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Jan. 11, 2005
Interview with: Robert Champagne
Interviewed by: Don Komarechka
Credited as: System Programmer/Artist, Faceball 2000
Currently: Vice President, Nintendo Software Technology

Q:	What role did you take in the development of Faceball 2000?
A:	I was the lead-programmer (and artist!) of the project. We also had another in-house programmer do the bot-AI.
Q:	Faceball 2000 being your first project, how does it compare to things that you have done since then?
A:	Each project has something special about it, and Faceball was my first "professional" production so it will always have a special place. The positive response that I have gotten from the game (even today, 15 years later, I meet people that know the game and have good things to say about it! That hasn't happen with all the projects that I have worked on!
Q:	What were some of the design limitations of creating a First Person game on a 1.05mhz Z80 processor with 64kbit of RAM, and how easy were the ports in various consoles?
A:	I came-up with a simple algorithm that is used to draw the walls and objects (based on the original Midi-Maze engine). Everything was done in assembly language and optimized several times over. The wall-drawing routine, for example, consumes the most CPU cycles to do it's work and was re-written several times to accommodate various features of the Gameboy system. Of course, even though the system is limited in RAM, we used ROM as much as possible to access look-up tables and other pre-computed data (the "faces", for example, are pre-rendered images. I wrote a program on my development machine to texture-map an image on several different "symmetrical" shapes and then rendered each face to a bitmap). Obviously, the biggest limitation of the game is that it is really taking place in "2D" (you cannot "jump" over the walls or other players-- all movement happens in the X-Y plane). Also, we took as much advantage of symmetry as possible-- the faces mirror when turing to one side, the top and bottom of the walls are mirrored, etc.
Q:	How long did the development process take?
A:	As I remember, the project took about 6 months to get the core-engine up and running. Then at least that much time was spent developing levels.
Q:	Using multiplayer links it has been observed that the game can handle up to 16 players. How was this accomplished? (keeping in mind that every other Gameboy game was limited to a maximum of 4 players)
A:	When we developed the game, there was no "4-player adapter" available (yet) from Nintendo (and they didn't tell us it was coming). We wanted more than 2 people to be able to play the game simultaneously, so looked at the hardware specification and came-up with a simple way to connect as many Gameboys as we wanted (essentially a daisy-chain of systems). I built a connector and wrote some code-- and couldn't believe how well it worked! The original idea was to pack-in this "special" connector (which would use the standard 2-player cable to connect to the "next" system in the chain) with the cartridge. The cost was low and it was a great feature for the game, but Nintendo would not allow it. Anyway, the project was almost ready to ship at this point, and that is when we found-out about the 4-player adapter. Our only choice was to support it, but I was able to leave the original "16-player" code in the game (it will auto-detect 2-player "cable," 4-player adapter, or the special daisy-chain connector for up to 16-players). Oh, we limited it to 16-players, but it could have easily been more. Quite honestly, it was hard to find more than 10 people to test the game at the time of development! I remember holding two Gameboys (one in each hand) to playtest the game. I'm not sure that we EVER had a "real" 16-player game going!
Q:	Any secrets in the game that have yet to be uncovered?
A:	I doubt it, although I really don't remember everything that was put in the game-- it has been 15 years! I know that most of the cheats were activated by entering a "special" name at the start of the game... "SHOWCREDITS" comes to mind as an example. I know that BPS planned to publish the cheats in Nintendo Power Magazine.
Q:	How many versions of the game were produced, both released and unreleased?
A:	Probably more than I know. The license to the game was sold to the publisher in 1993 and I lost track of any developments that happened after that point. We (Xanth) created the Gameboy, SNES, GameGear, and PCEngine versions of the game. These were all released. There was also a version worked on the the original NES, a PC version, as well as a few for systems that never were released.
Q:	Were there any other projects in the works before the company disbanded?
A:	There were several very cool projects being worked on. Unfortunately, since I was only an employee of the company I cannot say what they were.
Q:	After your work with Xanth Software F/X, where has your career taken you?
A:	I left Vancouver B.C. (where Xanth was based) in 1993 and moved back to my hometown of Seattle. I started doing contract-work in the game industry (working with BPS again, as well as Activision, Spectrum Holobyte, and Lucas Arts just to name a few) and eventually formed a small company of my own (in late 1994). In 1999, I was given an offer that I couldn't refuse and moved to my current position as the VP of a development studio wholly owned by Nintendo. It's somewhat ironic that I started my career with a Nintendo system, worked on just about every other system out there, and seem to have come full-circle!
Q:	Have any other Xanth alumni made any waves in the video game industry?
A:	They certainly have, but again, I don't want to mention anybody's name without their permission. Several of them I still see on a regular basis and others I haven't talked to in years.
Q:	What are you impressions on the game, your favourite aspects or things you would have liked to have changed?
A:	To be honest, when I first started programming the game I didn't really like it. Remember, FPS's didn't really exist yet, and I was a huge fan of side-scrolling games. I think that the multiplayer aspect is what really got me caught-up in the game. It was just too much fun to have a "death-match" (we, of course, did not call them that at the time!) with friends. When the initial version of the game was working I remember playing long into the night with other guys in the group. There really isn't much that I would change. More time to optimize the 3-D stuff, maybe (heck, if I knew then what I know now! :)