Trip-a-Tron is a
light synthesizer written 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 through his
Llamasoft company in 1988. It was originally written for the
Atari ST
The Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the Atari 8-bit family. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985 and was widely available in July. It was the first pers ...
and later ported to the
Amiga in 1990 by Andy Fowler.
Description
Trip-A-Tron was released as
shareware
Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer ...
, but also came in a commercial package with a 3-ring-bound manual and 2 game disks. The trial version contained no limitations, but registration was necessary to obtain the manual, which in turn was necessary to learn the
script language
A scripting language or script language is a programming language that is used to manipulate, customize, and automate the facilities of an existing system. Scripting languages are usually Interpreter (computing), interpreted at Runtime (program li ...
("KML" - supposedly "Keyboard Macro Language" and only coincidentally the phonetic equivalent of "camel") which drove the system.
The software has a usable but quirky user interface, filled with in-jokes and references to Llamasoft mascots. For example, the button to exit from the MIDI editor is labelled "naff off", while the button to exit the file display is labelled with a sheep saying "Baa!"; the waveform editor colour cycles the words "Dead cool" above the waveform display, and the event sequencer displays an icon of a camel smoking a cigarette; and the image manipulation tool has a series of icons used to indicate how long the current operation is going to take: "Make the tea", "Have a fag", "Go to bed", "Go to sleep", "Go on holiday", "Go to Peru for six months", and "RIP"; and the scripting language command to set the length of drawn lines is "LLAMA". (The manual states: "I could have called the command LINELENGTH I suppose, but I like llamas so what the heck".)
The manual is also written in a similar light, conversational style, but has been praised for nonetheless achieving a high degree of technical clarity.
In spite of this the software is extremely usable and was recommended as one of the best
light synthesizers available at the time.
1096: Colourspace
By Pete, I'm Not Doctor Who, ''One thing that does stick in my mind from Trip-A-Tron, however, is a peculiar artistic project Minter undertook with a musician named Adrian Wagner known as Merak. Merak was a wordless, abstract story about the adventures of an android in space, and it was a spectacular combination of psychedelic visuals and memorable music''
See also
*Psychedelia (light synthesizer)
''Psychedelia'' is an early light synthesizer developed by Jeff Minter and published by Llamasoft in 1984. It was converted to the MSX and ZX Spectrum by Simon Freeman.
Usage
''Psychedelia'' allowed a user to generate a light show on the scre ...
* Virtual Light Machine
* Neon (light synthesizer)
References
External links
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{{Jeff Minter
1988 software
Atari ST software
Amiga software
Music visualization software
Llamasoft software