textfiles/games/CONSOLES/jeffmint.txt

An interview with Jeff Minter.

INTERVIEW WITH JEFF 'YAK THE HAIRY' MINTER <1B>by Richard Karsmakers

About  one or two months ago,  I wrote a letter to Jeff  'Yak  the 
Hairy' Minter,  creater of dozens of blast'em-up games for several 
machines,  and  writer  of the ST program  'Colourspace'.  He  was 
surprised that a hack group like us did something constructive for 
a change, which he seemed to appreciate...

RK: Let's get down to business right away. What's your occupation, 
and what's your date of birth?
JM:  My occupation is,  I suppose,  that of programmer, although I 
got a pretty casual approach to what I do;  sure,  I need to do  a 
lot  of commercial stuff to earn my bread,  but I get the  biggest 
buzz  from  doing experimental stuff.  Some  of  the  experimental 
stuff  turns  commercial  if  it  gets  good  enough  (the   whole 
Psychedelia  (A popular Commodore 64 light synthesizer,  ED)   and 
Colourspace series started out from a Sunday afternoon hack I  did 
on my C64, for example). I'm 24 years old, be 25 this April 22nd.
RK:  Why did you switch to the Atari ST?  When did you buy it?  Do 
you still program on other computers as well?


JM:  I  got the ST because I wanted to move on to a  machine  with 
more  potential for my creative work than was afforded by  the  8-
bit  micros.  I was interested in the Amiga,  but it  was  hellish 
expensive  and hard to get (still is hellish expensive!),  and  my 
first  contact with ST came when Atari asked me if they could  use 
8-bit  Colourspace as a demo in Hannover '85 show.  I went  along, 
and saw the ST,  and fell in love with the system: I really wanted 
to get Colourspace on the ST!   I liked Atari's approach to the 16 
bit  market with the ST:  the computer wasn't too  expensive,  had 
great graphics and plenty of RAM,  and was cheap,  so real  people 
could afford to have it.  Pity the sound chip was so naff  though. 
Anyway,  I ordered the ST, got it in May that year but couldn't do 
any  work on 'Space cos I only had a mono monitor!   I  eventually 
got  the ST running with a Philips monitor,  and ran my  first  ST 
Colourspace  demo (only one week's work!) at the PCW '85  show  in 
London.
     I   also  program  for  the  Commodore   64,   Commodore   16 
occasionally, have done work on the Atari 8 bits too.
RK: Which of the computers you're working on do you consider to be 
best?  What is your opinion about the ST<->Amiga syndrome, and the 
Amiga in general?

JM:  Of the computers I work on,  the ST is the  best.  True,  the 
Amiga is more powerful,  but the price here in England means  that 
not many people can afford one,  and also the system isn't 'solid' 
yet, what with stuff written under Kickstart 1.1 not running under 
1.2, the poor software developers have a really hard time. HDs are 
very  expensive  for  Amiga too,  'coz you got  to  buy  the  SCSI 
interface to get decent speed,  and even then they're not as  fast 
as  on the ST.  I use my ST for all my word processing and  stuff, 
messing  with  graphics  and mathematical  art  (thereby  teaching 
myself all the math I forgot since leaving college) and of  course 
my  'Space work.   As for the old ST-vs-Amiga  argument,  I  still 
prefer  the ST although it isn't as powerful in some ways  as  the 
Amiga.  Amiga's  too expensive to justify the slight advantage  it 
has over the ST;  there's plenty happening for the ST and lots  of 
useful stuff to hang on it,  all available now, and all compatible 
with the current release of the machine.  My ST has two  floppies, 
one  half meg and one one meg,  a  HD20,  graphics  tablet,  video 
digitiser  and sound sampler,  and gets used 14 hours a  day  most 
days  when I'm not working on the C64;  my Amiga tends  to  gather 
dust  and is only fired up for the odd game of Marble  Madness  or 
Mindwalker,  and  most  annoyingly,  the drives have gone  out  of 
alignment,  meaning  that DF0:  cannot read files  from  DF1:  and 
vice versa.  A real downer.  DPaint is good on the Amiga though; I 
hope they port it over to the ST soon.
RK:  When did you start programming 'Colourspace'? Which assembler 
did you use to program it?
JM:  I started writing Colourspace in August '85.  It was finished 
by  January '86.  I started out using the 68000 assembler  in  the 
Atari development Kit, but soon moved over to using K-SEKA,  which 
doesn't  have  many  fancy features,  but runs like  the  wind  on 
account of being totally RAM based.  A lot of the coding of 'Space 
I is a bit raw,  as it was my first ever 68000 program,  and  also 
Atari's documentation was a bit heavy! All the good bits were well 
hidden in tons of other stuff!   Atari UK were helpful when I  had 
machine crashes or whatever,  they'd fix me up pretty  quick,  but 
for programming advice,  not so hot, 'coz they all worked in C and 
didn't know a lot about assembler programming.
RK:  What  may we expect from you in the near future,  software  I 
mean?
JM: I would like to write arcade games for the ST, and I doubtless 
will as soon as I finish with Colourspace. I particularly like the 
idea  of transferring Ancipital to the ST with better graphix  and 
extended gameplay,  so that may well be my first game project  for 
ST.   My next ST release will be Colourspace II.  I have done some 
work  on this already,  but now I'm doing some Commodore  work  to 
earn  some  bread,  before  devoting say 6 or 7  months  to  doing 
nothing  but 'Space II on the ST.  I have currently got as far  as 
'Space v1.3,  which has extra stuff like:  denser starfields,  new 
pattern mode using lines instead of just pixels, screen re-mapping 
allowing  you to do Colourspace on the surfaces of a cube,  or  on 
the  surface of a sphere (or indeed upon the surfaces  of  several 
concentric spheres);  also, the ability to drive Colourspace using 
a graphics tablet,  thereby allowing you to get rid of the  little 
white  dot  that  you need with a mouse to  position  yourself  on 
screen.   For Space II I hope to add:  a video-sequencer (allowing 
you  to  load  lots of frames in and run them  as  an  animation); 
macro-commands so that any key can be assigned any function rather 
than  just  having pre-defined  functions;  faster  plot-routines; 
proper menu-screens for the options instead of having to  remember 
silly sequences like UNDO-M-A and stuff;  proper file handling  on 
load and save functions;  generally improve the user interface and 
add  more  options.  I have no firm release dates yet  although  I 
guess  summer/autumn '87 is a good guess (I'm tied up 'till  April 
with my Commodore work).
RK: What do you think of <1B>ST NEWS<1B> and our Synth Sample III (we sent 
these programs to him together with the interview, ED)?
JM:  <1B>ST  NEWS<1B>  is a great idea.  The screen colours are  too  dark 
though   -  could  hardly  read  it  on  my  SC1224!   Perhaps   a 
'change  screen colours' option?  I liked the  menu  presentation, 
though,  made  the  newsletter easy to  browse  through,  and  the 
articles were interesting and pretty well written.  Some  'active' 
demos  would  be  nice,  if  not in  the  newsletter  proper  then 
elsewhere  on  the disk.  Although I understand that  there'll  be 
stuff like that when you get your problems with GFA-Basic  sorted. 
The Synth Sample was good,  although there was the odd bum note in 
there! Of course I missed hearing the stuff properly, 'coz my MIDI 
synth  just  blew up and I haven't had it  fixed  yet.   All  good 
work  though  - anything that shows off the ST is well  worth  the 
effort, keep it up!
RK:  I  suppose you must have run into some strange problems  when 
you were programming on the ST. Can you tell our readers something 
about that?
JM: I found that when I was learning my way around the ST, my main 
problem  wasn't  that  the information provided  by  Atari  wasn't 
correct,  just that it was buried in huge amounts of other not-so-
relevant stuff. My docs pack from Atari consisted of a huge box of 
photocopied, un-bound sheets roughly sorted into vague categories. 

What  was  needed  was a good book  for  the  beginning  ST-68000-
programmer with all the juicy bits like file access,  reading  the 
keyboard and mouse,  accessing the sound chip,  and  understanding 
the screen-mapping of the ST,  and useful appendixes full of stuff 
like key code tables,  detailed memory-maps, and stuff we all need 
at  times  like  Neo-file structure  explanations  and  the  like. 
Perhaps  if all the programmers you knew worked together we  could 
build  up  a  library of disks of documentation on  this  sort  of 
stuff,  written  by  those people who have already  learned  about 
these things and explaining them for new programmers who are still 
learning.  So  you  could send off for the PD  documentation  disk 
about,  say,  using the graphics-tablet in an ST application,  and 
get  a disk full of info and examples back.  Would save a  lot  of 
hunting through those piles of photocopied sheets!
RK:  Are  any  other  more or  less  famous  British  programmer's 
switching to the ST?
JM: Tony Crowther (He is the auhtor of many very nice games on the 
Commodore 64,  like Loco,  Suicide Express, Monty Mole and William 
Wobbler,  ED) has fallen heavily for the Amiga,  and plans to code 
for  that  machine.  I think he's attracted by  the  graphics  and 
sound,  being  as he's a fine artist and loves DPaintII,  and  his 
best  mate's a musician and loves the Amiga sound chips  (I  think 
Mr. Minter refers to one of the very best sound programmers on the 
Commodore  64 here,  Ben Dalglish).  There's a lot of ST  interest 
here in the UK though;  lots of the old 8-bit software houses  are 
turning  to  the  ST  and people  like  Paul  Shirley  (author  of 
"Spindizzy") are converting stuff for ST.  I've all but  convinced 
Andy  Braybrook  that he ought to get an ST too (Andy is  the  guy 
that programmed Paradroid for the Commodore 64, ED).
RK: Since I've heard that you love playing games, even your own, I 
would like to know which games for the ST you consider best.
JM:  Best game...  to play,  probably Time  Bandits.  Technically, 
probably Star Glider. Jez has done some great 3-D stuff there, and 
the game's a blast too.
RK: What do you consider to be the best game on any computer?
JM: The best game in any computer?  Has to be Star Raider for  the 
8-bit Ataris.  In terms of depth of gameplay vs. memory used (only 
8K of ROM!) nothing else comes anywhere near. 'Raider on the ST is 
great graphically,  but the gameplay is a bit easy (I shouldn't be 
able to get Star Commander Class One for a moderately-good Warrior 
Mission!)  and is spoiled (like many ST games!!) by the fact  that 
the joystick interferes with keyboard commands,  meaning that  you 
can be in the thick of a heavy battle when a spurious 'shield off' 
command gets issued and you get blasted!  (This is also a pain  in 
Time  Bandit:  I've been playing for over an hour only to  have  a 
spurious 'quit' command end my game).  The solution:  ensure  that 
all  keyboard commands in joystick-operated games require  another 
key pressing as well,  i.e. Shift-Q for a QUIT command rather than 
Q alone.
RK: Software piracy in known to be quite growing on the ST just as 
it has on popular home micros like the Commodore 64.  What do  you 
think of it?
JM: I have mixed feelings about piracy. I appreciate that cracking 
games  is a fine way to learn about programming,  but it's a  pain 
when  you've just spent five months programming a game to  see  it 
getting  ripped off all over the place.   Maybe the big  companies 
can afford it,  but I'm just one guy trying to earn my living, and 
especially where the ST is concerned I need to be able to sell all 
the  legitimate  copies I can.  There aren't that many  ST  owners 
around yet compared to Commodore folks,  and if half the ST owners 
get  cracked software for free,  it makes it difficult to  justify 
the  large  amounts of time it takes to develop stuff on  the  ST! 
Mind you,  I don't really like having to protect software at  all, 
because I feel uncomfortable if I only got one disk of something I 
use a lot, and besides, I like to have stuff on my HD20! I think a 
lot of the solution could be to do stuff that isn't protected  but 
which  requires a good manual to use properly.  That way,  if  you 
pick  up a pirated copy,  you get to have a look at the  software, 
and  if  you  want to use it to its full  potential,  you  get  an 
original and all the info with it,  plus the possibility of  stuff 
like  software updates to better versions.   I think a lot of  the 
answer  to  the piracy problem lies in the hands of  the  software 
houses  themselves.  Tougher  disk-protection ain't  the  way.  No 
matter  what you put on a disk,  sure as llamas got fluffy  little 
tails,  some  other  sucker's gonna deprotect that disk  within  a 
couple of weeks of launch.   As for the hackers themselves,  I got 
nothing  against them,  they usually laser-sharp coders  and  know 
their subject machines inside out- only please remember  guys,  we 
aren't all huge companies like USGold who can maybe afford to lose 
some sales here and there, a lot of programmers are guys just like 
you  working  on their own trying to do good work and  maybe  earn 
some cash too!

Yours zoophilically

     -- Y a K