Slashdot Mirror
Minter on the History of Llamasoft
Tmuk writes "Just thought I'd bring to your attention the first of a new series of articles by Jeff Minter over at the mighty Way of the Rodent. For the first time ever, the complete history of Llamasoft is being brought together by the man himself, with new articles appearing regularly. Enjoy!"
I played Llamatron incessantly for a good part of my late teens and twenties. Even today's bi tech FPS games can't compete for playability with a classic like Llamatron. I even got it running in DOSBox on Linux. Woohoo! :)
Un-news
Other than a remake of Robotron, what other games did he make? I can't find any references in the article.
Anyone have any information about how his new Gamecube game Unity is progressing?
Haven't seen much new on either his site (aside from the initial announcement) or Lionheads about it for a while?
Sounds like an interesting (and typically Minteresque) project, seems like it is meant to be a cross between his music lightshow idea and a shoot-em-up.
I remember that Jeff Minter was THE Man when it came to making the Atari ST do the impossible. I haven't thought of my old ST for many years...
If a bunch of geeks can't put things into proper perspective, then it's all meaningless. The guy COPIED a game and released it as shareware. Big F'ing whoop!
Yeah, Tempest 2000 kicked ass. What has done for me lately?
Well, yes, he was. He had a long collaboration with Atari, and it's strange that in the last few weeks I got a (boxed, new) copy of Temptest 2000 for my Jaguar.
:)
I still have my STe too, so I could crank out Revenge of the Mutant Camels when I get home
I work for AssemblyTV and I seem to remember we interviewed him. [checks] We did.
3 %2 Fassembly03%2Fassemblytv%2F2003-08-08_1210-jeff_mi nters.mpg&fileinfo
http://scene.org/file.php?file=%2Fparties%2F200
Best $700.00 I got my parents to spend. I remember them asking, "Do you think this will help you with school". Let's see I passed, went to college, passed, got a job in the IT field, got a better job in the IT field, etc.
Yeah, it helped.
So thanks Mom & Dad.
And some day it'll be worth more than the $700.00 too.
Jeff minter has made some of the best games ever.
Tempest 2000 (made the Jaguar useful)
Tempest 3000 (got a nuon dvd player just for it)
Not to mention, llamatron, Defender2k, attack of the mutant camels..the list goes on and on.
I cannot wait for Unity.
Ubuntu- Linux for human beings.
After Unity is released for GameCube, Jeff plans on making a sequel to Llamatron (although this could change, that's very unlikely since Yak himself announced it):
i ght=llamatron
http://www.yakyak.org/viewtopic.php?t=14802&highl
That was a fantastic bit of software.
:-)
A light synth. You set up reflections and transformations, picked a llama or CND shaped cursor and waggled it on screen. Like a kaleidoscope, on drugs. You could record the output and play it back at parties to impress you friends, or put on Pink Floyd and chill out, or simply sit there and have epileptic fits.
Every geek likes flashing lights. If you dont, you may as well just go and work for micro$oft right now.
The grass wasnt just greener in those days, it was stronger as well.
Here is the real mirror
It kind of shows up one of the problems with computers today. Back then, you had a programming language built right into the machine and could play about with it to your heart's content, and if you felt that BASIC was a bit, well, basic, it wasn't going to break the bank to pick up a book on Z80 or 6502/10 machine code and an assembler to experiment with. I certainly did - not to any great level, but enough to create little games and get things moving around on screen.
What do kids have like that now, though? I'd hate to think that computer studies classes for 14-year-olds drop them right in with C!
You must think in Russian.
I played many of these games to death on the C64. Some where a humorous slant on established themes (Matrix/Centipede, Attack of the Mutant Camels/Atari Empire Strikes Back), but others were truly original, like Iridis Alpha - a horizontally scrolling shooter where your craft was in the same level in two different dimensions at once via a split screen effect. That was really interesting twist on the old scrolling shooter - the Viewtiful Joe of it's day, but for shooters and not platform games.
:) Perhaps a "Programming Pearls" style book for programmers seeking to get the most bang for the buck. His games seemed to break the boundaries of what we thought the C64 could do almost effortlessly.
Anyway, I want to point out that Jeff's a pretty good *writer*, as well. Back in the day (1983), the game "Matrix", with it's smooth scrolling grid background, was very impressive. Jeff wrote an article in some magazine describing exactly how he did this. Right down to the machine code level. No listings, just an engaging and detailed description that left you understanding *exactly* how to do it (*). So much so, that I turned around and added it to the game/toy/demo thing I was mucking about with at the time. I was 13. I'm not saying that makes me a child prodigy (I'm sure others will quickly list their early coding experiences that beat that), I'm actually saying that makes Jeff's writing very, very, good.
I'd like to see him write perhaps a whole book on something technical. Anything
(*) I know, you want to know how it was done, without using the C64's hardware smooth scrolling. The simple answer is he took an unused character, and altered the bitmap for it. So take a "T", then create 8 frames where the horizontal bar drops so that your bitmap is an upside down "T". Because of the way the C64 video chip worked, altering the bitmap of a character made *every* instance of this character on the screen change *instantly*, in hardware. So fill the screen with your "T", hook up a little bit of machine code to an interrupt to drive the animation, and you've got a full screen smooth scrolling grid with "practically zero effort" as Jeff put it. Reverse the animation and you go backwards. Now *that's* lateral thinking.