ChromaBlast | Update | vertical shoot ’em up for Amiga

This is **ChromaBlast**, a vertical shoot ’em up for Amiga — a real Amiga: the Amiga 500 with 1 MB of Chip RAM, plus an AGA version for the Amiga 1200. ⚡ ENGINE — It was WAY TOO SLOOOOOOW!! BEFORE ❌ • A wave of just 5–6 enemies could bring the game to its knees and slow everything down. • Dying during a full wave caused an extremely noticeable slowdown. • The pacification warp stuttered, with a visibly stepped animation. • Pacification and bombs caused sudden frame drops — sometimes triggering up to around *48 blits in a single frame!* • Enemy bullets could flood the screen like a hailstorm. AFTER ✅ • *CONSTANT GAME SPEED:* if a frame takes too long, the game logic catches up with the missing tick. The gameplay never slows down anymore. The visual frame rate may occasionally drop, but enemies, projectiles and scrolling always continue at their correct speed. • The death sequence now runs as a cinematic slow-motion scene at **25 FPS**, cutting the rendering cost in half precisely when the engine is under the greatest pressure. • Bomb decolouring and pacification recolouring now spread progressively **LIKE A WAVE**. The engine is no longer overwhelmed by multiple large events, even when they happen simultaneously. • Warps are now interpolated frame by frame, making them smooth as butter. • The first eight projectiles use Amiga hardware sprites. *Denise draws them at virtually zero CPU cost.* Enemy fire is also limited to a maximum of six bullets on screen, while formations now materialise progressively instead of appearing all at once. • Bonus optimisation: the striped ocean Copper effect now uses **20 KB less Chip RAM**. THE RESULT *IT FEELS LIKE A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT GAME.* Smooth on a standard Amiga 600, with identical gameplay behaviour on the Amiga 1200. 🔵 ORBS — The New Enemy Projectiles BEFORE ❌ Tiny grey 4×8 dashes that were difficult to see and travelled in perfectly straight lines like rifle shots. AFTER ✅ • New **12×12 shaded orbs**, complete with highlights and the visual style of a classic 1990s shoot ’em up. • They now behave like **HEAVY ENERGY ORBS**: they travel at roughly half the previous speed and are affected by gravity. They begin by aiming directly at you, then curve into a parabolic trajectory. 🌠 Dodging them is now a completely different skill. • On the Amiga 600, they are rendered using hardware sprites at almost no cost. On the Amiga 1200, they appear as identically shaded BOBs. • The boss has *NOT* been changed: its projectile patterns remain fast, aggressive and unforgiving. Try everything and tell us what you think! --- The core mechanic is simple. The universe as we know it is threatened by the **Grey Armada**, which wants to turn everything grey by stealing every last colour. Your mission is to shoot your way through it and bring the colours back. In addition to attacking you, every enemy scatters colour-draining bombs across the ground. When you hit an enemy, it does not explode: it becomes coloured, restoring colour to the ground beneath it in the process. Your true score is not measured in points — it is measured by how much of the world you have brought back to life. There are five worlds to save, each with its own distinctive setting. Then, for the grand finale, you will have to venture deep inside the Grey Armada’s fortress and restore its colours — not by destroying it, but by **SAVING IT**. Under the hood, all of this takes place in a 16/32-colour world, covering everything you see: your ship, the enemies, projectiles and terrain. Enemies do not follow pre-recorded patterns. Each one has its own state: it evaluates you, engages you, becomes aggressive or tries to escape. An enemy that has just entered the screen will not fire immediately. It is watching you. Half a second later, it has spotted you — and the attack begins. Then there is the boss. And the boss watches you play. Do you stay in the centre? Crossfire. Do you always slide to the left? A fan of projectiles aimed towards the right, where you are likely to move next. Do you never miss a shot? Walls of bullets designed to force you to move and break your aim. When you die, time slows down. A grey warp engulfs the place where you fell. The entire world slows down and waits for you, as if it wants you to emerge again. This moment belongs entirely to the player, giving you enough time to understand which power-ups you have lost and realise that you still have a chance to collect them again. *ChromaBlast* is written in C and 68000 assembly and compiled using VBCC. Programming by Michele Ferrigno Graphics by Daniele Pomposelli Music and sound effects by *Alex FeroX Ciarelli* and **Simone JMD Bernacchia**. The team is called **Guru Vision**.