Show HN: Reviving a 20-year-old puzzle game Chromatron with Ghidra and AI (opens in new tab)

(quesma.com)

28 pointsstared18d ago9 comments

Play: https://p.migdal.pl/chromatron-oxide/ Repo: https://github.com/stared/chromatron-oxide/ (educational purpose only) The original: https://www.silverspaceship.com/chromatron/

Full story in the blog post.

9 comments

duskwuff17d ago

The source code to Chromatron was made available on the game's forum at one point. Here's a copy I saved:

https://gist.github.com/duskwuff/513e2b4f38b3db2e060c8611ebf...

A couple of helper functions are missing, but nothing terribly important.

staredOP17d ago

I wasn't aware it existed - and thanks for saving!

And wow, this code is beautiful.

ticulatedspline16d ago

FWIW game works fine on windows 11 64bit. went to https://www.silverspaceship.com/chromatron/ ran the exe. fun game.

staredOP15d ago

It is good to hear that!

So, as always, the problem is not with gaming, but Apple gaming.

casey217d ago

Very nice. But "Models excel at code, but not at visual inspection" is limited, Claude excel's at code cause that is anthropics main focus. Google will leapfrog them soon.

I could never see Claude doing this without a human in the loop, while Google has probably already reverse engineered a good chunk of the software available on the web

staredOP17d ago

When dealing with binaries, Gemini 3.1 Pro is in the same tier as Opus 4.6, https://quesma.com/benchmarks/binaryaudit/. Here are the results without humans in the loop, fully end-to-end.

For any practical development, you want humans in the loop, just precisely as much as it is needed (e.g. to ask the right questions, not to get steered away), but not more.

rsalus17d ago

Doubtful.

xnx17d ago

Similar recent project for Skyroads: https://github.com/ammaarreshi/SkyRoads-Codex

alberto-m18d ago

Excellent article, thanks!

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

9 comments

duskwuff17d ago

The source code to Chromatron was made available on the game's forum at one point. Here's a copy I saved:

https://gist.github.com/duskwuff/513e2b4f38b3db2e060c8611ebf...

A couple of helper functions are missing, but nothing terribly important.

staredOP17d ago

I wasn't aware it existed - and thanks for saving!

And wow, this code is beautiful.

ticulatedspline16d ago

FWIW game works fine on windows 11 64bit. went to https://www.silverspaceship.com/chromatron/ ran the exe. fun game.

staredOP15d ago

It is good to hear that!

So, as always, the problem is not with gaming, but Apple gaming.

casey217d ago

Very nice. But "Models excel at code, but not at visual inspection" is limited, Claude excel's at code cause that is anthropics main focus. Google will leapfrog them soon.

I could never see Claude doing this without a human in the loop, while Google has probably already reverse engineered a good chunk of the software available on the web

staredOP17d ago

When dealing with binaries, Gemini 3.1 Pro is in the same tier as Opus 4.6, https://quesma.com/benchmarks/binaryaudit/. Here are the results without humans in the loop, fully end-to-end.

For any practical development, you want humans in the loop, just precisely as much as it is needed (e.g. to ask the right questions, not to get steered away), but not more.

rsalus17d ago

Doubtful.

xnx17d ago

Similar recent project for Skyroads: https://github.com/ammaarreshi/SkyRoads-Codex

alberto-m18d ago

Excellent article, thanks!

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse