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Classic Games (Games) Entertainment Games

Minter on the History of Llamasoft 136

Posted by michael from the got-llama dept.
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!"
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Minter on the History of Llamasoft More

Minter on the History of Llamasoft

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  • Mirror (Score:3, Funny)

    by Xeed ( 308294 ) on Thursday February 26, 2004 @10:56AM (#8397741) Journal
    In case it gets Slashdotted, mirror can be found here [alljim.com]

  • Thank you Jeff (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Trolling4Dollars ( 627073 ) on Thursday February 26, 2004 @10:56AM (#8397743) Journal
    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! :)

  • So... (Score:5, Funny)

    by hookedup ( 630460 ) on Thursday February 26, 2004 @10:56AM (#8397745)
    Is winamp still kicking their respective ass? Sorry... :)

    • Re:So... (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It whips the Llama's ass!
      • I have been using Winamp for almost as long as it's been out. During that time it has NEVER done any kind of whipping or other suchlike acts even when I took it to the zoo on my laptop and showed it a llama. I think this is false advertising and I DEMAND my money back!

        Oh, it's free. Never mind

        • Re:So... (Score:3, Informative)

          by djdavetrouble ( 442175 )
          Hello this is not a llamasoft reference, whips a llamas ass is a reference to the late great wesley willis, a homeless schizophrenic that some indy musician befreinded and produced a decent size music catalog (50 plus records). All of his songs were pretty much the same structure, talking about a subject, how great it was, and how it whips a (insert animal)'s ass, with some advertising tagline concluding the song. (Milk, it does a body good, etc..)

          Read about the late wesley willis and whipping llama's asse
      • >Is winamp still kicking their respective ass? Sorry... :)

        >> It whips the Llama's ass!

        Who read this and imagined it was started by Tommy Lee Jones with Will Smith as the AC?

  • Curious... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gpinzone ( 531794 ) on Thursday February 26, 2004 @10:56AM (#8397748) Homepage Journal
    Other than a remake of Robotron, what other games did he make? I can't find any references in the article.
    • The one I remember most is "Attack of the Mutant Camels" on the Amiga.

      • Re:Curious... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Threni ( 635302 )
        > The one I remember most is "Attack of the Mutant Camels" on the Amiga.

        Are you sure you don't mean the C64?

        And has anyone mentioned `the curse of Minter` yet? Any console he got involved with failed to materialize. I'm sure it would be worth Sony's while getting him an Xbox2 dev kit...

    • Re:Curious... (Score:5, Informative)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 ) on Thursday February 26, 2004 @11:02AM (#8397803) Homepage Journal
      tempest 2000 & 3000 among others..

      some list from google..
      Code & Graphics

      * Ancipital, 1984
      * Attack of the Mutant Camels, 1983
      * Batalyx, 1985
      * Gridrunner, 19??
      * Hellgate, 1984
      * Hover Bovver, 1983
      * Iridis Alpha, 1986
      * Lazer Zone, 1983
      * Made in France II(?), 19??
      * Mama Llama, 1986(?)
      * Matrix, 1983
      * Mega Blast, 19??
      * Return of the Mutant Camels, 1987(?)
      * Revenge of the Mutant Camels, 1984(?)
      * Rox 64, 198?
      * Sheep in Space, 198?
      * Voidrunner, 19??

      • Headbangers Heaven - 198? on the ZX Spectrum

      • Re:Curious... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Zaiff Urgulbunger ( 591514 ) on Thursday February 26, 2004 @11:19AM (#8397979)
        N one ever mentions "Super-deflex". It was on the ZX Spectrum, and if I recall correctly it was all written in Basic. And, during the loading it said "Anyone copying this game would be hung, drawn and quartered". I was aged 10 or something. And I was using a copy! (I must've been scared Mr. Minter would suddenly appear weilding an axe, or else this message wouldn't be etched on my brain!).

        I can still remember the music too.... da-da-daa, da-daa-da, du-da-daa, (up octave), da-da-daa, da-daa-da du-da-daa, (down octave), etc etc.

        Honestly it was great! But *why* does no one ever mention this game? Was it so easy to copy it only ever sold one copy or something?

        • Re:Curious... (Score:4, Funny)

          by October_30th ( 531777 ) on Thursday February 26, 2004 @11:41AM (#8398208) Homepage Journal
          But *why* does no one ever mention this game? Was it so easy to copy it only ever sold one copy or something?

          Almost right.

          It was so easy to copy that Jeff Minter and his axe had quite a job to do before justice had been served. Unfortunately almost no-one was left to mention the game.

          Except you.

          In fact, now that you've come public with this particular skeleton in your closet, don't you think that you should keep an eye on any axe-carrying Jeffs you might run into.

      • Revenge was 1983 actually. At least it said so on the box. Sheep in Space was 1984.
        Magic days. I met Jeff when I was 7. He's pretty tall and I was dumbstruck at meeting this computing god, as he was to me, and all I could say was "You're tall aren't you?" to which he replied "Yes."
        Unforgettable.
      • The vastly underrated "Tempest 2000" [llamascores.org], an insanely fast, psychedelic (surprise!) update of the ancient Tempest arcade machine, with banging techno soundtrack.

        I want a Linux Port!
      • Also see Minter's entry in this list [dadgum.com].

    • For a start, here's a list of the games he made on the C64 [c64gg.com].

      Before he got a C64 he was writing for the Speccy (with games such as Headbanger's Heaven) and Atari. Since then, he has worked with the Amiga, the ST, the Jaguar, PCs...

      Retro outfit Retrospec [sgn.net] have made a number of tributes to his games.

      HAL

    • Re:Curious... (Score:5, Informative)

      by nate1138 ( 325593 ) on Thursday February 26, 2004 @11:09AM (#8397884)
      If you check here [llamasoftarchive.org], not only can you get a list of titles, but most of them are freely available for download.
    • Attack of the Mutant Camels
      Revenge of the Mutant Camels
      Llamatron
      Llamazap
      Tempest2000

      among others.
      • Goodness - Llamazap! Now that *is* an obscure title. Only released on the Atari Falcon as far as I know (I've got it on my Falcon's hard drive somewhere)...

        • I'd always wanted it for my Falcon, but I never got around to actually buying it. I was all set to nick my mates Jaguar control pads for it too...

  • Unity? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by frankthechicken ( 607647 ) on Thursday February 26, 2004 @10:59AM (#8397772) Journal
    Anyone have any information about how his new Gamecube game Unity is progressing?

    Haven't seen much new on either his [llamasoft.co.uk] site (aside from the initial [blackcatnetworks.co.uk] announcement) or Lionheads [lionhead.com] 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.

    • Re:Unity? (Score:5, Informative)

      by timbloid ( 208531 ) on Thursday February 26, 2004 @11:28AM (#8398058)
      He keeps a blog on the YakYak forum [yakyak.org] with screenshots of WIP :)
      • Excellent, I was beginning to fear the project might have died a sad death.

        From some [yakyak.org] of the screenshots [yakyak.org] it looks like it might be similar to his Nuon Tempest 3K [classicgaming.com]. Though it's kind of hard to judge.
        • Just because Jeff Minter's games all look distinctly different from other games, doesn't mean they are all the same. If you check other screenshots: 1 [medwaypvb.com], 2 [medwaypvb.com], 3 [olpin.net] you can see that the game is very different. Tempest is looking down a static 'web' while many of the screenshots seem to show travelling down some sort of tunnel network. What the game actually *is* though is still unknown.

          Looking forward to seeing something a bit different.

  • Hugging time!!!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by spectrokid ( 660550 ) on Thursday February 26, 2004 @11:01AM (#8397789) Homepage
    Let's sit around the fire and tell the hilarious joke about that time the cat ran off with our cassette containing that 63K Pong - clone....

  • Atari ST? Same Minter, right? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pegr ( 46683 ) on Thursday February 26, 2004 @11:05AM (#8397830) Homepage Journal
    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...
    • 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 love Jeff Minter and his work, but to say he stretched the ST is wrong. He had some crazy copper-type effects, but above that not much. The gameplay on the other hand ALWAYS rocked. I doff my cap to him.
  • I started drink Guinness thanks to Jeff's advice... Hopefully I was too young for LSD...

  • My favorite quote (Score:5, Funny)

    by scumbucket ( 680352 ) on Thursday February 26, 2004 @11:10AM (#8397888)
    from the article:

    "On the first lesson, we were told that we would be learning a language called CESIL. This wasn't any kind of a real language that anyone used to really do things with, from what I recall, but some synthetic language purely for the purposes of education (or perhaps places on real comp.sci courses were already getting oversubscribed, and CESIL was deployed to send lesser students running gibbering and screaming into the hills, vowing never to go near a drop of code ever again)."

    lol. When I was at university I thought the same thing about PASCAL.

    • Re:My favorite quote (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Except pascal was actually pretty cool. I learned it first, and I used it to make games. Sure, they were stupid dungeon-crawling adventure type things where you moved around trying to get deeper and avoid randomly placed traps. But it was a game and it was pretty damn cool :D

  • Atari ST emulation is the way to go.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 26, 2004 @11:26AM (#8398039)
    Remember that Minter is perhaps most famous for Llamatron; you can fire it up to this day in any Atari ST emulator pretty much, such as STeem or SainT, or WinSTon, etc etc. STonX runs very well under Unix/Linux for instance..

    If you're into handhelds, then try out CaSTaway..

    Palm OS:
    http://www.codejedi.com/shadowplan/castaway.h tml

    GP32:
    http://www.codejedi.com/shadowplan/gp32.h tml

    Finkle

  • Interesting article (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gilesjuk ( 604902 ) <giles.jones@nospaM.zen.co.uk> on Thursday February 26, 2004 @11:42AM (#8398227)
    A good insight into how things were at the start of the home computer revolution.

    People take things like RAM, disk space and CPU cycles for granted these days. A readme file for a piece of software these days is likely to be bigger than a game on some of the first 8-bit home computers.

    One thing that is sad is how 3D games programming is out of the reach of the hobbyist these days. Purely down to the complexity of modern games, they take too long to create if one person tries to do all the work. Then there's the SDK and development hardware required if you want to develop for a console.

    • OpenGL can actually make 3D programming relatively simple, actually. Same for other APIs, or even wholesale game engines that are available.

      Granted one person sure won't be creating a Tribes2-class title, but some great stuff can be done.

      Almost seems like many gamers are geared more toward eye-candy and FPS rather than pure gameplay. Not the crew here probably, but the mass market at large. And the Big Companies push exactly that since they can spit it out and make a profit.

      Some of my favorite games are

      • Re:Interesting article (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        It's the artwork, not the programming that gets you. It is really hard to crank out all the models and textures and other misc artwork needed for a modern title. It really takes a couple people doing it as their full-time job to do the job properly.
    • 3D games programming is out of the reach of the hobbyist

      Not just programming. Scuttlebutt is that Doom3 is going to have such a high level of physics built in that even simple level design might require a time commitment in excess of that available to any but the most dedicated coders.
      • Well that's the thing, the more realistic you want your game to look the more real world dynamics you have to include. It's not simple math either, it's all real numbers in three dimensions.

        Then you have polygon characters to make (itself a skill), textures, scenery and collision maps, etc... never mind actually thinking of a decent idea for a game.

        It's not impossible, but a commercial quality game in the 80s would be knocked up by one or two people (and perhaps someone else would do the music, see C64) i

  • AssemblyTV (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dotwaffle ( 610149 ) <slashdot@wPARISalster.org minus city> on Thursday February 26, 2004 @11:43AM (#8398239) Homepage
    I work for AssemblyTV and I seem to remember we interviewed him. [checks] We did.

    http://scene.org/file.php?file=%2Fparties%2F2003 %2 Fassembly03%2Fassemblytv%2F2003-08-08_1210-jeff_mi nters.mpg&fileinfo

  • Commodore PET 2001 - Thanks Mom & DAD (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Graemee ( 524726 ) on Thursday February 26, 2004 @11:44AM (#8398256)
    Funny, I just finished repairing mine last night, hadn't fired her up for 5-6 years and a couple of moves. Just had to re-seat the memory. Got to love that case design and the rod to hold the hood up. Built like a tank.

    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.

  • Minter is THE man (Score:2, Interesting)

    by wobedraggled ( 549225 )
    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.

  • Jeff Minter at Alternative Party (Score:3, Informative)

    by Quietti ( 257725 ) on Thursday February 26, 2004 @11:53AM (#8398365) Journal
    Jeff visited us last year at Alternative Party [altparty.org] in Helsinki. He shared his stories on game development, animal fetishes and other Minter oddities. Then he accompanied a large group of visitors for a pint of Guinness at the nearest Irish pub, then partied like a Finn in the sauna after eating reindeer meat (thanks Nosfe!). Too bad he couldn't make it this year...
  • I am born in 1970, and discovered my first computer in 1978 when I was visiting a university, there was a LEM game, where you enter the amount of fuel to give thrust to a moon lander, and it gives you your speed and altitude, and you have to land safely...
    Then in 1982 my father bought a ZX81 in kit, assembled it, and I started learning BASIC on it, writing games (with 1K of RAM...), as it was slow, I started to learned Z80 assembly language, then we bought the 16K extension, it was wonderful!
    I continued a

  • Small Developers - Drowned Out? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MooseByte ( 751829 ) on Thursday February 26, 2004 @12:33PM (#8398845)

    Reading stuff like this always makes me ponder the fate of the small developer over the years. I know they're out there (Ambrosia on the MacOS side, etc.) and that they still create some fun stuff. But in the current sea of endlessly rehashed titles by Big Corporate Game Houses(tm) it sure does seem like they get lost in the noise. Can't afford to buy shelf space? Sorry. Can't afford to buy a review in a fanboy game rag? Sorry.

    Seems like the same dilemma as the book publishing industry. Anyone can write, most creations are crap but some real gems do get produced. The problem comes in gettings the freakin' thing on a shelf. Big publishers (dead tree and computer games) generally seem to filter out anything innovative by focusing on tried-and-true regurgitated themes.

    The alternative is to go with a Web presence and skip the Big Publisher filter altogether, but even today that seems to be a compromise at best.

    So... a very long-winded way of asking what small developers are doing these days? Self-publishing? Reluctantly tailoring titles to please the Big Publishers?

    How I yearn for the days of People Pong and Aztec....
    • Reading stuff like this always makes me ponder the fate of the small developer over the years. I know they're out there (Ambrosia on the MacOS side, etc.) and that they still create some fun stuff. But in the current sea of endlessly rehashed titles by Big Corporate Game Houses(tm) it sure does seem like they get lost in the noise

      I'm not saying their games aren't fun, but let's be honest. Ambrosia has been copying old arcade games since they started (Asteroids, Centipede, Galaxian, Serpentine, Pengo). A
      • "Bottom line: You can't single out the big corporate game houses for "endlessly rehashed titles" okay? "

        Agreed, the little guys rehash too. But take Escape Velocity for example. A rehash? Yeah Sundog came out, what 15 years before it? But it had a depth and downright fun nature that made it a great rework. And as Big Publisher rehashes go, I still consider UT to be a peak of the FPS genre. (Purely my opinion, of course.)

        I'm not saying there's groundbreaking software being written at every small develop

        • But take Escape Velocity for example. A rehash? Yeah Sundog came out, what 15 years before it?

          Escape Velocity was *heavily* inspired by Star Control and Star Control II. EV is still a great game.
          • "Escape Velocity was *heavily* inspired by Star Control and Star Control II. EV is still a great game."

            Definitely! Historical note (my memory fails me) - was there something prior to Sundog in the whole "trading/battling on the high seas of outerspace" genre? I'm only familar with Apple ][ games of the era. C64/TRS80/Atari400.800?

            Trivia of course, but it's kind of like wanting to find the source of the Nile. :-)

          • I say Sundog (on the ST) was one of the most amazing games of all time, given it fit on a 720k disk. It even had RPG! Loved those little stick figures closing in on you in the streets! I got good enough to go looking for them, I swear it's true. Always been curious, did anyone find a better way of making money than just running guns?

  • trip-a-tron (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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 stron
  • I was reading up about the Berkshire town of Reading (where I work) on Wikipedia and Jeff came up as a resident.

    So, I decided to check out his site, and tried Gridrunner+++.

    Is there something in the history that says "temporary insanity due to sensory overload"?

  • Programming now and then (Score:5, Interesting)

    by payndz ( 589033 ) on Thursday February 26, 2004 @02:32PM (#8400528)
    The article's a good read, especially if you're familiar with Minter from the old days. (I saw him once at a computer show in about 1985, wandering around in a big woolly coat and looking a bit lost...)

    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!

    • >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!

      I am 14, I am learning C
      Just today i wrote 2 programs to do my maths for me, it took me 10 minutes, whereas doing the sums would of taken me a good hour.
      Just what is wrong with a mid-level language?
      If i learn a low-level language like Assembler i could only write programs for one architecture, and i would have trouble trying to join a real project, if i learn a mid-level l
  • I can hardly wait to play Unity...
  • All right, I remember Not The Nine O'Clock News spoofs of Space Invaders competitions, and we even had an original table model in the office a couple of years back, but what's the Death Row Execution Method?
  • 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.

    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 :) 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.

    (*) 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.

  • I really wanted to read this, but it seems to have gone away. I've tried to get the google cached version, but can't find the right way to stick my fingers down google's throat. Anyone got it?
  • He read Asimov and Clarke being 7 years old. Did I understand this correctly (x+9=16, x=7yrs)? Wow....

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