RadiantFighter

RadiantFighter

RadiantFighter is a free, open-source port of the Amiga AGA beat-'em-up Shadow Fighter (N.A.P.S. Team / Gremlin Interactive, 1994) to Windows and Linux. It runs the original game, unchanged, on a small Amiga 1200 written in C++ (68000 CPU and AGA chipset), with sharp integer scaling, configurable control ports and fullscreen.

No part of the original game is included in this project. RadiantFighter contains no game code, graphics, sound, text, ROM or disk image. To play you need your own copy of Shadow Fighter (see Game files). Shadow Fighter and all its contents are the property of their respective owners. The author of RadiantFighter claims no rights over the game. RadiantFighter is not affiliated with or endorsed by N.A.P.S. Team, Gremlin Interactive or any rights holder.

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Made largely with AI. Most of RadiantFighter (the analysis of the original game, the code and the documentation) was written by an AI assistant (Anthropic's Claude), directed, tested and reviewed by the author.

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Features

• The original game, as it was. The original 68000 code runs on an emulated Amiga 1200: CPU, copper, blitter, AGA bitplanes (up to 8 planes, 256 colours of 24 bits, BPLCON3 banks, BPLCON4, wide fetch modes), AGA sprites (16, 32 and 64 pixels wide), Paula audio, CIAs, keyboard and joystick ports. No Kickstart ROM is needed.
• No disk drive, fast loading. The game's track loader reads the disk images directly and the packed blocks are unpacked in C++: the Gremlin logo appears after about two seconds.
• Sharp picture. Full-screen pictures (title, menus, selection) are shown in 4:3 with the overscan area the game uses; the fight is shown as its exact display window. The window opens at half the desktop and can be resized.
• Picture modes (options menu, PICTURE): PIXEL PERFECT = the largest integer scale that fits the window or the desktop, black borders, with the CRT-Pixie filter computed exactly at that scale; FILL = the full height of the window or screen at any scale, with sharp pixels (sharp bilinear: no uneven pixels) or a CRT filter made for non-integer scales (every scanline gets the same light). Both start with their CRT filter on; F5 switches it off and on. Windows display scaling (125%, 150%) no longer blurs or shrinks the picture.
• CD or Amiga music, your choice. MUSIC: CD plays the audio tracks of the CD32 version (WAV files you make from your own disc, see below), as on the CD32; Paula stays free, so every fight has the stage (background) sounds and the sound effects at the same time. MUSIC: PAULA is the original Amiga music and sound, untouched. Never both at once. Separate volumes for the music and for the sound effects / stage sounds.
• Move list in the options menu: the special moves of every fighter.
• CRT-Pixie filter (F5): scanlines, aperture mask, glow, vignette, in the style of the crt-pixie shader.
• Skippable intro: Space, Return, Right Ctrl or fire (A) on a controller go straight to the title screen.
• High scores kept in RadiantFighter.highs next to the executable (same format as the WHDLoad install: a ShadowFighter.highs from WHDLoad is read too).
• The manual protection is answered for you.
• Both Amiga control ports configurable: keyboard, mouse or any joystick or game controller, for two players.

Game files

Put next to the executable either:

• the four ADF images of the AGA floppy version (... (Disk 1 of 4) ... .adf and so on), or
• the WHDLoad installation folder (ShadowFighterAGA, with Disk.1 ... Disk.4), or its four Disk.N files.

They are recognised by their SHA-256 digests (other versions are tried, with a warning). Another folder can be set with game_path=<folder> in radiantfighter.ini or --data <folder>; if nothing is found, RadiantFighter opens the system's folder picker (on Linux it needs zenity or kdialog).

CD audio (optional)

RadiantFighter creates an audio folder next to the executable. Extract the audio tracks of your Shadow Fighter CD32 disc (or of a dump of it) as WAV files, 44.1 kHz, 16-bit, stereo, and copy them there with exactly these names:

File	Disc track
track02.wav	first audio track (track 1 of the disc is the game data)
track03.wav ... track12.wav	the following tracks
track13.wav	last audio track used by the game

The game plays track 3 in the menus and the selection, a track per fight (as the CD32 version does) and track 13 in the ending. Any WAV with these names plays, your own music too. The folder also holds a README.txt with these instructions. With the folder empty, or MUSIC set to PAULA in the options menu, the original Amiga music plays. The intro keeps its Amiga music in both modes (the CD32 intro has no CD track).

Controls

Key	Action
Joystick in port 2	player 1 (as on the Amiga)
Joystick in port 1	player 2
Keyboard joystick	numeric keypad 8 4 6 2 (7 9 1 3 diagonals), Right Ctrl = fire
Other keys	the Amiga keyboard (as in the original: for example P pauses the fight)
Escape	options menu (the game is paused)
F5	CRT filter on / off
Space / Return / Right Ctrl / A	skip the intro
F11	window / fullscreen
F12	screenshot (PNG next to the executable)
Game controller	stick or d-pad = joystick, A = fire, Start = options menu

The options menu sets: fullscreen, the picture (pixel perfect or fill), the CRT filter, music (CD or Paula), music volume, effects volume, the device in each control port (nothing, keyboard, mouse or any joystick); it shows the move list (left / right: fighter) and can restart the game or quit. The settings are kept in radiantfighter.ini. With MUSIC: CD the SOUND item of the game's own options menu has no effect (stage sounds, effects and CD music always); with MUSIC: PAULA it works as in the original.

One fire button, as in the original (the CD32 version too: its pad buttons are used only for pause, menu choices and a cheat). Holding fire repeats the basic attack: this is the original behaviour (the game reads the button state every frame), and some special moves are "rapid fire" moves.

Cheat codes

From the WHDLoad install of Psygore & Codetapper (codes found by Keith Krellwitz, Sweet Cheater); they work in RadiantFighter as in the original. On the options screen type only one of these (the last one typed counts):

Code	Effect
MBARIVIDISOCCAFFARIMBARI	play as Shadow Fighter
PARAPONZIPONZIPO	play as Pupazz
TIRIKAKKU	infinite credits

During a fight press P (pause) and type:

Code	Effect
EBBRAVOSCECCU	win the current round
CUNIGGHIUACCURRENNU	speed up the game
SURICIMONCU	normal speed

The CD32 version has one more, with the pad of port 2 during the pause: green, yellow, green, yellow, green, yellow, blue, yellow, blue, yellow, blue, green, green (CD32 only: not available in RadiantFighter).

Command line

radiantfighter [--data <folder>] [--fullscreen] [--test-frames N]

Building

C++20 and SDL2. The Amiga core (68000 CPU from Moira by Dirk W. Hoffmann, MIT licence, and the chipset) is in core/.

• Windows (Visual Studio 2022 + vcpkg): cmake --preset windows-vcpkg then cmake --build --preset release; the result is a single radiantfighter.exe with SDL2 linked in. scripts/package.ps1 makes the zip.
• Linux / macOS: install SDL2 (libsdl2-dev, brew install sdl2), then cmake --preset linux and cmake --build build -j. -DRF_LINUX_PORTABLE=ON makes an executable for other distributions (glibc 2.34+).
• -DRF_BUILD_TOOLS=ON adds the developer tools: rfrun (the game without a window: screenshots, keys, joystick scripts, random input), agatest (self-test of the AGA chipset) and rf_formats (data converters).

The GitHub workflow builds Windows, Linux and macOS at every push and attaches the packages to a release for every v* tag.

Roadmap

• The CD32 joypad (seven buttons).
• A true 16:9 fight view: it needs the stage drawn in C++ beyond the graphics the game provides.
• More of the original routines translated to C++.
• macOS and Android packages: open to the community (the code builds on macOS; nobody tests it yet).

Licence

RadiantFighter is © Lorenzo Castelletta and released under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or later (see LICENSE). Moira (in core/ext/moira) is under the MIT licence.