The Great Escape Ported to C

About

The Great Escape is a 1986 isometric 3D ZX Spectrum game about escaping a wartime prison camp, created by Denton Designs and published by Ocean Software; it's loosely based on the 1963 film of the same name. This is a portable C reimplementation of The Great Escape, translated from a full reverse-engineering of the original Z80 assembly (done in a companion project) into portable C code that builds and runs on macOS, Windows, and RISC OS without needing an emulator. It has also enabled builds for the web via Emscripten and even the BBC Micro via a Raspberry Pi co-processor.

How it differs from the original

Beyond faithfully reproducing the original ZX Spectrum game logic, the project has fixed some bugs present in the original release, and its author has analyzed size and speed differences between the C reimplementation and the original assembly.

Getting started

On macOS or Windows, build with CMake (creating a build directory and running cmake and cmake --build, or using the included build script) and run the resulting binary. At startup, press 0 to configure your own control keys, or 3 for default Sinclair-style keys; the macOS build currently has the most complete audio and menu support, and a browser version built with Emscripten is also available to try without installing anything.

History

Development began in 2013 and continued through at least 2022, building on a separate reverse-engineering effort by the same author that fully disassembled the original ZX Spectrum game.

Media

Additional notes

External link

The README links to a related project, a from-scratch port of the arcade game Chase H.Q., and to an article about porting Chuckie Egg.