Support NeoGAF

[Panajev2001a]

This is THE man Jeff Minter:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c9/Jeff_minter_at_asm04.JPG


Who is he ? Wikipedia is your new friend (don't be jealous Goggle, you are always our friend) here, providing for a nice biography of the Yak:

Jeff Minter

Jeff 'Yak' Minter (born in Reading, April 22, 1962) is a British computer/video game designer and programmer. He is the founder of software house Llamasoft and his most recent work is the light synthesizer (called Neon) built into the Xbox 360 console.

Many of his games include certain distinctive elements—they are often arcade style shoot-em-ups. His fondness of llamas, sheep, camels etc. often leads to them appearing in his games or the titles (Llamatron, Llamazap, Attack of the Mutant Camels, Revenge of the Mutant Camels, Sheep in Space, etc.).
Also many feature something of a psychedelic element, as in some of the earliest 'light synthesizer' programs such as his Trip-a-Tron.

In online forums and informal game credits pages Minter usually signs as "Yak", which is, in his own words
"a pseudonym chosen a long time ago, back in the days when hi-score tables on coin-op machines only held three letters, and I settled on Yak because the yak is a scruffy hairy beast - a lot like me ;-)."


Early years

Jeff Minter became interested in computers while attending secondary school.
He teamed up with Richard Jones, a fellow pupil, and together they started writing their own games on their school's Commodore PET. They soon parted ways.
Jones went on to commercial projects, some of them in the software market (e.g., Interceptor Micros).

Games

In 1981 Jeff Minter started writing and selling Sinclair ZX80 video games.
In 1982 he founded software house Llamasoft (a company that creates games rather than sells or distributes them is often called a house).
His first game through Llamasoft was Andes Attack (US version: Aggressor): a Defender clone for the Commodore VIC-20, but with little llamas instead of spaceships (a fan of Defender, he would remake it again as Defender 2000). His second Llamasoft game, Gridrunner, was written in a week and was his first commercial success both in the UK and in the USA.

Minter went on to develop a number of classic games, all written in assembler, for the later home computers (such as the Commodore 64, Atari 400/800 and Atari ST) which were marketed mainly by word of mouth and by the odd magazine advertisement.

These games included: Gridrunner, Matrix, Hellgate, Hover Bovver, Attack of the Mutant Camels, Revenge of the Mutant Camels, Revenge of the Mutant Camels 2, Laser Zone, Mama Llama, Metagalactic Llamas Battle at the Edge of Time, Sheep in Space, Void Runner, and Iridis Alpha.

After the collapse of the home computer market he worked for Atari and for (now-defunct) VM Labs.
For Atari he produced Tempest 2000 (1994) on the Jaguar, a remake of Dave Theurer's classic Tempest of 1981. Minter also produced Defender 2000 (1995) on the Jaguar, a remake of Eugene Jarvis's classic Defender.
Minter also produced the Virtual Light Machine (VLM) for the Jaguar CD-ROM add-on.

For VM Labs, Minter designed software for the Nuon chip. Jeff Minter also created the VLM2 (Light Synth) & Tempest 3000 for the Nuon.

Later came a short spell writing games for the Pocket PC platform, some of which also had PC conversions (using a customized Pocket PC emulator).
During this time, Minter released three games: Deflex, Hover Bovver (ports/remakes of his own early 80s games of the same name), and the PC/Macintosh game Gridrunner++.

In 2002, Jeff began work on a project for the Nintendo GameCube with the name of Unity — the combination of the two main threads of Jeff's work: light synthesis and classic arcade style shooting.
Jeff was writing this game for Peter Molyneux's Lionhead Studios but the project was canceled in December 2004.

The version of the VLM to be used within Unity has since been reprogrammed and significantly expanded. Now named Neon, it has been used in the Xbox 360 media visualization. [1]

He's now producing another Tempest variant, codenamed Space Giraffe. [2]

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


A bit of Neon history straight from the Llama's mouth ,

The Lightsynth comes of age...

Neon is Llamasoft's latest and most breathtaking light synthesiser. Capable of generating anything from soothing ambient swirls to strobing multicolour explosions, it's infinitely configurable thanks to its modular nature, and always stunning to look at.

Neon can run purely off audio input or from up to four joypads, each controlling a different display element with incredible ease and precision and generating hypnotic, multi-layered end results that are way ahead of every other piece of audio visualisation software


Neon, The History of...

Back in the VLM-0 days I had a conceptual idea for a lightsynth that would be truly worthy of the name - something which really *was* a synthesiser, with modules that you could plug together and dials and sliders you could adjust to create a huge variety of effects, just as a musician does with a music synthesiser.
That idea was well ahead of what consumer-level hardware was capable of at that time, and so it remained just a neat idea, something for "one day"...

Remember what I said about Nuon and "computational resolution"? Well, without giving any secrets away and getting myself into trouble with Microsoft, I can tell you that the Xbox360 can bring to bear an absolutely *staggering* amount of computational power on each and every pixel, and never drop below 60 frames a second. The thing's a *monster*.

Finally realising my design of a modular lightsynth on top of that awesome computational power, and inheriting the multi-user controllability from VLM-3, is NEON - and the results are simply amazing. Even I am continually amazed at what it is possible to get out of it, and I designed it }:-D.
It is a true light synthesiser, and easily the most beautiful thing I have ever made, by a very long way. We thought VLM-3 was good, but this makes VLM-3 look like Psychedelia. It's truly a generational increment - hence after years of long service I decided it's finally time to lose the VLM name.

It can be used purely as a visualizer - but a visualizer which instantly obsoletes all those still currently struggling along with VLM-1 techniques straight into the Stone Age.
Or you can pick up the controllers and feel what it's like to fly it as a Crew.
It is truly a thing of beauty... I believe it finally begins to achieve the potential that I saw all those years ago when I first made Psychedelia... and I am happier with it than I have ever been with anything I've created in my entire career.

And we got it into the firmware again...

Microsoft firmware.

Of the Xbox360 for goat's sake }:-D.

At last... after more than 20 years' work, one of my lightsynths is going to reach a decent sized audience.

Millions and millions..... }:-D

http://www.llamasoft.co.uk/neon.php


Screen shots:

Screen-shots CANNOT do this visualizer justice, not even videos unless you have some audio too (and you have to enjoy it fully so it cannot be crappy audio+video feeds), but that is all I can give you here:

Why cannot they really relate the awesomeness of Neon ?

Because they represent just a SMALL selection of the default grid of effects (posted at the end of this post).

Because they are static.

Because even if it was a moving video you are not hearing anything and even if you did it would not playing YOUR music.

Because you would not be really experiencing how the visualizer "interprets" the music being played, the changes of pace in the song, the "mood" of the song and its flow.

To really enjoy the Visualizer you really have to experience it first hand, queuing up your favorite tracks in a Playlist and let the Visualizer transition from one song to the next (on the first song it does not always give you its best performance ever IMHO, it seems to take a song to warm up so to speak ).

It is beautiful to see how it varies every time you use it, depending on the track it is playing at the moment , depending on the tracks it has played before that track: the colors used, the light and Screen Perturbation effects, the speed you travel some tunnels at and the crazy motions you do inside of them.
I cannot see how PLAYSTATION 3 Visualizer will be able to match Neon which is a gem that stood in Minter's head being perfected more and more at each iteration since before the Atari Jaguar's years.

It MIGHT be that SCE assigned to its Visualizer (btw, when are they going to add one to the PSP ?) some people that have had the same passion as Jeff Minter for such a product and that they were able to match or exceed Neon, but that is about as likely as Kutaragi calling me to tell me my special Panajev edition PLAYSTATION 3 will be shipped to me ASAP and for free... *uhm... cell-phone is ringing...* .... yeah... wishful thinking ... :lol.

No offense to the SCE people that have worked on the PLAYSTATION 3 Music Visualizer, but something like Neon is not just l33t-programming, it takes experience, some craziness and a lot of creativity... it is not something you can easily solve just by throwing more ace-coders to the task... all IMHO.

You still think, after having used it, that it is a relatively trivial piece of software: well, have you seen Neon's manual yet ?
Check it out at http://www.llamasoft.co.uk/360m1.php and see what you can do . I would want to try a 4-player session at Neon, finding the best way to play our favorite songs... connecting the Xbox 360 through the DVD Recorder we cold even record it and post it on YouTube . Now... I have got to find those three other people :lol.


As promised, here is the screenshot of Neon's grid of effects:

Full resolution here (it was ruining this thread's formatting): http://www.llamasoft.co.uk/images/x360manual/NeonGrid.jpg

 

[MightyHedgehog]

Yeah, very cool shit, though it'd be nice if it were properly widescreen formatted. I don't care for stretch. I still like Andy O'Meara's G-Force visualization better...but I think only because I really prefer image transformation/morphing transitions in VLMs.

 

[BuG]

but something like Neon is not just l33t-programming, it takes experience, some craziness and a lot of creativity...

You forgot "a ****ton of acid". BTW, you know he calls himself Yak, not Llama. Also he feels that in order to "really experience" it you must be controlling it with three other people, and that together you put on a performance not the visualiser.

 

[NotWii]

How is the synchronisation with the music?

Every visualisation I've seen is terrible, except for spectrum analyzers and oscilloscopes, but those aren't terribly exciting to watch.

 

[bbyybb]

It really just reminds me of the visualisation options that are in Winamp.


Nothing revolutionary.

 

[Gazunta]

Long deserved thread. Minter is amazing. All hail Minter. And thanks for pointing me towards the instruction manual - I had no idea of the potential of Controller 2.

BTW - anyone who posts in this thread that they don't think Neon is all that and a bag of chips is dead in my eyes.

 

[Panajev2001a]

You forgot "a ****ton of acid". BTW, you know he calls himself Yak, not Llama.

I know he calls himself yak, heck it is written in the Wiki page I posted myself in this very thread .

It really just reminds me of the visualisation options that are in Winamp.


Nothing revolutionary.

Reminding and "being the same as" are quite different concepts: you know, a Toyota Celica reminds me of a Ford GT (both sports cars), but it does not offer quite the same experience . The Media Center remote reminds me of the Wii-mote, but would we say they are just the same ?

The way it synchronizes with the music, the way it visualizes its sound is better IMHO than all the other visualizers I have tried from WMP, to Winamp, etc...

 

[Panajev2001a]

Long deserved thread. Minter is amazing. All hail Minter. And thanks for pointing me towards the instruction manual - I had no idea of the potential of Controller 2.

and Controller 3 and Controller 4 .