There is a lead programmer for each product There a lead programmer and there is a cast of support programmers for each project And the resources vary from project to project I would say I certainly am allocated the least number of resources. And other, I wouldn't say so much programmers maybe, but some game designers probably have more resources allocated to them. And depending on the scope of the project. You know, something like, I would say, like Munsters, where the scope is maybe a little, and Black Knight, where the scope is a little shorter, versus something that you know, like, wow, this is going to have a lot of stuff in it and be pretty big, like Star Wars. So it really varies. Each game is kind of different in a lot of respect. Makes sense. Yeah. We kind of went off track because we're so curious about your history, Lyman, and a lot of the things that have happened recently. But I know you guys are on to talk about Cactus Canyon, so we definitely want to jump back into that. Lyman, you were the programmer on the original version of every CGC game that they've put out so far. So did they come to you in the past and ask you for your input on those games, or is this the first time that you've ever really been involved? This is pretty much the first time I've ever really been involved. My only other involvement prior to that, I think probably the first time I met Ryan at CGC, was at MGC when we had Batman there. And I'm just standing in the booth chatting with, I can't remember who was there, I think Mike Vinicorn was there, a bunch of other guys from Stern. And we had a Batman in a Stern booth. And then the CDC booth was right next to us. And I look over there and there's all this stuff. You know, I worked on 20, 25 years earlier. And that's when I first met Ryan. And he's kind of, you know, Ryan's, you know, he was there representing the company at the show. And we chatted a little bit. And he gave me his business card and said, hey, you know, do you ever want to talk or this or that? let me know and uh i didn't really again i when i'm involved in a project again the timeline of all of the things that i worked on at stern elvira was actually supposed to be i believe the expo game in 2016 and greg and dennis and i had kind of started to really kind of get into that project at in in december of 2015 and then you know like batman was kind of flip-flopped in there and so So those projects kind of swapped. And then I was sort of looking at things like, well, I still have a commitment to finish this game that I agreed to finish. And that was Batman and Elvira was next up to that that I kind of said, yeah, I'm going to commit to this game and I'm going to work on it and finish it up. So I just kind of shrugged it off at the time. But then again, as far as Cactus goes, it wasn't something that I was looking to do. But once it was presented, it really made a lot of sense that Josh and I, because, again, we have all of this history of playing all these games, that we could finish up the game in the context of a, you know, late 90s Dally Williams game. And Cactus really has kind of that same structure that those other three games have, the two games that I did with Brian and the game that I did with George, Monster Bash. The kind of story-based build-up, you know, to a conclusion and a payoff on the shots and a boy and lots of characters and humor. And so when it was presented, it really made a lot of sense. And I started to get excited about it because it wasn't big studio pinball. It was just kind of like, here's this game that already has a foundation, and can you finish building the house? Right. And that, where I was, certainly the amount of work that I put into both Batman and Elvira, that was something that was very welcome. Yeah, definitely. I can see that. So CGC first scores the great Lyman Sheets, and then, poof, along comes Josh. No, I was, that's the project. Josh was. I've been on the project that Lyman was working on Walking Dead probably Oh wow. It's not that long, but a long time. How did you get started? One of those phone calls. Doug Dubow over there, you know, telling me what he's a cabinet vendor for us, so we'll talk shop a lot, and he was telling me what he was working on. You know, he talked about the CGC team trying their best to finish the game, and I do what I always do, which is, hey, if there's anything I can do to help, let me know. And he sent over this like 102 page design document that the CGC team did. And, you know, I went through it and gave some feedback of the stuff that I thought was cool, the stuff that I thought wasn't. And just said, you know, anytime that you want me to help write anything new or tell you what I think is fun, not fun, help iterate with the team, you know, I'm here. So it was mostly that for a while. And when the opportunity with Lyman came along, I think, you know, it was always important. I had told Doug that the game to me, you know, the heart and soul of that game is it's almost like a licensed game, even though it's an unlicensed game, in that this team from Williams created this universe the same way that if you did a Batman 66, like someone created that stuff, you know. And so the job with this project to me was always let's try to finish what these people couldn't finish because it's a group of really talented people that obviously had ideas. and you start looking at, I remember, you know, starting with Lyman on this stuff, and you're looking at the artwork, and I can remember, like, sending an email to John Yossi of, like, who's this person? You know, you zoom in 400x, and it's like, he drew this character randomly for some reason. It's like, what's the story behind this dude? Or you talk to, you know, we were fortunate enough to talk to Matt Correale, the original programmer, and it's like, hey, man, what's in your notebook? Like, where were you going here? Where were you going here? Did you try anything that worked? Didn't work. So we're not stepping in the same, you know, puddles you did. Like the job was really less about, you know, being handed a blank play field and hey, man, build the universe and make it good. It was really like, I don't know, more of a school project is probably the wrong term. But like we had some resources of people that had put in a lot of the creative work. It was more like solving a puzzle of what can we do to honor these folks that really dreamt up the game, you know, in the beginning 20-whatever years ago. And I think that was a really interesting challenge. It's almost like the creative freedom to do whatever you want is sometimes easier than, you know, trying to work within the specific limitations that the game has to offer. I know that what Lyman just spoke to regarding the games that were made from that era, I call it, there's a certain, like, Williams charm to those games. Like, how the rules are, how the sounds are. There's something to that era that is just very specific to that era. And we didn't want to lose that with what we were doing to help add on to that game experience. And I think that was really challenging to do. I call it a lot of, like modern pinball, you have such a long story to tell that it's kind of like 1 to 10. You have a whole lot to tell. And with these Williams games, it kind of starts at 7 and goes from 7 to 10. So the shots that you're making to progress is really that 1 to 6. And then you start a mode, and it's already three-quarters of the way of that story being told for that mode. And it's just very different than a lot of the modes today where you start something and it's like, all right, chapter one, everyone, sit down. It's time to start, you know, whittling some wood here. It was a neat challenge specifically for this, and obviously having Lyman on board who lived that in the 90s was a pleasure. It's still a pleasure as we continue to work through and problem-solve on this thing. Yeah, there was a lot of upfront kind of, it wasn't just jump in and write code. There was definitely a lot of research, both starting with the research and the documentation that the CGC crew did on the game, And then, as Josh has been talking with Dak Correal, I didn't talk with John. And I'm sorry, Josh, you obviously talked to a lot more people than I did on this. Yeah, and Frankie, who did Continued. Anyone that had anything to do in that Cactus universe that we can help use as a resource to make the game better, we hit up, for sure. Those are all questions that we had, yeah. We wanted to ask you a little bit about how you went back and looked at what has been done in the past, because Continued was out, and I know PrepKey put a ton of time into that. And I know there's a treasure trove of stuff that didn't get used in the original game that was actually finished. So we want to go through each of those things individually with you. Yeah, so earlier this month, CGZ puts out a press release that you guys have joined the crew to create new and enhanced software for Cactus Canyon Remake. But before and after that statement, we had been hearing rumors that you guys were working on both an update for the existing code and also an entirely new rule set that could be sold as a form of pinball DLC in the future. Josh, can you officially give us the confirmation on what is and is not coming? No, I can't. I can't confirm or deny the work that Lyman and I are doing and really the work that Lyman's doing and what I'm helping him do. He gets to write the code. I get to have all the fun parts. You get to have all the fun. I do. But ultimately, guys, that's a question for Doug and for Ryan. $35. In terms of what they do with our work, right? Like, we have an idea, but it's not something that we can speak to. Okay. Sorry. So basically, the CGC team is working on the game's code, and that's what will be released with the game when it ships. You guys will be working to further enhance that code after the release date? Certainly, I believe that their shipping of games is pretty imminent, hopefully, and we are certainly not done with what we're doing. I can say that. How's that? Yeah, no, that's good. So have you guys, before you were even brought in, Josh, had they been working to enhance the code, or were they just trying to get the code to where it was in the original? No, it was definitely an enhancement. I mean, they put in a lot of effort. You know, this design document that had, you know, storyboards from the artist that was on the project and rules concepts from the programmer that was on the project. I think they, and what made it great was their process was very similar to where Lyman and I were coming from, which was, you know, in the design document that they had, it was like referencing the Expo seminar that the CGC team did 18,000 years ago. Like, there was a lot of that same, we're trying to finish the game that these guys did, and there were some, you know, audio files in the ROM that existed. Like, there's a lot of, sort of going back to my puzzle piece analogy, it's like you're trying to finish, someone hands you a 500-piece puzzle, and you know the pieces are there, you don't quite know how they fit, and you know that you might have to cut a couple of your own pieces to put in there to help make it fit. But I think that, you know, there was a natural, like, finishing of the stuff that they did, but also making sure that they were providing additional experiences that fit within sort of that 90s game design. So I think Lime and I just are taking that even a step further. So it's clear you guys are going to continue to work on the code after the game is released in some way to enhance it. I guess you guys aren't comfortable to really tell us where the code will be when the game comes out in terms of whether it will be new and improved or any of the features that will come with that, or are we just going to be talking strictly about where you want it to go down the road? No, I mean, the game that people will be getting when it ships will not be, you know, the base Williams Cactus Canyon. There is a lot of work that was done to help get that game into a position that it can stand on its own, regardless of what Lyman and I have been working on. Okay, and you can't speak to any of the things that are going to be there. No. Okay, that's fine. Here's $105. Yeah, right. So we'll talk specifically about what you guys are going to add to it. He laughed his ass off listening to that. You cannot confirm or deny. I love it. So, Lyman, it's my understanding that this game is being coded in a way that is going to bring the original code into a new programming language. Instead of just taking the ROM out of the old game and sticking it in the new game, they're kind of rewriting some of the code so that it fits into their coding language. How difficult is that process, and why couldn't you just use some sort of emulating software to bring that in without getting too crazy technical, if you can even answer that? Sure, I'll try to answer that. I'll have to dance around a couple of things. I guess the easiest thing to say is that it is not using emulation. It is native, written from the ground up code, which basically allows, it makes it much easier for the amount of things that are being added to the game. Because ideally, I think in a perfect world, CGC probably would have just emulated Cactus Canyon if the original design team were allowed to finish the game in 1998, whenever they were working on the game. and they wouldn't have really needed to add anything, and they could have just emulated the code in the ROMs, the 1609 assembly language. But when you're talking about adding game rules and so many other things, it's a lot easier to just work natively with source code than try to hook in and patch on and kludge in all these other things when you're emulating the original code from the ROMs. That makes sense. All right, well, let's dive into the existing code and what enhancements you're going to make to it. This isn't the first time that someone has tried to retool the code for a game. Eric Prepke worked on enhanced code, and Cactus Canyon continued. Have you guys played with that version? Yeah, right. Lyman, you had it on. Yeah. It was like a science project. We constructed everything that Eric had done in that game and absolutely pulled some stuff out of his game that's going to make it into this updated game. Yeah, I contacted him as if he was a member of the original design team. He was on my list of someone that we wanted to talk to because outside of the people that invented the universe, he was probably the one guy that has spent more time within the universe as anyone else. So he was definitely a resource. I don't think he knew that Lyman was on the project, but Eric knew that I was on the project. I was the one who reached out to him. He knew I'd been on the project for a while. And, yeah, so we definitely had some questions about where some of the things that he was doing on that thing. And there will definitely be some CCC stuff or homages to his stuff in our games because it fit well within the universe that we were trying to build, you know, from the 90s game. Nice. And you said you'd reached out to Matt Correale as well. Did he help you bring some of the assets that he never got to into the new game? And did he have ideas for new things that could be added as well? A lot of it was, and I think Lionel spoke to it earlier, but the time to iterate. It's like he spent more time talking about the stuff that they tried and didn't work. And that's an important part of the problem-solving process. It was helpful for us to know what puddles to not step into because it's like, oh shit man he's explaining an idea that they tried that that we have the same idea maybe we will go in a different direction now and then there was some stuff that he had you know there was a rule related to the uh the left out lane drain that was not in the they didn't get around to making it into the the base game that they made all those years ago but he had a rule idea that kind of overlapped really well with the rule concept that lyman and i were taking him through and it was like oh shit it was kind of interesting for us to come to the same conclusion of where that story was going. So, again, he was another resource. I appreciate the time that, you know, he took to sit and chat with us on Zoom, just kind of pick his brain for as much as he was willing to get up. He got $5, too, right? Yeah. Is he involved in gaming anymore? It seems I looked up his LinkedIn profile, and it sounds like that's kind of in his past. Yeah. I think it's rare, man. You think about the team that did this. You know, it was half of Lyman's life ago, And it was like all these guys that were in their 20s and 30s back then. And more people than not have moved beyond pinball since then. So he still has a cactus. He does, which is awesome. It was cool. So when you guys explored what was already done, and I'm sure that you guys have had a lot of knowledge on that playing the game over the years, what areas did you find that you felt needed improvement in the basic code? And what were your major goals for making this game software even better? Oh, I think, again, to what Josh was saying about solving the puzzle, I think when you look at the playfields, and this is why I like the hand-drawn art with instructions or kind of like the story kind of laid out on a playfield versus, you know, just a bunch of Photoshopped images of like a license or whatever is, like you get, you have a chance to draw the player in, you know, with art, and then they can look at the playfield and you can try to tell the different stories. and all of those are out on the playfield. I think just to talk about one thing, all the saved poly items on the playfield. So in the original game, they have this train and there's on the ramp in the middle, the center ramp, there's a story about the hero getting on the train and saving poly from the train. And then in the game, though, there's on the right ramp, there's kind of like a bank story. There's a bank robbery and you have to save poly from the bank robbers. and then on the left ramp there's a river and a waterfall, and the hero's trying to save Polly. Like, Boss Bart has Polly, and he's trying to save her from the waterfall. And in the original game, if you build up those shots, it doesn't matter if it's the middle train shot, if you build up the right shot or the left shot and you finish it, it kind of starts this save Polly from the train thing. And I'm like, well, how do I get from telling this story about saving Polly from bank robbers to like Polly's tied on the tracks and I have to save her from the train or the waterfall story on the left ramp and so that part of the puzzle is like really easy to figure out it's like and every single time I think when we kind of look at the game and after doing all of the research as to where everybody wanted to go with it and then studying it and looking at it and kind of laying out a roadmap of where we want to go with the game is to kind of look at those things. And yeah, after about four or five times, I'm like, the answer is always they didn't have time to finish the game. So the obvious thing is like, once you get to that third part of the bank story, it shouldn't be about rescuing Polly from the train tracks. Or if you get to the third part of that waterfall story where Bart has Polly in a canoe on a river and the hero is riding on a horse with a lasso, okay once you make that third shot it should have like why is she tied how did she get on the train tracks like that doesn't make any sense to me at all so that's I guess that's I could probably just leave it at that and like I said I think a lot of people look at the art on the game and they look at the stories that are trying to be told throughout the game they'll get it I mean I think I know it's always the case where if if you give 10 more people a half-finished cactus canyon you'll get 10 different outcomes, but there are a lot of clues in the work that was done that I think a lot of reasonable people would probably come to the same conclusions about kind of what to do with, you know, with the game. Some things are easier than others. Obviously, the Polly one is the simplest example of something that I could come up with without, you know, trying to give too much away of, you know, the rest of the work. I can give away one other thing, which I think is really important to us. I think outside of the storytelling, I think there was also trying to match, not to get, like, to score, you know, Lyman and I are both tournament players, so we, you know, we do focus a lot on score balancing. And to us, making sure the coolest things in the game are worthy points-wise for what's in the game, there was a lot of that balancing going on as well. Like, someone was already in the game to start with that, like, man, this isn't worth shit. But it's like a team really did a great, they created a great experience, you know, a great Williams 90 experience. I'm used to hearing somebody at a tournament come to me and yell at me that this isn't worth shit.