games on hardware designed
for 2D, sprite-based games, long before the days of Sega bringing out
the SVP (DSP) chip for Virtua Racing, so i wonder how on earth you
pulled it off and how pleased you were with the results?

A5) Insanity is probably a pretty accurate term.  Doing 3D on Genesis
required many programming/optimization tricks -- something that 2600
programmer like Dennis and myself had lots of experience doing (the
processor in the 2600 didn't even have a hardware multiply
instruction).  The end result was fine for doing a camera flyover of
the course in PGA Tour Gold, but for action games like Steel Talons
and Hard Drivin', the frame rate was pretty choppy.  But basically the
best you could do on that hardware.

Addt QP1) I've heard of E.A using the MD's Z80 CPU as well as the 68000 for
games like F-22, LHX Interceptor and Blockout, where as UK coder's
like Archer Maclean simply used clever coding routines for his snooker
game, so i wonder which camp you fell into?.

Addt.A) We left the Z80 for audio as designed, and stuck to clever
coding techniques.

 

Addt.Q P2) Also would developing on the Sega CD instead of been a help? faster
CPU to start with, could use Genesis 68000 in tandem etc?

Addt A.P2) Maybe, but I think it would have been a messier development
environment.  I prefer the straight-ahead approach, looking for every
last drop of optimization of the hardware.  Throwing a mechanical
device into the mix makes me nervous.

 

Q6)Looking at the games themselves (Steel Talons, Hard Drivin' and
Race Drivin') do you feel they were (technical issues aside) ideal for
home conversion?.I ask as whilst say the Atari Lynx has a technically
fantastic version of Hard Drivin', it cannot disguise the originals
limited gameplay, you soon find yourself having done everything there
is to do, boredom sets in.Plus when you do add in technical
restraints, you suddenly find something like Steel Talons gets very
frustrating as frame rate isn't what you'd want, but hardware simply
not up to it....

A6) Probably not ideal choices for home conversion, if just for the
lack of custom controls like a steering wheel, etc.  And the frame
rates (esp. Steel Talons) do indeed suck.

 

Q7)Sticking with your 2D Genesis games, i'd like to ask how you
approached:Pitfighter, which had massive sprites, very impressive
scaling in the coin-op, but a lot more custom hardware than could be
found on the Genesis and Roadblasters, which whilst being 1 of the
better home versions (NES, ST+Amiga versions disappointing many),
lacked speech.

Compromises obviously had to be made from the start, but how did the
teams involved decide what to keep and what had to go?

A7) As half the team that decided what stayed and what had to go, I
can only say that we tried to include as much as was technically
feasible.  I don't remember the details, but I think these kinds of
decisions were fairly obvious and easy to make.

 

Addt Q) The Genesis version of Pit Fighter turned out far better than the SNES
version, let alone the Master system version and as for the 7800
version, that was canned.
Am i right in thinking there was at least talk of a sequel exclusive
to Genesis, if true, what ever became of Pitfighter 2?

Addt. A) We did the Genesis version of Pit Fighter 2, though I'm not
sure it ever reached production.  That was 20+ years ago.

 

Q8)Final question, i believe your now retired from the coding side of
games industry, so could you tell us what your up to now and if you
miss the coding days?

A8) I "retired" in 2001 and made music the center of my life once
again.  I've been composing and conducting since then, and have
produced 4 commercial CDs of my work.

I do miss the coding days, the camaraderie and technical problem
solving; and the money was damned good, too.  If the world of
videogame development hadn't changed drastically in the mid-90s, I'd
still be sitting in my home office developing games with my
programming partner and an occasional subcontractor for art and sound.
But I'm also quite happy sitting in my home office every day writing
music, which if anything is an even more isolated activity than
programming.  It's thanks to videogames that I get to do that now.