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…..
- 5 levels, ~17 minutes expert playthrough. This release is a Level 1 demo.
Team members:
- 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.”
