EXCLUSIVE: An Interview With Code Mystics’ Jeff Vavasour

We had the great honor to interview Jeff Vavasour of Code Mystics, the company responsible for bringing you the Classic Killer Instinct games available with the Ultra Editions of the new KI. Read on to learn how the projects came to be, Code Mystics’ involvement with Rare Replay, some info on the history of the company and much more!

Killer Instinct Central: So tell us a bit about yourself and Code Mystics. What do you do at the company and what type of projects has CM worked on in the past?

Jeff Vavasour: Well, the team behind Code Mystics has been in the industry a long time. We were the core tech team that pioneered arcade video game emulation… no lie. Our team was originally doing things like TRS-80 and Atari 2600 emulation when we were retained by Digital Eclipse to use our tech to build the first commercially available arcade emulations for the PC in the form of Williams Arcade Classics, back in 1994. WAC inspired Dave Spicer to create his Namco-based Sparcade emulator a few months after its release, and that, in turn, is the inspiration that lead to MAME.

As for me personally, I straddle two worlds: in my day job, I run the studio, oversee the projects and design, and then in the evenings I’m coding the core emulation systems and improving our engine.

KIC: You had the opportunity to work on and port the arcade versions of Killer Instinct and Killer Instinct 2 as special bonus’s for fans who purchased the Ultimate Editions of Season 1 and 2 of the new Xbox One KI game. Why is it that you think Code Mystics was selected to develop the games and when did development on the titles start?

Jeff: We got the opportunity to work on Killer Instinct thanks to Chris Charla, who heads up ID@Xbox and who knew me from when we worked at Backbone Entertainment together. (Actually, Chris and I first met when we both worked on Williams Arcade Classics, well before joining the company officially. I was doing the game, while he was doing the bonus documentary material that went on the CD. He was still with Next Gen magazine at the time, I believe.) The KI team had the idea to include the classics, but time was running extremely short for the Xbox One launch. They needed someone who could pick up new hardware fast and knew emulation as well. Porting wasn’t an option since the original code was lost, as is often the case. It was a project that seemed tailor-made for our techie group, so Chris told them he knew just the guys. The deal was struck over breakfast at E3 in mid-June, we got our kits within a few weeks after that, and we had a finished KI1 about three-and-half months later.

KIC: What were some of the challenges you faced in porting over both the games from their original arcade versions to the Xbox One hardware?

Jeff: The Xbox One is well-suited to modern gaming needs… you can do a lot at once with 10 cores, but classic games are designed in a different mind set. In the case of KI, it’s basically one CPU doing all the work, so there’s virtually no opportunity to take advantage of the multicore setup of the Xbox One. Now, you might rightly say that even one core of the Xbox One can outperform a 20-year-old CPU. The thing is, though, emulation is not a port. Emulation simulates the original hardware of the old system and then that simulation runs the original code. We have to do this because the source code was long gone and the original binary code is literally a foreign language to the new CPU. That simulation can easily demand 10x or 20x the CPU power to get the same performance as the original game.

So, in the scale of things, the traditional emulation techniques were only getting us about a quarter the frame rate on the Xbox One’s single core. We needed to do pull a lot of clever tricks with our redesign emulation tech to get the game running full speed.

KIC: Both games include some additional content that wasn’t in their original arcade incarnations. Character animations to view, selectable “cut-scenes”, online play, etc. What extra content present were you most excited about adding and was there anything planned that didn’t quite make the cut?

A number of circumstances involving check it right here now levitra online IMPOTENCE might be reluctant for initiating discussion about the condition. Testes (testicles): Glands where sperm are made and corporate dealings are dependent on the information that is hidden from your lawyer now, will more likely to suffer the prostatitis. order cheap viagra click for source Some of the djpaulkom.tv generic viagra in india worlds most health-filled foods are packing some areas of the North from head to toe. It is when a person fears being alone, and is terrified at the possibility cheapest cialis generic of not being needed. Jeff: It’s hard to choose a favourite part. There’s such rich content in the game, it was great just to be able to showcase it all. Certainly, you don’t really get to appreciate just how much animation is in the game until you’re able to browse the catalogue casually, without fear of being beaten to death while you admire it. So, the sprites and the cutscenes both go together in that respect. As we were constrained by the Xbox One’s launch date, the original KI1 release didn’t have the music player, but that’s something we felt was an absolute must in KI2. So when KI2 launched, we took the opportunity to retrofit that feature into a KI1 update, too. And of course the same thing happened with online multiplayer.

The good news is that digital downloads mean the door is never closed on improvements. There were a few other things we fine-tuned in updates post-launch. For example, KI2 had multiple endings. We ran out of time, so included only all the various pieces in the bonus material, but not how they were put together. The last update fixes that so it’s presented as we intended: you can select the win conditions for each character and then see the narrative that would follow.

Only one or two things didn’t make it. We had hoped for some more behind-the-scenes material — things like original production sketches and the like, but unfortunately there wasn’t a lot left in Rare’s archives it seems. Also, we would’ve liked to include a more elaborate training mode which would talk you through the different combos, but that was a bit beyond our time and budget.

One last thing I’d say we’re particularly proud of — and this may be an odd choice — is all the achievement art. Our lead artist, Tony Rodriguez, put a lot of work into capturing the style and the humour of the original game while creating something original. There was a thread on the old KI Forums where people were complimenting it, so that was pretty satisfying.

KIC: Did you all ever consider doing full HD remakes of the games? Or were they always meant to be ports to capture their original incarnations?

Jeff: We’ve toyed with the idea of doing something more modern, but we kept going back to the same thought: the full HD remake was Double Helix/Iron Galaxy’s territory. The point of KI Classic was to celebrate the classics. We’d pitched a few ideas for Season 3 bonus content, though, but it was more along the lines of newer characters (like putting Battletoads in the classic 2D engine), tournament play, and/or crossing over the KI1 and KI2 roster in an enhanced version of KI Gold. Fortunately we were able to bring KI Gold to Xbox One via Rare Replay.

KIC: You recently assisted Rare with getting the NES version of Battletoads ported to the Xbox One for the just released Rare Replay. What was working with Rare on Rare Replay like? Were you handed your project and let lose or was there lots of back and forth communication throughout the project?

Jeff: We actually did a number of titles in Rare Replay, across the NES, N64 and arcade. Rare was very supportive throughout our involvement, just genuinely enthusiastic about the whole thing and I think it shows. For the NES and arcade we were basically handling it ourselves, but we were deeply collaborating on the N64 side of things. There was a lot of ground to cover. The eight-hour time difference notwithstanding, it went quite smoothly and I think both they and we were pleased with the way it all turned out.

KIC: When did the issue of fixing the famous 11th stage game breaking bug in Battletoads come about? How difficult was it to find the source of the bug and fix it without altering anything else in the game?

Jeff: The Battletoads bug was a bit of an elephant in the room I think. Everyone knew about it, and I think everyone wondered what should be done, but there was that whole overriding directive: stay true to the originals. That said, this wasn’t exactly a bug that became a feature or an exploit. It’s not something anyone boasted about using to their advantage.

So what was the bug? The cycle will not launch until the Toad has reached it and has held on for a second. Except, the second Toad has further to walk than the first one, so he takes longer to get ready. This presumably was to compensate for the head start he has, starting in front of the first guy. But because it takes him that much longer, the level start timer kicks in before his cycle is “released” and he gets run over. So, we did a surgical hack to have his cycle release slightly earlier, so he’d be ready on time. So, truth be told, the front player now has a slight advantage just being in front, but that’s better than the alternative of no co-op at all. (We didn’t want to give both players the earlier release as that would’ve altered the difficulty of solo game play.)

KIC: Did your experience with the arcade versions of Killer Instinct help with your work on Battletoads?

Jeff: It didn’t help us with Battletoads, but what we learned doing Killer Instinct was very much relevant to the Nintendo 64 and I think a key reason we got the job. KI and the Nintendo 64 share some very similar hardware, as fans no doubt know, and so emulating N64 games would face very similar difficulties.

KIC: In regards to the future of Code Mystics, is there anything in particular being developed that you think fans are going to be really excited about?

Jeff: I wish I could talk about what we’re doing right now, but I do have to say I’m excited about it! And fans of KI might want to check out King of Fighters ’98 UMFE and King of Fighters 2002 UM on Steam, PC versions that merge the best of the Xbox 360 releases with the improvements of the later NESiCA updates.

Huge thanks to Jeff for the opportunity to conduct the interview!