It was December 2018 when Gameblabla showed the world what he did for the Philips CD-i. He managed to port one of his games (based on Supra Killminds) for the Philips CDi and could confirm it works on a real CD-i 220 unit. Super Quartet is a puzzling game by based on Killminds and Quartet (the flash game). Your goal in this game is to move a piece of the square into one of the 4 available spots. You start with 3 lives and the timer decreases more quickly as time goes on Slide it over an already occupied place (or take too long) and you'll lose a life. We recently spoke to Gameblabla, the 24 years old developer of Super Quartet on CD-i to find out how the process went, how he came up with the idea and what could be next in the pipeline.
Hi Gameblabla, could you tell us how development started of Super Quartet on CD-i?
"Well originally, it was a clone of Killminds for the Megadrive that i had made for the 3DO. Later i took the same code base and ported it to the NUON. Fast forward to November/December 2018, i was still pissed that no one gave a shit or did anything homebrew wise for the Philips CDI. Probably because most people thinks its a shit console (there's some truth to that but not in the way most people think)."
What were the barriers to making CD-i homebrew?
"One barrier was just due to the fact that it is seldom documented, relies on old compilers only working on Windows XP (doesn't even work on Wine) and you can't really use direct access like on consoles like the Genesis, NES or stuff like that because each CDI console has subtle differences."
Super Quartet is built on the source code of Frog Feast, the only other CD-i homebrew title that currently exists. Could you elaborate on this?
"The only guy that did some work on the CD-i was cdoty for Frog Feast and he had previously released the source code for it previously but it went down around the mid 2010s meaning it stopped me short in my tracks. I had asked cdoty for a copy of the Frog feast source code and he told me he would look into it. However, i got nothing in return... So i asked cdifan(The author of CD-i Emulator, -editor)instead if he had a copy of the Frog feast source code and he found it on his hard drive! This kickstarted the whole thing because without it, i would have had to figure out all of that shit myself and believe me, it turns out to be quite complicated..."
What were the next steps when you received the Frog Feast source code?
"So i got Frog Feast's source code and unfortunately, i already noticed some issues. Though it would play back the sounds in Frog Feast just fine, i couldn't manage to play mine properly. I'm still mystified as to why and it doesn't help that the emulators are horribly inaccurate, even MAME for that matter. For example, as i was trying to test the sound code and it worked fine on both emulators. However, as soon as i got my newly bought Philips CD-i and burned it on a disc, it would just softlock. (wasted CDs oops) So i disabled the sound related code and it would work just fine now.
Another pain i had to deal with was the fact that i could not get the screen to be cleared. I came up with a hack by parsing the whole screen with empty text but even my initial attempts were still glitchy."
Did the first tests with the Frog Feast source code changed your mind about your CD-i porting plans?
"The source code was pretty awful and was especially coded in such a way that it would only work with Frog Feast. I know little to no m68k assembly language so it was painful to figure out his asm stuff...
My initial plans was to port Evil Australians to the Philips CD-i. However after some testing, i knew that porting that game over would be impossible as is so i just decided to port Killminds instead, a much easier game to port. And this is how Super Quartet (aka Killminds) on the Philips CD-i was born.
It was just an exercise to see if i could manage to whip up something for the CD-i. I did... kinda. I couldn't manage to get the sound working correctly. I also have no idea how to deal with CDDA music. The Frog feast commercial version had CDDA version (it would be nice if i could get a copy of that version) but the source code it was based on removed that related code..."
It was just an exercise to see if i could manage to whip up something for the CD-i. I did... kinda. I couldn't manage to get the sound working correctly. I also have no idea how to deal with CDDA music. The Frog feast commercial version had CDDA version (it would be nice if i could get a copy of that version) but the source code it was based on removed that related code..."
What kind of other help did you get in developing Super Quartet on CD-i?
"Cdifan said he was planning to work on a CD-i base library as to make development on the Philips CD-i easier. That was after the release of Frog Feast more than a decade: nothing came out of it. After the release of Super Quartet, i told him i needed to have some easy way to draw to the framebuffer as well as playing back sounds and CDDA music. He cringed and told me i was basically asking him to make a complete devkit..."
How easy do you feel is developing on CD-i, when you look back to it?
"The Philips CD-i is a terrible platform to work for: i would place it alongside the Atari Jaguar but even that console has a somewhat ok graphics library given the hardware..."
"The Philips CD-i is a terrible platform to work for: i would place it alongside the Atari Jaguar but even that console has a somewhat ok graphics library given the hardware..."
What's next in the pipeline for CD-i?
"Absolutely nothing unless someone comes up with a better devkit out there. Really, i would be happy with anything as long as it works okay. I mean, i just refuse to work with such a horrible piece of a devkit... The C compiler is still stuck with K&R C, it doesn't even support ANSI C 90."
Imagine we'd have a better devkit. What do you think would work well on CD-i?
"I think the CD-i would be the perfect platform for visual novels given that you can achieve a very high resolution with a high color depth compared to other consoles of the time like Genesis or even the SNES, it's insane.
Maybe you could even come up with some 2D platformers if you can come up with fast drawing routines like cdoty was planning."
What did you like the most of cdoty's work on CD-i homebrew?
There's a Mode7 CD- demo that cdoty did around 2008 (but cancelled): it's pretty slow unfortunately due to the slow CPU but still cool nonetheless. You can grab it here: https://gameblabla.nl/files/cdi/Mode7-CDi.rar
Is the source code of Super Quartet CD-i also available for aspiring future CD-i developers?
"Yes, I have published the source code for Super Quartet CD-i with some instructions so really guys, i've did the best i could. https://github.com/gameblabla/superquartet-cdi
To compile it, you need the OS9 C compiler as well as some more tools that you need to put in the img folder inside of src. You can find these at https://gameblabla.nl/files/cdi/ This will only fully compile on Windows 32-bits, due to an error in the C compiler that requests a unix path on Windows. This won't work on Dosbox for example (even though it can run the binaries) but /dd/ will default to C: on Windows. This corner case also still won't work on ReactOS. The source code is based on Frog Feast's source code, which without it, this project wouldn't be possible. Eventually this code will be got rid of anyway since it won't be suitable for future projects."
Thank you Gameblabla for these insights behind the process of developing Super Quartet on CD-i.
Hopefully Interactive Dreams will attract the eyes of some former CD-i developers willing to leak more source code :' )"
It's clear it was no easy task. The lack of attention at the end of 2018 did not help either. Gameblabla told us: " It's a shame that most people just don't bother with it but alas, it was also the same thing with the 3DO."It's a marvelous effort that CD-i has seen the release of its second homebrew title. After Frog Feast in 2007, it took more than 10 years for the first new CD-i developments that has now seen the light of day.
Of course there are still plans by cdifan to update his CD-i base library and even release a full authoring tool by the name "CD-Izi", but as Gameblabla told us, after ten years nothing came out of it. No guarantee for the future, but it will remain a small flickering star at the horizon. :)
[Thanks, gameblabla]
[Thanks, gameblabla]