• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Jeff Minter on making neo-retro shooters, Jaguar development, etc etc

S

sploatee

formerly Oynox Slider
Hello GAF...

Thought this might be interesting to some of you who (like me) enjoy the latent (and not-so-latent) psychedelia in classic arcade shoot-em-ups and the thought process that goes into making them. There's a promo-y bit on Llamasoft's latest - TxK - but it's near the end so if you're allergic you can stop reading before you get there.

http://www.minotaurproject.co.uk/devblog/?p=74

One of the things I particularly liked about vector graphics displays was that the display limitations enforced a kind of deeply abstract aesthetic onto games made that way. The glowing, geometric, jewel-like objects and the abstract mathematically pure worlds that they occupied looked to me like visions of life in other dimensions. Traditional graphics strove to become more and more lifelike with each passing hardware generation, more and more like the real world – but I didn’t want my game to look like the real world at all. I wanted to take players into that lovely abstract dimension.
Click to expand...

Perhaps the most amazing thing that we got out of the Jag hardware was something that I confess absolutely stunned me when I first discovered it. The Jag had hardware that could move pretty big chunks of graphics around, allowing for ginormous sprites that you could also scale and rotate and change the intensity of. That in itself was pretty liberating, and although my game was to be primarily polygon based the ability to manipulate such sprites was certainly a handy thing. You could even have sprites as big as the screen if you wanted to, something I was thinking about one morning, and I suddenly wondered what would happen if you drew a sprite that actually WAS the screen (or at least the previous frame). So I coded up a giant sprite that had as its source texture the previous output frame, and the universe exploded.
Click to expand...

Some people simply could not handle the sensory overload that built up on the higher levels. Some people didn’t like it, some people seemed to actually be angry that I’d even try to modify game difficulty using such a technique. But to those who ended up loving the game it is the very thing that they like about it the most – how you had to open up your senses as wide as possible, take everything in, both visually and sonically, and process it into something you can see clearly. It’s hard to describe but it feels almost transcendental when you can do it.
Click to expand...
 
S

sploatee

formerly Oynox Slider
I know.

I'm sure he is appreciated as someone who is an 'individual' but his games are just immensely well-designed. Aside from all the sheep-and-llamas, I think he's on a par with Eugene Jarvis.
 
Y

ymmv

Banned
sploatee said:
I know.

I'm sure he is appreciated as someone who is an 'individual' but his games are just immensely well-designed. Aside from all the sheep-and-llamas, I think he's on a par with Eugene Jarvis.
Click to expand...

Is Eugene Jarvis known for making the same two or three games for two decades running?
 
cyberheater

cyberheater

PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 PS4 Xbone PS4 PS4
That was a very interesting article. Thanks OP.
 
B

Briarios

Member
ymmv said:
Is Eugene Jarvis known for making the same two or three games for two decades running?
Click to expand...

I still play Goat Up on my iPad from time to time, it's hardly like Tempest. I think if you look at the list of games he's made, you'd see the variety there.
 
P

pswii60

Member
One of the things I particularly liked about vector graphics displays was that the display limitations enforced a kind of deeply abstract aesthetic onto games made that way. The glowing, geometric, jewel-like objects and the abstract mathematically pure worlds that they occupied looked to me like visions of life in other dimensions. Traditional graphics strove to become more and more lifelike with each passing hardware generation, more and more like the real world – but I didn’t want my game to look like the real world at all. I wanted to take players into that lovely abstract dimension.
Click to expand...
Great to read Jeff saying this.

It's strange, but true, that the more advanced graphics get, the less immersed I become in the game. I think that previously your imagination would fill the gaps, and that is far more immersive and exciting than anything you can put up on a screen. It's why books can often be far more involving than film.

But also, graphics and processing limitations also meant that developers and artists would need to use their imaginations more too. Even with all the 2D platformers around now, none of them have the incredible artwork we were used to seeing in the early 90s.
 
K

kick51

Banned
need more individuals like him

he makes games and farms or something, right?

Day 1 for the vita game, just like Space Giraffe

needs a Shu level...come on, there was an Allard one!
 
P

pswii60

Member
kick51 said:
need more individuals like him

he makes games and farms or something, right?

Day 1 for the vita game, just like Space Giraffe

needs a Shu level...come on, there was an Allard one!
Click to expand...

revengeofthemutantcamels.png
 
M

MightyHedgehog

Member
pswii60 said:
Great to read Jeff saying this.

It's strange, but true, that the more advanced graphics get, the less immersed I become in the game. I think that previously your imagination would fill the gaps, and that is far more immersive and exciting than anything you can put up on a screen. It's why books can often be far more involving than film.

But also, graphics and processing limitations also meant that developers and artists would need to use their imaginations more too. Even with all the 2D platformers around now, none of them have the incredible artwork we were used to seeing in the early 90s.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I think a lot of older gamers feel this way....I know I do. If you grew up with games from the 8-bit and 16-bit arcade, computer, and console days, you were always using more of your brain to enhance, fill-in, and breathe more life into those older games and, in the process, you own the experience on a level that most modern games just never allow for. I never lost that part of video graphics and why I'm never as impressed as most on this forum with how amazing realistic games can be...it's just not that interesting to constantly evolve toward kinda pointless photorealism. I always prefer imaginative new stuff to look upon rather than tired, but technically impressive and well-crafted recreations of some mundane reality that dominate every AAA game in the last decade or more. Wish Minter would do more than just Tempest again and again on consoles, though.
 
S

Stet

Banned
Next he should make an epic exploration game based on William Shakespeare's classic tale of magic, fantasy and adventure. You know, A Midsummer Night's Dream.
 
J

jhmtehgamr20xx

Banned
One of the things I particularly liked about vector graphics displays was that the display limitations enforced a kind of deeply abstract aesthetic onto games made that way. The glowing, geometric, jewel-like objects and the abstract mathematically pure worlds that they occupied looked to me like visions of life in other dimensions. Traditional graphics strove to become more and more lifelike with each passing hardware generation, more and more like the real world – but I didn’t want my game to look like the real world at all. I wanted to take players into that lovely abstract dimension.
Click to expand...

We need SO much more of this mentality in the industry these days. I've never been a champion of pursuing ultra photo-realistic visuals in games, not heavily so anyway.....once a game begins to look like real life, why not just put down the controller and go experience it firsthand? That's why artistic games with very unique artstyles have always curried my favor; either intention like Viewtiful Joe, Odin Sphere, No More Heroes, Parappa etc., or nowadays incidental due to the crude methods of the day like Virtua Fighter 1, Motor Toon, and Virtua Racing. And it goes without saying that the majority of 2D games still warm me up more than their 3D counterparts. 3rd Strike laps the 4 games many times over in terms of visual and stylistic integrity, for example. It probably also has something to do with me being an artist; although I take inspiration from realism (like any good artist) regards things like anatomy, proportion etc., I don't like for my stuff to directly mimic it. Partly because I'm not that good lol, but a lot has to do with the fact I prefer stylistic and abstract representations of the everyday and mundane.

All this petty nonsense regarding resolutions, bump map this, physics engines that....all attempts of ever-more verisimilitude. I find it boring tbh. It's a technical accomplishment on one hand but conversely pedestrian from an artistic sense. I do have a place in my heart for new games that are going aside and beyond that, however; Rime for example is looking incredible. Unfortunately, these sorts of games are few and far between. I would love to see the day a developer realizes that newer isn't necessarily better, not depending on the message and emotion they want the game to illicit upon the player. Maybe a horror game could benefit from a SD res scene here, screen tearing or intentional film grain there (Eternal Darkness did such things well). The Order 1886 is supposedly using techniques like this in moderation to give the game a more atmospheric touch, and it's working very well. Imperfections can elevate a game's aesthetic as much, and in many cases more, than perfection. But it's a much better gamble when applying that to a style that is not aiming with photo-realism, as you can not only be more liberal with use, but such attempts are more readily acceptable by the viewer.

Maybe one day, that'll become a reality. We're already to a point where game visuals are practically real; once these little visual trinkets are able to dynamically impact the play experience in an interactivity sense, that seemingly impossible goal should have been reached. I just hope the well of more artistic (visually speaking) games doesn't dry up anymore than it already has, or I might not be around to witness that "accomplishment".
 
S

sploatee

formerly Oynox Slider
jhmtehgamr20xx said:
We need SO much more of this mentality in the industry these days. I've never been a champion of pursuing ultra photo-realistic visuals in games, not heavily so anyway.....once a game begins to look like real life, why not just put down the controller and go experience it firsthand? That's why artistic games with very unique artstyles have always curried my favor; either intention like Viewtiful Joe, Odin Sphere, No More Heroes, Parappa etc., or nowadays incidental due to the crude methods of the day like Virtua Fighter 1, Motor Toon, and Virtua Racing. And it goes without saying that the majority of 2D games still warm me up more than their 3D counterparts. 3rd Strike laps the 4 games many times over in terms of visual and stylistic integrity, for example. It probably also has something to do with me being an artist; although I take inspiration from realism (like any good artist) regards things like anatomy, proportion etc., I don't like for my stuff to directly mimic it. Partly because I'm not that good lol, but a lot has to do with the fact I prefer stylistic and abstract representations of the everyday and mundane.

All this petty nonsense regarding resolutions, bump map this, physics engines that....all attempts of ever-more verisimilitude. I find it boring tbh. It's a technical accomplishment on one hand but conversely pedestrian from an artistic sense. I do have a place in my heart for new games that are going aside and beyond that, however; Rime for example is looking incredible. Unfortunately, these sorts of games are few and far between. I would love to see the day a developer realizes that newer isn't necessarily better, not depending on the message and emotion they want the game to illicit upon the player. Maybe a horror game could benefit from a SD res scene here, screen tearing or intentional film grain there (Eternal Darkness did such things well). The Order 1886 is supposedly using techniques like this in moderation to give the game a more atmospheric touch, and it's working very well. Imperfections can elevate a game's aesthetic as much, and in many cases more, than perfection. But it's a much better gamble when applying that to a style that is not aiming with photo-realism, as you can not only be more liberal with use, but such attempts are more readily acceptable by the viewer.

Maybe one day, that'll become a reality. We're already to a point where game visuals are practically real; once these little visual trinkets are able to dynamically impact the play experience in an interactivity sense, that seemingly impossible goal should have been reached. I just hope the well of more artistic (visually speaking) games doesn't dry up anymore than it already has, or I might not be around to witness that "accomplishment".
Click to expand...

I couldn't agree with you more.

The Order 1886 is an interesting example of "cinematography" in a game (I wish there was a more appropriate word! What I mean is that it (seems?) to be more about the art direction and the way the visuals can create an atmosphere and serve the narrative, instead of MORE SMOKE! LARA CROFT NOW HAS MORE REALISTIC JIGGLE!).

Verisimilitude is so over-rated. Why can't we have games based on the worlds that the Brucke school created, or the Fauves, etc etc. I know that sounds completely pretentious and daft, but Hollywood and realism aren't the only ways to represent the world.

The point I'm badly trying to make is that the limitations of the systems at the time forced designers to represent things in a more abstract way, forcing the player to fill in the gaps and use their imagination. But I honestly feel like abstraction in games is such an under-explored area. Because systems are so powerful now, designers just get intoxicated and rush towards making everything look as much like the real world as possible. That would be fine, but the narratives that underpin these 'real world' games are generally third-rate Hollywood knock-offs written by 15 year old boys. I don't know if Killzone 1,2 and 3 have decent narratives, but Shadowfall and Mercenary were beyond terrible - worse than the very worst Hollywood hack. Call of Duty: Ghosts had some incredible set-pieces and they'd spent millions hiring Hollywood actors, but the script was dreadful, simplistic gung-ho nonsense (you might say "duh, obviously!" but for a game clearly styled after a Hollywood action film, they seem oblivious to all of the really good examples of how to do it). I could feel AC4 really trying to put together a sophisticated story, but all it did was say "look, deep thing happening over there! now don't think about it and press X to attack!".

I'm grumbling and old, but I feel that if you're going to go for the "realistic" approach with a cinematic narrative, you should really do it properly and not insult the intelligence of the people playing the game. Alternatively, you could go the other way and use abstraction to your advantage - Missile Command is an amazing example of a game that conveys a whole atmosphere through minimal visuals and sound. I'm a geek, but I'd love to see games that look a bit further than Hollywood and C-movies (I don't want to say B-movies because good B-movies have a sense of fun that bad game narratives don't have) for their visuals and narratives.
 
J

jhmtehgamr20xx

Banned
sploatee said:
The point I'm badly trying to make is that the limitations of the systems at the time forced designers to represent things in a more abstract way, forcing the player to fill in the gaps and use their imagination. But I honestly feel like abstraction in games is such an under-explored area. Because systems are so powerful now, designers just get intoxicated and rush towards making everything look as much like the real world as possible.
Click to expand...

Yep. It may not be necessarily fair to blame game developers for this only, however, since the world of technology is just on this climb of the "future" and has been so since its inception. And in may ways, that's good. I can't imagine most people advocating for the "limitations" of Windows 3.1 or DOS and thinking Windows 7 or 8 would be better for mimicking them. No, that'd just make them terribly cumbersome for anyone born after 1975 to use xD.

Then again, those are software for productivity, not entertainment.

I'm also an avid music head, like with jazz, underground/old-school hiphop, chiptune music and very prominently electronic music like drum and bass. Lately there's been a resurgence of producers going back to analog synthesizers (not exclusively, but at least incorporating them more into their work environment)-the sort that were used to make classics like Goldie's Timeless and Ed Rush and Optical's Wormhole EPs-because, even though they're a bit more crude and limited compared to today's DAWs, they have a very distinct character that's very hard (in some ways, impossible) to imitate with digital software.

Optical (one of my absolute biggest inspirations regards DnB neurofunk) recently said in an AMA some of the differences in analog vs. digital synths. I've known of some of these for a while now but it was nice to see him elucidate them (plus the fact that AMA was hella useful). Analog synths for example would roll off frequencies below a certain threshold (40hz) or beyond a certain threshold (5-9kHz I believe). Digital software, on the other hand, preserves ALL frequencies, 0-20kHz (and probably beyond). However, most people can only hear frequencies within a certain range, and analog systems were designed with that in mind, hence why other freqs were cut out.

What I'm trying to get at there, is that at the time those audio engineers used that knowledge to their advantage while taking into account analog's weaknesses and produced hardware that gave sounds a very distinct flavor that DAWs and vst-i's, in some ways but not exclusively b/c of their preserving all frequency data, are actually unable to recreate. There are some producers now looking for a more raw and grittier/organic sound and analog synths are making a bit of a comeback because of that (with neurofunk producers in particular).

I think at some point this sort of development will occur with video game developers. It probably won't be to the point where you have them breaking out a Genesis SDK to code on (because unlike a vinyl, cd or mp3, Genesis carts can only play on a Genesis, and those ceased manufacturing years ago), but a good number of them could start emulating those hardware techniques on newer systems. It'd only be better though if they did so in ways that explore new artistic presentations, and not merely repackaging presentations of old, which again is why it's pleasing to see games like Rime and The Order doing what they're doing. They have obvious comparisons (Wind Waker for Rime in particular), but their own visual identity too, and that's fantastic.
 
H

Herne

Member
Spoke to Jeff once about setting up an interview for a public domain C64 magazine. Nice guy, and as out there as his creations :)
 
Y

ymmv

Banned
sploatee said:
Umm.

There's a bit of truth in what you're saying (and I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong in working in that style), but it's also a bit unfair.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hover_Bovver

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheep_in_Space

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2010/06/sinclair-zx80/all/
Click to expand...

Hover Bover and Sheep in Space are 30 years old. It seems that whenever Jeff Minter announnced a new project it's a new version of Gridrunner, Tempest or some kiind of light synthesizer. OK, that's a bit unfair to Minter since his iOS games show some variety. I applaud him for being the grandfather of all indie developers, making his unique style of games for 30 years now. On the other hand, he's still doing the same thing over and over again. He's programmed on tons of systems but everything looks crude, is plastered with references to sheep, goats, lamas and the like and always looks like a teenage coder's first game. It's both admirable, weird and a bit sad. Jeff Minter in a nutshell.
 
M

missile

Member
Someone could write something similar about raster graphics, color palettes,
and halftoning producing a very unique look & feel on its own, if not teh look
and feel of the past. Unfortunately, this look & feel didn't made it so far
into 3d games due to the limitation of the old computers not having enough
performance for 3d graphics. And as video accelerator took over the place in
about 1996 and 3d games become common, many of the old rendering techniques
were rendered obsolete (and became forgotten), yet there is some intrinsic
appeal into them worth exploring esp. considering 3d indie games.

... The Jaguar had another couple of lovely gifts to give though. One of them was particles – ahh, delicious particles. Back on the 8-bit machines simply drawing individual dots in an arbitrary position on the screen was in fact a bit of a palaver, involving a surprising amount of fiddling about to do, having to tit around with bitplanes and masking and bitwise shifting and ungainly indexing and other such CPU-consuming trumpery, so even basic particle stuff was pretty expensive. ...
Click to expand...
Addressing individual pixel were a b!tch, they were bit-mapped and staged into
planes while using color. The addressing overhead pretty made bit-mapped
3d raster graphics a tough one and also a very inefficient one. The overhead
paid was essentially the cost saved while using simpler video chip logic, i.e.
in using a low-cost addressing scheme. For example, the C64 used the same chip
logic for its bit-mapped graphics as for its character mode graphics. So you
basically had to raster into 8x8 pixel character blocks using sub-byte
addressing schemes masking and or'ing the bits (pixels) into the framebuffer.
And given that one could use 320 pixel per line, addressing pixels become even
more inefficient due to the 8-bit (256) nature of the C64, i.e. you couldn't
reach the right side of the screen with just 8-bits. Additional computational
overhead was necessary to address them.

All in all, such oddities has made 3d graphics on many old computer systems
a pretty tough job to do, it was virtually impossible to write efficient
raster algorithms. To alleviate this problem hardware vendors started to build
custom chips for rastering lines, filled polygons etc. I still ask myself how
the additional cost of a linear framebuffer weights in against the saving in
doing efficient and fast raster graphics on the software side. Anyhow.

Even if an Amiga or Atari were superior against a PC during the earlier
ninetieth, mass consumer 3d graphics started with the VGA. The VGAs linear
addressing scheme (mode 0x13) and its 256 colors mode made it possible to
write the fastest raster algorithms out there. For example, rastering a line
on the screen, their pixels could be addressed linearly and, even better,
could be computed incrementally by simply adding a constant to the old
address. I think Michael Abrash has implemented the fastest line drawing
algorithms ever written back in the days.

Old rendering techniques like working with color palettes and halftoning
patterns to simulate colors and shades etc. never made it far into 3d games
since 3d graphics accelerators quickly took over once 3d games became
feasible (Quake).

So there is a hidden treasure of retro 3d rendering styles left unexplored.
 
J

jhmtehgamr20xx

Banned
missile said:
Old rendering techniques like working with color palettes and halftoning
patterns to simulate colors and shades etc. never made it far into 3d games
since 3d graphics accelerators quickly took over once 3d games became
feasible (Quake).

So there is a hidden treasure of retro 3d rendering styles left unexplored.
Click to expand...

This has me very intrigued; it hopefully means some developers will attempt using these "unexplored" rendering techniques in new productions, as long as the new hardware is capable of doing it. I don't see why it wouldn't be, but there's a whole host of factors why it may not be, especially if they were originally created for exotic hardware components that proved unpopular. I'm probably getting nonsensical now.

Great post btw.
 
stuminus3

stuminus3

Banned
I'm scared of the day there's no more Jeff Minters in the industry.

Make sure you're all playing the latest version of Gridrunner while you wait for TxK. Yes it's an iOS game but it's also amazing.
 
C

Ceaseless Discharge

Banned
One of the true greats of game design. Jeff really gets it. His mechanics, controls, systems and mind warping immersion is always spot on. Been playing his games since I could walk and can't wait for his Vita debut.
 
D

Dog Problems

Banned
As a kid I had a Jaguar and Tempest 2000 was one of the three games I had for it. Absolutely loved it and I've enjoyed everything of his I have played. Hopefully TxK is a success for him and he gets a ton of new fans.
 
M

missile

Member
jhmtehgamr20xx said:
This has me very intrigued; it hopefully means some developers will attempt using these "unexplored" rendering techniques in new productions, as long as the new hardware is capable of doing it. I don't see why it wouldn't be, but there's a whole host of factors why it may not be, especially if they were originally created for exotic hardware components that proved unpopular. I'm probably getting nonsensical now.

Great post btw.
Click to expand...
Thx! Well, I've started such an attempt in building a 3d retro rendering
engine form scratch for recreating and pursuing the look & feel of old-school
three-dimensional computer graphics and video games seen on old rasterscan CRT
TVs. It will be like giving the old computers more computational performance
while still having full control over your rasterizer and of parts of the video
signal, yet your are restricted in color, resolution, and the antics of your
video signal generator etc. all being done on purpose. Well, this is sort of a
contradiction -- in having more computational performance yet being restricted
in color, resolution etc. (if there aren't tight limits given by the physical
hardware), which may also explain why such rendering techniques never made it
way far into 3d, since with the advent of hardware acceleration they quickly
disappeared and everything got smoothed out. Recreating this look & feel and
extrapolating it into the future (that never existed for them) may perhaps
deliver sort of a very unique look. To give you an idea, not only will the
logical (software) part be restricted (computing halftone shade tables out of
a fixed color palette for 3d graphics :D), the video hardware will/can also be
restricted. The rastered picture will be modulated, color reduced/band-limited
(NTSC/PAL) and rastered by the virtual CRT into a given RGB pixel mask on the
(virtual) screen to be displayed on the real screen. But who says that the
each CRT will always have arbitrary (or 8,10,12-bit) intensity levels for
each color gun? What about only 1, 2, 4-bit per color gun? So the CRT may
apply halftoning to the incoming signal as well! That's just about the color.
I haven't started to talk about all the issues a CRT has in projecting an
image onto the screen which really adds to the feeling, i.e. color bleeding
(depending on intensity and the color itself), ghoasting, dot-crawl, moire,
gun divergence, magnetic influence, shadowmask heating etc.. What plays in
favor of this technique on modern hardware is the ever increasing resolution
of modern displays, which, oddly enough, is important for computing low-
resolution 3d retro graphics. As higher the resolution as more varied the
retro pixels can be for a given retro resolution.

I've just started and I hope I will bring it to fruition.


Edit: Here is a realtime halftone 3d graphics I programmed a couple of month
ago for Notch's DCPU16:

27991861.gif


This is the complete opposite of what Jeff Minter is trying to archive by
putting the vector aspect into the limelight, whereas my approach does the
same yet for raster. Whereas he says; No-pixels! I say: Pixels! ;) Don't
know about you guys, but there is a certain aesthetic in (non-smoothed) raster
graphics.
 
S

Shaneus

Member
jhmtehgamr20xx said:
I'm also an avid music head, like with jazz, underground/old-school hiphop, chiptune music and very prominently electronic music like drum and bass. Lately there's been a resurgence of producers going back to analog synthesizers (not exclusively, but at least incorporating them more into their work environment)-the sort that were used to make classics like Goldie's Timeless and Ed Rush and Optical's Wormhole EPs-because, even though they're a bit more crude and limited compared to today's DAWs, they have a very distinct character that's very hard (in some ways, impossible) to imitate with digital software.
Click to expand...
Slight side-note, but you've just summed up perfectly why I prefer Megadrive/Genesis music over SNES wavetable-based stuff. It doesn't go for realism, and in doing to is able to experiment a lot more than if it was try to sound like it was redbook audio. It's a loose approximation of what is to be real, sure. But IMO it avoids that uncanny-valley of audio that I personally found the SNES went for (and never liked at all).

Having said that, I do dig tracker music (MODs, S3M etc.) for some reason, but perhaps that's because they use their own instruments, where the SNES I believe used a bulk of it's voices from an on-board thing.

I'm just gonna leave this here ;)
 
Stiflers Mom

Stiflers Mom

Banned
Been digging Yaks games since playing Mutant Camels back in the middle of the eighties...

Will buy TxK... :)

(and yeah, the industry needs more people like him. He is like a "last man standing" after all of these years, and doing his things like he always did. )
 
S

Shaneus

Member
What Jeff Minter's making now:
2oylZeel.png


What Eugene Jarvis is making now:
bCDsMTGl.jpg


Yagharek said:
Classless trolling.
Click to expand...
Yah-huh.

StifflersMum said:
(and yeah, the industry needs more people like him. He is like a "last man standing" after all of these years, and doing his things like he always did. )
Click to expand...
I think we see some of what Jeff quintessentially is in games like Proteus, but my greatest bugbear right now for "retro" aesthetics is that every single goddamn indie developer seems to go for the same pixel-art style, and in the end all those titles blend into each other. At least Minter's changing things up and giving each of his titles a unique look while still remaining obviously "retro".
 
A

AmyS

Member
pswii60 said:
revengeofthemutantcamels.png
Click to expand...

Man I sooo wanted to play this game:


PGkpcKY.jpg


Mutant Camel's '89

on this platform

p0fYHlg.jpg


MASU7hs.jpg


z8YfiY7.gif



Before Tempest infested the consoles of the 90s, Jeff Minter was busy spawning endless versions of Revenge of the Mutant Camels (which was available on just about every format going at the time). This version featured 256 colours and 'power chair' support.
Click to expand...

lIvngWe.jpg


avPngjl.jpg

(that's Ed Semrad of EGM magazine from issue #6 (January 1990) in an article called 'Future Play')

s6SNpV4.jpg




Watch these (w/ Jeff Minter)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q153mhAYL3w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6f-N3pWApgc


Just footage of Attack Of The Mutant Camels '89, clips 1-3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Tjk9IR5fIA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUy4QMlb790
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPGtap-nF6U


Ah well, too bad so sad, and all...

I'm goin' back to
save the last humans!
playing
RESOGUN
 
M

missile

Member
Shaneus said:
... but my greatest bugbear right now for "retro" aesthetics is that every single goddamn indie developer seems to go for the same pixel-art style, and in the end all those titles blend into each other. ...
Click to expand...
Most of them are 2d pixel-art. And indeed, they blend into each other making
it difficult for indie developers to stand apart. Part of the problem is also
the use of similar tools for creating games. Give 100 people Unity and they
may likely programm very similar games (a 2d platformer featuring sort of
some pixel-art). Well, I think the 2d retro pixel-art wave is over, it is a
well established subject and more or less easy to do given many of the
gamemaker tools out there. What isn't explored that much is the 3d aspect of
retro gaming. Making 3d games seems more daunting for many indie
developers, and implementing special retro rendering techniques is sort of a
steep curve to climb for many. There was recently a thread over here at GAF
where people called indie developers for 3d retro games (getting sick of
the retro 2d platformer).

Shaneus said:
At least Minter's changing things up and giving each of his titles a unique look while still remaining obviously "retro".
Click to expand...
Due to the age of Jeff, he had/has access to the old vector tubes (CRTs who
don't scan the screen by a predefined raster). So he might have been fallen
in love with this technique and tries to reproduce the associated look & feel
wherever he can. And indeed, there is a very aesthetic element to pure vector
graphics and Jeff does a great job in delivering, yet there are way too much
colors on the screen for my eyes. ;)
 
M

missile

Member
A

AmyS

Member
BTW, had to edit that post a few times to get it to a state where I felt was complete.


Oh and, holyfreakingcrap, while looking for some pics of AMC'89, I am now playing a prototype of it via emulation. Naturally, I can't tell you all where to get the stuff to do the same, this is GAF afterall, but it's so not difficult to seek it out for yourselves.

sweet, sweet multi-layered scrolling and colors, oh my.

Savin' the last humans in Resogun will just have to wait!
 
S

Shaneus

Member
AmyS said:
BTW, had to edit that post a few times to get it to a state where I felt was complete.


Oh and, holyfreakingcrap, while looking for some pics of AMC'89, I am now playing a prototype of it via emulation. Naturally, I can't tell you all where to get the stuff to do the same, this is GAF afterall, but it's so not difficult to seek it out for yourselves.

sweet, sweet multi-layered scrolling and colors, oh my.

Savin' the last humans in Resogun will just have to wait!
Click to expand...
I didn't even know that was possible. Should tide us all over until the 11th!

I'd wager that Minter himself wouldn't have a problem at all, given he posts ROMs/images of most of his stuff on his own website anyway :)
 
B

Baron_Calamity

Member
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Konix called the Flair 1 and slowly evolved into the Flair 2 which got sold to Atari and released as the Jaguar?
 
D

Dr Zhivago

Member
missile said:
Edit: Here is a realtime halftone 3d graphics I programmed a couple of month
ago for Notch's DCPU16:

27991861.gif


.
Click to expand...

This is great, reminds me of Starstrike 2 on the Spectrum :)
sstrike2.gif


There's so much interesting stuff to be done in old rendering techniques.

Gazunta said:
Jeff Minter's a better game designer than every single person who has ever or will ever post on GAF.
Click to expand...

But what if Jeff posts on GAF ????
 
M

Mascot

Member
Man, Space Giraffe was very nearly my perfect video game, but after about a dozen levels I literally could not see what the fuck was going on. If there was an option to turn down the background psychedelia a couple of notches I'd probably still be playing it to this day.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

10 years with no new BioShock is a sad world to live in.
2 3
109
4K
ShaiKhulud1989 replied
Déjà Vu: Is PS5's Performance Mode a Rehash of the Early HD Debacle?
Opinion 2
53
3K
Gojiira replied
  • Poll
Is it possible to make a new retro console using parts like 6502, z80, etc.. ?
15
1K
mopspear replied
Japanese vs. Western Developers attitudes towards Handhelds
Opinion Game Dev 2
54
3K
Jubenhimer replied
Linear single player games, preferably shooters, with lots of replay value (bonus modes, challenges, unlockables, etc.)?
15
1K
fart town usa replied
Top Bottom