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Classic Games (Games) Entertainment Games

Part 2 of Jeff Minter's History of Llamasoft Published 140

Posted by michael from the insert-credit-to-continue dept.
Tmuk writes "The second part of Jeff Minter's Complete History of Llamasoft has just gone up over at The Way of the Rodent. Straight from the man himself, it's a fantastic read after the previously Slashdot-covered first part. Enjoy!"
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Part 2 of Jeff Minter's History of Llamasoft Published More

Part 2 of Jeff Minter's History of Llamasoft Published

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  • Anyone know where to find Llamatron? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by StandardCell ( 589682 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @12:47AM (#8700495)
    I haven't been able to source a working copy of this game since 1995 - at least not one that will run under the later versions of Windows. Anyone know?

    • Re:Anyone know where to find Llamatron? (Score:5, Informative)

      by kiwioddBall ( 646813 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @01:01AM (#8700564)
      Mate - Jeff used to provide downloads of his whole video game archive on his website before he switched to llamasoft.co.uk. I don't know where you can get them now. Jeff reckoned that one of his larger mistakes was to license his software for release on a PC at one point - perhaps he has realised the value of his software brands and has withdrawn the downloads so he can realise an income off them at some point. His Gridrunner and Camel titles as well as Llamasoft and his name certainly have good brand recognition amongst the gamers of the day so he well deserves to profit from those :)

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @12:51AM (#8700523)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Commodore 64 anyone? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Troed ( 102527 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @03:01AM (#8700976) Homepage Journal
      Get a Gamecube - his latest psychedelic shooter Unity is soon to be released.

      Info and images here [ign.com].
      • And you have to click through an advert for cannabis to get through to the pictures :-)

      • Get a Gamecube - his latest psychedelic shooter Unity is soon to be released.

        Bound to be a trip, but to be honest, this seems like a wasted opportunity - imagine a Minter title on Xbox or PS2, where it could draw audio from your own CDs and munge the graphics in time. The GC is the one modern console that doesn't offer this possibility, which is a shame. Then again, maybe Jeff'll turn out a separate game with this functionality, and I'm sure Unity will be a blast. One of my strongest gaming memories is

        • Minter might take advantage of the Cube's seriously weird texturing possibilities (unmatched on Xbox, and possibly very hard to accomplish on the PS2). The cube can combine textures with different operators, and do 8 per pass, which is more than the Xbox and PS2.

          No fanboyism, just technical details. One description of what can be done can be found in the readme for Dolphin, the PC Gamecube emulator.

          • Ah, interesting. I'm sure he'll make the most of the Cube and mine any interesting depths it might harbour. And of course he'd do the same for the PS2 and Xbox, given the opportunity (maybe with the EyeToy or the Xbox hard drive). On the GC he could tap into the GBA linker for some old school pixel action... a lot of possibilities. One thing at a time, I guess.
    • Or, if you want something right now, go to www.llamasoft.co.uk for Gridrunner++ or http://www.medwaypvb.com/softie_games.htm for Hover Bovver 2 and Deflex - all shareware PC games (a fiver each) completely written by Jeff himself.

      Gridrunner++ especially is heinously addictive.
    • > No one could ever accuse him of being unoriginal

      Attack of the mutant camels was a direct clone of the AT-AT walker game on for example the Atari 2600 console.

      There are a few more examples of his games not being original in concept I think.. He usually came up with rather twisted variations tho.

  • Does any one around actually own a working PET (Score:3, Interesting)

    by vinit79 ( 740464 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @12:53AM (#8700533)
    Just wondering if any gamers actually own a PET. Reading the article tempts me to own one (esp if I can get it for really cheap).

    I have played only a couple of time on a tabletop aracade , wonder why they got phased, I for one would like to play on one today too( maybe with fancier graphics with alpha blending and all !!)

    PET therapy works
    • Yeah, two cats and a dog.

      You knew that was coming.

    • Re:Does any one around actually own a working PET (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      perhaps you should consider an AIBO

    • Used a PET - had a few at my school. Think Commodore 64, sans colour. That's all. C64's are plentiful, if that's what you want to play with.

      And tabletops are common in the arcade-rebuilding industry. We're all nostalgic for that old form factor. Still, only ancient games get made that way. Nothing modern. IMHO, I'd love to try that myself - make a fun little top-down 3d four-player console-style arcade game. Maybe a simple Combat-style tank game with an FPS-style weaponspread, and then build a dece

    • Re:Does any one around actually own a working PET (Score:5, Interesting)

      by martin-boundary ( 547041 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @03:51AM (#8701141)
      I've got one. I turn it on every couple of years, for nostalgia. It usually takes two or three flicks of the switch to *actually* turn on, sometimes you just open up the hood (works like a car hood) and press some of the components.

      When it's on, you've got to wait for ages for the game to load from the cassette, and the keyboard is completely nonstandard. Doesn't use ASCII (PETSCII instead), has characters in a completely weird layout, and you have to press the keys really hard (especially the T key on my machine, which doesn't work too well anymore. Try typing LIST with a recalcitrant T).

      My favourite game on this was a game called Pickup, where your cursor has to run around a lab, picking up spilled chemicals. If you mix the chemicals you lose them. Another cool game was Canyon, where you fly a jet in a scrolling, and narrowing canyon. Finally, there was a demo called Flight, which was a small animation of the moon rocket being launched from earth, coasting in space for 3 days, and landing on the moon. It climaxes with a small astronaut stepping out and playing a round of golf.

    • > Just wondering if any gamers actually own a PET.

      My girlfriend has one, the old one with the calculator style keyboard (and its not a recent buy, she got it when that machine was 'hot')

      I'll have to do with a collection of VIC20s, C64s and Amigas ;P

      Its a nice collection but we are lacking a C128 still (not interested in the C16/Plus 4, tho I have a Plus 4 somewhere I think)

  • Jeff is the man... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kiwioddBall ( 646813 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @12:54AM (#8700540)
    Jeff rocks - my first machine was a Vic 20 and my first game Gridrunner - my second machine was a C64 and my first game on that was Revenge of the Mutant Camels - Jeff has defined my decidedly warped computer existence!!

  • Winamp? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Am I the only one who read the title and thought this was about Winamp?
    • Winamp was made by "NullSoft", although LLamas do feature quite prominently in their persona for some reason. Were they inspired by Llamasoft, related, or perhaps just share some common odd obsession with the creatures?

  • This is a great read for those around 35 +/- 5yrs (Score:5, Interesting)

    by GrpA ( 691294 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @01:19AM (#8700656)
    A lot of old memories in his article... It brings it all back.

    Some of us followed different paths, but I guess if you're in that age group and reading slashdot, there's a very good chance you've probably had many of the same experiences, thoughts and memories that Jeff Minter shares...

    • Yep, he nailed it. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by PotatoHead ( 12771 ) * <doug AT opengeek DOT org> on Monday March 29, 2004 @02:00AM (#8700831) Homepage Journal
      His writing about simple discoveries like screen memory bring back floods of memories. We all used to sit around and try to figure the machine out. We all tried to make games, though nobody I knew had the sheer creativity Jeff demonstrated early on.

      Going from Basic to changing memory locations to assembly language was one of the best times I have ever had with computing. This article brings all that back as though it were yesterday.

      Damn good stuff.
      • My first computer was a Commodore 64, so I guess a lot had already been figured out and documented by others back then. Still it was fun playing around with basic and later assembly, though I never really followed through on the latter. Rasters were the thing; how incredibly satisfying it was to finally be able to make my own and move them around screen in a sine wave. Ripping off intro music from others and using their music engine in your own primitive demos... I wish I had spent more time and effort in l
        • We used to diss the C-64 because it didn't have extended BASIC commands to put sprites on the screen, make sounds etc. On reflection though, it might have made the transition from BASIC to assembler that much easier. Any thoughts?
          • I can't remember it correctly, it I think it might have. If my memory serves me right, you needed to POKE to get the sprites to display. This, of course, was much more similar to doing it in assembly, so I guess that made the transition easier. One thing was that you had the text-mode and graphics mode, and doing things with BASIC in graphics mode was just too damn slow. Drawing a line in a FOR-loop took ages! But the truly amazing stuff did happen in graphics mode... what was it called? Hi-res mode versus
            • Graphics mode was slightly annoying on the C64 since it was laid out as 40*25 characters of 8*8 pixels, rather than 320*200 pixels, so writing a PlotPixel routine was a bit on the slow side. The built-in basic did not support text output in graphics mode (unlike some BASICs). Multi-colour mode (160*200*4 colours) was available in both text and graphics mode.

              The minimalistic BASIC did really lead into a machine code mindset, but didn't have the built-in assembler that the BBC had.

              • You could actually find lots of half-BASIC/half-assembly programs where the assembly complimented the BASIC program. Stuff like the hardcore graphics mode routines were done in assembly and called from BASIC with the SYS function (if I remember correctly). Heh, I think I even figured out one day where your BASIC program was stored in memory and that you could run your BASIC program with a SYS command. Fun stuff to remember. I don't remember multi-color mode, as I think the C64 always offered 16 colors, whe
                • You do have all 16 colours at your disposal in both 320*200 and 160*200; the difference lies in how many of these you can use within a single 8*8 pixel (i.e. character-sized) cell. Hires (320*200) has 2 "pens": The background colour, which is the same everywhere, and one foreground colour, which is applied to every foreground-colour-coloured pixel within the respective cell - just like in text mode. Lores (160*200) sacrifices horizontal resolution for two additional foreground "pens", giving you 4 different
                  • Ah, I remember some of it now. I actually don't think this was a problem in actual hires mode-- only with multi-colored sprites. Those would only give you pairs of two adjacent pixels for the capability of having more than one color. I really don't think hires graphics suffered from this limitation, though.
                    • I actually don't think this was a problem in actual hires mode-- only with multi-colored sprites. Those would only give you pairs of two adjacent pixels for the capability of having more than one color.

                      I think sprite graphics modes are the same as background graphics modes, i.e. they offer the same (dis-)advantages with regard to either colour "mixing" or resolution. (However, sprite/background modes needn't match.)

                      I really don't think hires graphics suffered from this limitation, though.

                      Am pretty su

                    • Damn. I didn't know C64 graphics sucked *that* hard. :) I didn't think it looked all that bad at the time. Go figure. We've been spoiled indeed. Back then everything was new and we didn't expect much, like it said in the article.
                    • > Am pretty sure it does. It might be just like in games on less "multimedia"-capable computers where moving your (non-sprite) 'avatar' over background objects will cause its colour to bleed into the underlying character-sized rectangle.

                      The problem is very rare on the C64 because any programmer with a bit of a clue would be using a sprite to prevent this.

                      By default, the VIC-II chip could produce upto 8 sprites, but with a bit of trickery, 64 sprites was no real problem.

                      Those sprites could be used in 2
                    • The problem is very rare on the C64 because any programmer with a bit of a clue would be using a sprite to prevent this.

                      Yes, of course; I was just fumbling for a way to describe these hires colour-clashes, rather than pointing out that it's what happens in C64 games. If you were to, say, plot a few graphs in different colours, you probably wouldn't be using sprites... but yes, apart from the hardware sprites and scrolling that similar computers often lacked (even when they had higher resolutions and a lar

                    • C=64 was capable of ultimately looking better than, say, Apple II or Atari 8-bit; take a look at "Skate or Die" for example, I thought it looked like it was running on an Amiga at first. (Ooh, and the music...)

                      Kinda like the Atari 2600 has some really nice feel, and everything tends to be 60fps, but it's a bit of a bear to code for....
                    • it is exactly these little hacks and tricks that made the 8-bitters so damn much fun. In order to get the machine to do something cool, you basically had to have a pretty firm understanding of the thing. For a young coder, this means:

                      - base 2 & 16 notation and basic mathmatics

                      - understanding of the differences between ROM, RAM and memory mapped I/O registers. (Controllers, graphics and sound chips)

                      - assembly language

                      - making the basic abstract leaps between the math and the game elements. (The t
                  • Entirely correct, tho there was also a hires mode that allowed more then 2 pens/char pos with some other limitation... damn.. now I have to go look for my C64 documentation...
                • I think that unlike the BBC programs, they tended to be half BASIC half machine code, rather than half-BASIC half assembler. For example (from memory)

                  10 FOR A=49152TO49152+5:READ B:POKEA,B:NEXT

                  20 SYS 49152

                  49152 DATA 169,0,141,32,208,96

                  • Yeah, that doesn't matter much, right? That's just a means to get the code in memory. But I remember it was possible to save segments of memory to disk as a problem, so that it loaded when you LOAD "program",8,1 from floppy.

                    • In theory it is the same, but assembler is a bit easier on the old brain though! e.g.

                      LDA #0

                      STA $D020

                      RTS

                      Is easier to understand than the previous DATA statement, and being able to use labels etc. rather than writing patches (to avoid messing up target addresses) is really useful. Actually, I found labels more useful than mnemonic translation (e.g. as in a monitor program) since it made code more flexible.

          • On the other hand, there was an excellent extension cartridge called Simon's Basic [devili.iki.fi]. Just could just fit it into the backside slot of your C-64, and you had the best BASIC in the whole 8-bit world. Dad bought me that on my birthday (?) and it was one of the best gifts I got in my entire life. I can't even imagine what would make me today as happy as I was back then with my Simon's Basic (a Porsche perhaps?).

            Damn, it looks like we'll end up talking about 8-bit micros to our shrinks. "You see, doc, a friend
          • > We used to diss the C-64 because it didn't have extended BASIC commands to put sprites on the screen, make sounds etc.

            Which was a matter of sticking in the Simons basic cartridge (or load a cracked version from tape or disk)..

            But the standard basic was limited and if you wanted to do anything usefull on a C64, assembler was a must..

            Even with an extended basic, assembler was still a must if you wanted any performance.

            So hmm.. it may have helped a bit, but not that much I think.. It helped the availa
            • Funny the VIC 20 actually ran faster than the C64 did. Today we would call it shared memory or UMA. Both the CPU and the graphics chips worked from the same RAM. Turn off the graphics and you get about 10 percent higher performance.

              The VIC had about half the resolution the C64 did, so that means have the DMA graphics memory access. Faster machine.

        • Demos (Score:3, Insightful)

          by PotatoHead ( 12771 ) *
          There is nothing like making an old piece of hardware do something pretty cool; namely, more colors or sprites and such.

          I really liked assembly on the 8-bit machines. Learned two core things that stick with me to this day:

          (1) all computers really do is add numbers together and move them around, and

          (2) the computer does exactly what you tell it to.

          Number 1 was a biggie because it made the link between the nifty things like graphics and sound and numbers make some sense.

          Number 2 is evident to this day.
          • I like your sentiments, but number 2 is a bit iffy! Perhaps it should be (2) the computer might do exactly what the hardware engineer thought you were going to tell it to do. Unless it's Friday.

            The analog domain (speed of transmission, cross-talk etc.) probably intrudes more these days (on new hardware anyway), and often some hardware "features" are not fully documented. Sometimes when I tell a certain sound chip "stop playing that note". It says "no!" (argh).

            Even the C64's assembly language has a number

            • I do see your point, however mine remains. The computer does do exactly what we tell it to do. The hardware in the case of your C64 examples, *does* do what they told it to. (Within limits of course)

              The sound chip one I agree with.

              Point being that we are generally the problem with computers more times than not. Secondary point being, the first point has a *lot* to do with which computer and software you actually choose to use.

              We both are sitting at the extremes on this. Hardware faults aside, I do b
              • Hey, I agree that the vast majority of the time it is the programmers' fault, and related to the last thing you put in. Then it might be an extant bug you hadn't noticed. But I have had problems when it was the compiler (especially optimisers), or an undocumented feature of the hardware. And one of our guys just spent a week trying to debug a crash in his program, and the chip supplier eventually said... oh yeah, on the big boards the DMA sometimes is unpredictable [i.e. corrupts RAM] - try the small board.
    • Yeah, it's a bit freaky, from the PEEK/POKE, figuring out what char looked most like a monster or whatever, down to the Gary Numan (still love 'Films')... freaking exact.

      Let's see, wouldn't POKE 1524 place a char in the center of C-64 screen?

      Cool article...

  • ARTICLE TEXT (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Two . Colour, Sound, Poking Around.

    6
    Back in college, we finally had enough knowledge to begin making simple games. And simple they were . to the point of being ludicrously primitive by any reasonable standards. But they were our games that we had made ourselves, and there was something immensely satisfying about playing a game with your mates and knowing that it had come entirely out of your head.

    I remember writing a realtime version of those Star Trek games that were popular at the time. In mine, instea

  • Llama obsession? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Moocowsia ( 589092 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @01:43AM (#8700765)
    Is it just me or is there a lot of companies that have strange obsesessions with llamas... Maxis and Nullsoft for example.

    • Re:Llama obsession? (Score:5, Funny)

      by julesh ( 229690 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @05:49AM (#8701449)
      I think Mr. Minter started it. The others are just copy-yaks.

      (I remember Maxis as having an obsession with camels, can't picture anything llama related in any of their stuff but it has been a _long_ time since I had my hands on any of their games).
    • Ever tried playing deathmatch against a llama? You'll see why they're such good gamers, every games veteran has a lot of respect for them.
    • Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail.

      Watch it. Read the opening credits. I'm pretty certain this is where they all get it from.

      Apple used to be one of the Llama companies too in their Newton days - Llama references popped up all over the place because almost all of the Newton team were big Monty Python fans.
    • Don't forget Perl - the cover of Larry Wall's book "Programming Perl" has always featured a Camel, and the animal has since become the mascot of the language.

      And "Learning Perl", likewise, has always had a Llama on the over, and is therefore referred to as "the llama".

      Can't be a coincidence ...

  • pcformat (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There was an in depth interview with Jeff on an issue of PC FORMAT quite a few eon's ago. Plus on the coverdisk it had a copy of llamatron! I wish they had online archives of those older articles :-/

  • Great but (Score:4, Funny)

    by opusman ( 33143 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @02:22AM (#8700888) Homepage
    when do we get to hear about the camels????

  • Those were the days... (Score:3, Funny)

    by QuasiRob ( 134012 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @06:57AM (#8701677)
    >> Young kiddies were treated to an annual Atomic Christmas Party where they got to meet Santa and were given presents

    Ah, I remember going to those parties at AWRE as well, though I must be a good few years younger.

    "we're taking you to a christmas party at the atomic base"

    "waaahhh, dont wanna glow in the dark!"

  • Whee (Score:2, Interesting)

    by SillyNickName4me ( 760022 )
    More geek nostalgia..

    Damn, I wouldn't know how much of my time Jeff managed to steal with his silly but amazing games.

    • Re:Whee (Score:2, Interesting)

      by SillyNickName4me ( 760022 )
      Heh, you moderators never fail to amaze me with what you consider interesting ;P

      Ah well, guess a +1 delightfull option is lacking eh?
  • I learnt to program on a PET. What a fantastic machine it was. Our computer room had about 8 or 9 of them. Some had big screens, some small. Some had tape decks in them, some had external ones. Some had a funny white flat keyboard, some had a proper keyboard. All were amazing :-)

    We probably had the strangest computer room in England as well. I think it used to be a drama room, and the floor had a sort of pit in the middle with wooden steps up to the edge. The PET's were dangerously balanced around
    • Amen to the nostalgia...
      I sometimes get upset with myself that I never got beyond the BASIC stage on either the Atari 8-bit (which had a fantasic version of LOGO with turtles that looked like turtles...) or the C=64 (which had all these cool sprite and character set editors from Compute's Gazette).

      ZZAP!64 rocked...it was so much better than the stuff I could get in the USA. I cherished my 1 or 2 imported copies to the Nth degree...
    • who, believe it or not, was listening to C64 remixes on the way to work in his car this morning

      Dang remix.kwed.org being down! :-(

  • jeff minter & curry (Score:5, Funny)

    by Cederic ( 9623 ) on Monday March 29, 2004 @01:10PM (#8704546) Journal

    Content of an email I sent to my friends last year, after an event.. well, read:

    I just had a fantastic night out. The main attractions were (as the title suggests) Mr Jeff Minter, and some curry.

    For those of you who didn't know (or don't care) Jeff Minter is the genius behind games such as Andes Attack, Traxx, Gridrunner, Attack of the Mutant Camels, Revenge of the Mutant Camels, Hover Bovver, Tempest 2000, the incomparable Llamatron (best shoot-em-up ever) and my favourite game title of all time, Metagalactic Llamas Battle at the Edge of Time.

    The evening started badly for me as I found myself alone at a bar, stone cold sober, stood by the man himself. I swiftly ordered their strongest lager and engaged in what I describe as 'small talk'. A few seconds later Jeff acted like most girls do when I attempt this and desparately sought rescue from random passers-by, eventually finding an event organiser and fleeing towards a Commodore 64 running one of his games.

    I should mention, I found out about this by accident. I discovered something advertising curry for a tenner, which in Nottingham is a good deal, even without Jeff Minter thrown in for free. He was the ingredient to make the night perfect. Hero worship, and all that.

    Anyway, things kicked off and there were 3-4 hours of general questions from the audience, scripted questions from one of the event organisers, and lots of responses and general rambling from the man himself.

    Here are some of the quotes I found highly amusing. Non-Jeff-Minter-Fans, stop reading now :)

    Unmitigated honesty about his own games: "Andes Attack itself was a pile of wank"

    After revealing he wrote Gridrunner in just 7 days, "The best week's work I ever did in my life"

    On the camels in Attack of the Mutant Camels, "The graphic of the camel looked like two chubby men in a camel suit" (followed up with "Camels just aren't that shape")

    After being asked about the complex storyline in one of the cassette inserts for one of his games, "I just like to write bollocks"

    Describing how Nullsoft apologised for nicking his feedback technique, "What they didn't apologise for, was stealing my bastard llama as well" - some resentment apparent there.

    On hearing that Tempest 3k won CES Game of the Show award, "I'm like, Fucking hell!"

    A games company tried to sign him, having obviously done their homework, "They said, 'We'll give you a llama on initial signing, and an option on a yak after six months" (he's since acquired two llamas anyway).

    Responding to the question 'Why didn't you just blow it all in the '80s?', "I had nothing to blow, having no beasties at that time" - his continual
    references and innuendos to beastiality were comical in the extreme, although I confess I lacked the guts (and indeed, the interest) to ask
    whether he'd actually gone that far. He does own at least one (maybe three) sheep (one is 16 years old and called Flossie), a goat, 2 llamas and a dog.

    Describing how The Artist Formerly Known As was once interested in some of his work, Jeff described Prince, "He was a very weird geezer actually" - pot, kettle, etc?

    Some other random utterances: "Bugger me!", "Yay, have that you bastard", "I'm still no bloody graphic artist", "It gives me a stiffy just thinking about it" (this one in regard to some hardware he's got arriving soon), "I love llama liquid", "My sheep is throbbing", "For total headfuck convenience"

    There were some others, but in retrospect they just aren't funny outside of the context they were uttered (not that I'm claiming the ones above were).

    Some other interesting info: He's never seen Monsters Inc (amazing given his fur fetish), his favourite film is Bladerunner, and, in a fine quote indeed, "There's nothing wrong with fucking sheep"

    Obviously the lager was hitting me hard (not least because I was hitting the lager hard) so when the quiz came about I was in no state to answer it. One question was memorable though: "This is the sound of a Nubian Goat, but what is its problem" - followed by what one must indeed presume is the sound of a Nubian Goat with a problem.

    In case you care, its problem was that it was in heat. I leave you with that image.

  • Jeff Minter autographed my copy of the Tempest 2000 soundtrack CD.

    I've also got a photograph of him autographing an Atari Jaguar(!) game console while on a Jaguar promotional tour in Southern California.

    As if anyone cares. But where else am I going to share these little tidbits of detail? :-)

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