Developer lisoform2003 has released a Level 1 demo for ChromaBlast, a new vertical scrolling shoot-em-up for the Commodore Amiga developed through human-AI collaboration with Claude AI. Targeting OCS/ECS and AGA hardware, the game features a combo-driven evolution system where players control the Chromacraft to fight the Grayscale Armada across five levels. The project, created by Michele Ferrigno, utilizes custom 68000 assembly and C code to produce high-performance, OS-independent gameplay on stock A500+ machines.
Here's the latest from the EAB discussion thread.....
Expected game size:
- 5 levels, ~17 minutes expert playthrough. This release is a Level 1 demo.
- Michele Ferrigno (game design, art direction, asset creation, testing & QA). Code developed through collaborative sessions with Claude AI (Anthropic) — all technical decisions, debugging, and hardware-level Amiga programming were iterated through human-AI pair programming. The AI wrote the C and 68000 assembly; I directed what to build, how it should look and feel, selected and curated all graphic and audio assets, tested every build on emulator, and drove every design decision.
Targeted spec:
- A500+ OCS/ECS, 512KB Chip RAM (minimum). Enhanced AGA version for A1200/A4000 with 32-color graphics. Both versions on a single 880KB DD floppy.
Tools used:
- VBCC (C cross-compiler), vasm (68000 assembler), ptplayer by Frank Wille (MOD replay), Claude AI by Anthropic (pair programming), Python scripts for asset pipeline, FS-UAE for testing.
Description of game:
- ChromaBlast is a vertical scrolling shmup built from scratch in C and 68000 assembly, targeting stock Amiga hardware with no OS dependencies during gameplay. The game features a combo-driven evolution system — chain hits on enemies to evolve your ship through three tiers, each with improved firepower and distinct visuals. Enemies arrive in formation waves culminating in a multi-phase boss fight.
Technical summary:
- Interleaved bitplane engine: cookie-cut blitter bobs across 4 planes (OCS) or 5 planes (AGA) in a single blit operation per entity
- 512-line circular scroll buffer with tile-based terrain rendering
- Copper-driven display split: scrolling playfield + static HUD with independent palettes
- Ship tilt via palette-exact indexed pixel rotation (no anti-aliasing, preserves pixel art integrity)
- Enemy state system with checkerboard dithered color tinting (1 extra blit per enemy)
- AGA: 32-color palette, bullets as blitter bobs instead of hardware sprites, enhanced terrain and ship graphics overlaid on OCS base data
"This demo includes: intro with scrolling credits and animated starfield, complete Level 1 with 8+ enemy waves, boss with 4 engine flames and cannon tracers, pause system (P or Space key), dedicated music for gameplay and boss fight. A note on development: this game was built entirely through human-AI collaboration. I have no prior Amiga programming experience — I came in with a game idea, pixel art assets, and a vision for how the game should play and look. Claude AI handled the low-level Amiga programming across ~12 intensive sessions. Every feature, every visual choice, every "this doesn't look right, fix it" iteration was mine."
Links :1) Discussion/Download
I appreciate being honest about the use of AI.
ReplyDeleteStill, knowing that steals much of the appeal to me.
I'm not to fussed myself as long as the end result is good! I don't like it when you get an AI used intro and AI graphics, then the game is nothing like it :D
DeleteOne day, we can have AI-generated Amiga games that ticks all the buttons of our flavour, and looks and sounds like a high-quality 1990s product like Agony or Lionheart. I don't really know what to feel about it. Obviously, that day is nowhere near, but it's getting closer.
ReplyDeleteIt's getting much better by the month. This is a pretty good game considering. I wouldn't be surprised if in two years we have stuff that is the same quality as the 1st wave of Atari ST ports for the Amiga.
DeleteAs a proof of concept, you have to admit that actually looks quite good. Especially as it will work on a 512k Amiga.
DeleteAs a game it needs a bit more polish. It runs fairly slowly, the enemy patterns seems a bit stiff and predictable, the visuals are a bit blurry and I'm getting more Sega Master System vibes from this than Amiga ones. It would even be a bit slow even for a SMS title.
But a stellar effort from someone who can't program and is just using a chat prompt.
I'll try to be constructive here, getting Claude AI to generate code that could be imported into the Scorpion Engine might be useful. That way you could build an outline of the game you want and then set about refining it in a low code environment, and potentially take advantage of some of the optimisations the engine allows for, improve the enemy movements, and refine the visuals and anything else needed. Best of both worlds.
Hi, I'm Michele, the creator of Chromablast. I wanted to thank you for your constructive comment, which really does justice to the amount of work I've put in—even though I used prompts in Claude, I tested the improvements with every iteration until they turned out exactly as I envisioned, analyzing performance on both the A500 and the A1200; I’ll consider using the Scorpion Engine to see what benefits it might bring to Chromablast. But I really wanted to thank you so much for your comment.
Delete