Space Harrier (faster edition with autofire)

Games! AI remakes
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Hi everyone.

For the last few weeks I have been working with Claude to disassemble some games, and then try and understand how they work. I’ve learned a lot, and in the process managed to understand how Space Harrier drew its graphics.

To my surprise, it didn’t use a generalised Bresenham routine. Instead, it used 8 little “programs” for creating lines, and the diagonal variants took a slope parameter.

Anyway, I’ve had Claude make the following changes (though 128KB is now needed, due to storing lots of lookup tables in extended RAM):

  • Autofire (hooray!)
  • Much faster obstacle drawing
  • Removal of the very annoying shooting sound effect

Perhaps the game is a little too fast now!

spaceharrier6128.dsk (190.3 KB)

9 Likes
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Wow… definitely too fast for me.

But a great example of how AI can optimise games - and a great way to use the upper 64K.

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It’s running so fast that you could almost fill the shapes !

ATF use also optimized / specialized line draw function, i asked Claude how it run so fast (comparing to my i thought “fast” line draw)

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Off-topic: I’ve only just discovered now that the music during the credits is a great remix of J.S. Bach’s Prelude No. 2. It took me 40 years to realize that!

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I’m going to add these 2 videos here !!! , I think they might be interesting, if not I’ll delete them !!!, warm regards.

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They are both impressive in their own ways! Especially Horizon Runner. Very nice and smooth.

I had considered trying to fill the shapes in space harrier, but in the end I just wanted it to go ridiculously fast! :smiley:

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Would be interested to see a plus/GX4000 version and see what it could do, especially knowing what they achieved with SonicGX.

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Sound in Horizon Runners is horrible, but with a nice chiptune this should be a great game.

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Horizon Runner seems to be very restricted in how far you can move sideways. You’d have to fix that to really feel like Space Harrier. Otherwise it looks promising.

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Nice, Space Harrier was always one of my favourite games, the CPC version really disappointed a 13yr old me, with the wireframe graphics - compared to all other ports, I felt we were hard done by.

Good to see the game getting some much deserved love!