''Psychedelia'' is an early light synthesizer developed by

Jeff Minter Jeff Minter (born 22 April 1962) is an independent English video game designer and programmer who often goes by the name Yak. He is the founder of software house Llamasoft and has created dozens of games during his career, which began in 19 ...

and published by Llamasoft in 1984. It was converted to the MSX and

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as t ...

by Simon Freeman.

Usage

''Psychedelia'' allowed a user to generate a light show on the screen grid, using the joystick to send pulses or bursts of coloured squares. There are various preset settings, or the user can manually set the variables controlling the pulses. Patterns can be recorded to memory or tape for later playback. Unlike Minter's later synthesizers such as ''

Neon Neon is a chemical element with the symbol Ne and atomic number 10. It is a noble gas. Neon is a colorless, odorless, inert monatomic gas under standard conditions, with about two-thirds the density of air. It was discovered (along with krypton ...

'', ''Psychedelia'' does not use audio as a factor, only using a joystick's input. It is, however, intended to be played in accompaniment to music.

History

Minter had been considering "dynamic interactive pattern generators" but hadn't coded any previously. An idea for an algorithm came to him, in which patterns would be seeded along a path, which would then expand and change shape and colour over time. He coded it in 6502

assembler language In computer programming, assembly language (or assembler language, or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as Assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence be ...

, fitting into about 1

kilobyte The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The International System of Units (SI) defines the prefix ''kilo'' as 1000 (103); per this definition, one kilobyte is 1000 bytes.International Standard IEC 80000-13 Quantiti ...

. Running the code for the first time had a profound effect on Minter: "It just felt wonderfully new, and somehow primal... it was like the patterns and mandalas that have fascinated humans for millennia, but come to life, under your control..." Originally, Minter intended the algorithm to be public domain and contributed an early version in listing form to a computer magazine. After encouragement from his parents, Minter eventually released an expanded version commercially as ''Pyschedelia''. He continued to develop the light synthesizer concept, designing '' Colourspace'' (1985), '' Trip-a-Tron'' (1987), '' Virtual Light Machine'' (1990, 1994, 2000 and an unreleased version in 2003) and ''

'' (2004). ''Psychedelia'', along with other older Llamasoft programs, has since become

public domain software Public-domain software is software that has been placed in the public domain, in other words, software for which there is absolutely no ownership such as copyright, trademark, or patent. Software in the public domain can be modified, distributed, ...

. Later the author released a variant for Apple devices including the

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

Critical reception

On its release ''Psychedelia'' received mixed reviews. ''

Your Spectrum ''Your Sinclair'', or ''YS'' as it was commonly abbreviated, was a commercially published and printed British computer magazine for the Sinclair range of computers, mainly the ZX Spectrum. It was in circulation between 1984 and 1993. History Th ...

'' criticized the concept of a light synthesizer, describing ''Psychedelia'' as boring and awarding an average of 2/5. ''

Sinclair User ''Sinclair User'' was a magazine dedicated to the Sinclair Research range of home computers, most specifically the ZX Spectrum (while also occasionally covering arcade games). Initially published by ECC Publications, and later EMAP, it was publi ...

'' also only awarded 2 out of 5, finding the concept interesting but concluding that the games-buying public was the wrong demographic for this kind of software. In contrast, ''

CRASH Crash or CRASH may refer to: Common meanings * Collision, an impact between two or more objects * Crash (computing), a condition where a program ceases to respond * Cardiac arrest, a medical condition in which the heart stops beating * Couch su ...

'' found the package great fun to play around with, describing the effects as fantastic, but criticizing the retail price and narrow appeal. The magazine featured ''Psychedelia'' on their October 1991 covertape.

External links

Official site
at Llamasoft
Disassembled source code for Psychedelia on the C64
at GitHub

References

{{Jeff Minter 1984 software Music visualization software Llamasoft software Assembly language software Public-domain software

Usage

History

Critical reception

See also

External links

References