What’s to be gained from reverse engineering a four-decade-old video game? As it turns out, quite a lot, and as you’ll learn from [Norbert]’s recent talk at the ViennaJS meetup, it’s not just about bringing a classic back to life.
The game in question is Kee Game’s Sprint 2, a monochrome 2D car race that allowed two players to compete head to head. The glorious Harvest Gold and Burnt Orange color scheme just screams 1970s, and it might be hard to see why this game was once a popular quarter-eater. But it was quite engaging for the day, and [Norbert] was interested in reverse engineering it. That he did, using JavaScript to build a faithful browser-based emulation of the game. And he took it further, creating a 3D first-person version of the game.
But where the real work begins is in tearing apart the AI of the computer-controlled cars that hogged the track, and understanding how the vector map behind each race track is used to move the robot cars along smooth paths. [Norbert] covers the concept of vector and gradient fields and the Gauss-Seidel algorithm, then relates all of it to path planning for autonomous vehicles. Pretty impressive stuff for a guy who admits he is neither a professional programmer nor a mathematician.
We’ve covered tons of arcade game ports and recreations before, but this project goes well beyond those, at least in terms of lessons learned.
Filed under: classic hacks
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