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Games Entertainment

Catching Up With Jeff Minter 32

Posted by Zonk from the he-really-whips-the-llamas-ass dept.
Gamasutra's Brandon Sheffield has a nice interview up today with Jeff Minter, 50% of the indie gaming force that is Llamasoft. He was the creative force behind the visualization for the Xbox 360, and is currently working on the title Space Giraffe for Live Arcade. They touch on Minter's work ethic, past projects, and a canceled GameCube project that never quite made it out the door. They also, of course, discuss Minter's plans for the future: "One thing I would like to explore in the future is making music more involved with the game, so that the type of music you put on would determine how the level played. Some music might create a more chilled level, whereas heavy metal and heavy techno might be more intense. I've got so many ideas, but we can't do them all on the first outing."
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Catching Up With Jeff Minter More

Catching Up With Jeff Minter

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  • music is a great idea (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Some music might create a more chilled level, whereas heavy metal and heavy techno might be more intense. I've got so many ideas, but we can't do them all on the first outing
     
    What happens when you play some Barry Manilow? Does the toon just curl up and die?

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by LiquidCoooled ( 634315 )
      No, but the grue gets a twinkle in its eye and the supply crates contain various contraceptives.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by montyzooooma ( 853414 )
        "No, but the grue gets a twinkle in its eye and the supply crates contain various contraceptives."

        I think you're confusing Barry Manilow and Barry White. Well, I seriously hope you're confusing them.

        • Now I have my glasses on I see the error of my ways.
          The original poster was correct.

          That will teach me to RTFC before I post (mind you, this is slash...)

  • And when... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ... new mutant camels?

  • ...the type of music you put on would determine how the level played. Some music might create a more chilled level, whereas heavy metal and heavy techno might be more intense.


    Doesn't it work better the other way around, where the pros sync the music to the action?

    • Re:Doesn't it work the other way around? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by NeutronCowboy ( 896098 ) on Wednesday April 04, 2007 @05:34PM (#18612289)
      That's the beauty of the idea, and the reason why Jeff Minter is still regarded as a gaming genius: his completely off-the-wall ideas have a tendency to become common-place after a few years. Procedural worlds? Check. Music that controls the game? Check. Yes, the devil is in the detail, but that's the other reason he is a gaming genius: he gets stuff to work that other people simply theorize about.

  • Too many ideas... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by OriginalArlen ( 726444 ) on Wednesday April 04, 2007 @04:38PM (#18611335)
    Jeff's been generating amazing ideas at an amazing rate since the early 80s - sadly AFAIK none of them have really gone anywhere, as others have said he's had the touch of death for consoles too numerous to mention :(
  • I've not seen him for ages, Daglish that is.

    I owe him 100 quid too :)

    Last bloke I owed money to died so I'm hoping that's not a pattern :)

    • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Mick Jagger just called me looking for the $100 I owe him. Oh, and wanted me to say that you're a namedropper.

  • ...stole way too much of my childhood.

    Where's Jack Thompson when you really need him?

  • Other music games that I can think of One of the first (that I can remember) where music played an integral part of how the game was played was Loom from lucas arts [wikipedia.org]. Unfortunately not a lot of people played it, and when people think of early Lucas Arts now, they only recall Maniac Mansion.

    A more recent example was Rez, which came out on Dreamcast which too relegated it to cult status, and the PS2 version is very rare considering how high the demand for the game remains. Music didn't change the gamepl [wikipedia.org]

  • For music that determines how the game plays, you could say DDR is already like that, but the music is selected and the steps are already been determined. I think the game by codemasters called Dance Factory generates the steps for any music cd that you put in. But a non-dance game seeding the game style from the music has still yet to be done, as far as I know.

  • Jeff Who? (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by popo ( 107611 )
    I played Gridrunner on my C-64 for all of 20 minutes. It was sort of a crappy Centipede ripoff. What was most remarkable about the game,
    if anything, was that it said "A Game by Jeff Minter" on the title screen, which was unusual for the day (since credits were not given then).

    Otherwise the game was wholly unremarkable.

    With all the truly revolutionary games which have been written over the years, why on earth is the very average Mr. Minter acknowledged?

    This isn't flamebait. I want to understand why we see

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by CelticLo ( 575344 )
      It's all about playability, and changing the game mechanics to fit the game. And fluffy animals. Jeff is one of the few people who will take a classic game gendre and make his version play different. For instance Sheep in Space for the C64 was a Defender clone. Until you pushed the joystick upwards and your sheep flipped upside down and the gravity started pulling him towards the land speeding above. This is the step he's taken with Space Giraffe. Underneath it looks like his past work on Tempest, but the
  • Wow. Is it just me, or does that photo in the article make it look like he was the model for
    The GNU Logo [wikimedia.org]?
  • I'll believe he can complete a game when, well, when sheep fly. It seems he lost his knack for COMPLETING games a long time ago, which is a real shame. I have many fond memories of llamatron.
    • A) He's only ever had one game cancelled. "Unity". And that was because it was over ambitious for a console which had reached the end of it's life. (Read the article, it's all there)

      B) Space Giraffe is going to be released within a matter of weeks. His blog and others have vid of the beta working, details of the main code being done, just more levels being added, and the code has been in M$s hands for a month now. (And that info is all available from the wiki link above too)
  • In the early 1990's, I had the opportunity to drive Mr. Minter from an E3 convention back to LAX one evening. During this trip, we had time to talk as we were alone in the "Atari Taxi". He really is quite smart and is very interesting but he has a rather unusual fascination with sheep. Yeah. That's about all I should say about that.

    I did get a signed Tempest 2000 Soundtrack CD out of it as I broke several traffic laws to make sure he didn't miss his plane.

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