Gameduino on Pipistrello

[mkarlsson]

Just like Jack I have been playing with Gameduino, a really cool project by James Bowman.

Originally it was a add-on shield for an Arduino board that implemented a sprite engine and much more, while the Arduino board did all the computing and sending commands to the Gameduino shield via a SPI interface.

For more info see this link to the Gameduino page: http://excamera.com/sphinx/gameduino/ with cool pictures and a complete description of the system

To port this to Pipistrello I expanded the code by adding two more blocks so it's basically now made up of three blocks:
* Original Gameduino block (no functional changes, just some code cleanup)
* VGA-to-DVI converter to send out the display via HDMI to a DVI monitor instead of VGA
* Microblaze_mcs system running at 100 MHz with added hardware I/O modules (SPI, timer, DIO, UARTs etc.)

The Microblaze_mcs I/O system is designed to simplify the porting of the core Arduino code to this new platform.

The result is a completely self-contained system that can run most of the example sketches for Gameduino without any extra hardware, using the familiar Arduino GUI.

Links to a few bit files to show off what it can do (just download the bit file to the fpga, i.e. fpgaprog -v -f <bitfile.bit>)

256 sprites: http://www.saanlima.com/download/pipistrello-v2.0/sprites256.bit
collision: http://www.saanlima.com/download/pipistrello-v2.0/collision.bit
asteroids game: http://www.saanlima.com/download/pipistrello-v2.0/asteroids.bit (pins A3 - A6 controls the game)

Link to my version of the Arduino GUI (windows) with Microblaze support that can be used to compile and download the demo sketches (included as examples)
http://www.saanlima.com/download/pipistrello-v2.0/arduino-1.5.2-gameduino.zip

Instructions:
* Download the Arduino zip file (it's about 160 MB) to your computer (sorry, windows-only at the moment)
* Unzip to any directory
* Go to this directory and launch the Arduino GUI by clicking on the Arduino icon
* In Tools -> Board select "Microblaze_mcs with Gameduino"
* Connect the Pipistrello board to the computer, a DVI monitor and optionally a sound system
* Load one of the Gameduino examples by going to File -> Examples -> Gameduino
* Click on the Upload button. The sketch will be compiled, then merged with the base bit file and then downloaded to the Pipistrello board

Enjoy!

Magnus

[maddog_fr]

Hi Magnus.

I recently purchased a pipistrello board from your shop and I am very happy with it.

My goal is to use it at a core brain for my pinball project (to drive the LCD virtual DMD / play sounds and manage I/O's) not sure if I'll be able to to all but we will see.

I played around with the DVI_SERDES example and I managed to tweak it to generate a 1280x390 DVI signal

My screen (LTA149B780F) has a custom ratio that is quite close to the ratio of a real DMD(128x32) (see attachment). I managed to render a 128x39 matrix (8x8 pixels)

BTW I had to swap the Red and Green pairs (U7/V7 and U8/V8) to get the right colors with my screens (probably a problem with my lcd driver board).

 

I am now trying to read data from the SDCARD via SPI (Images at first) and although I am a software engineer. it is a bit low level for my taste (I have done some Assembler very long time ago).

So I am looking at this Gameduino port you did and it look very interesting I tried it  with another screeen with a regular 16:9 ratio but I have a weird behavior with all the examples (see second screenshot)

Any idea where what would cause this ?

Sadely the project is written in Verilog and I haven't a single clue where to find the generation of the signal (hsync/vsync/RGB) if you could point me in the right direction it would be much appreciated.

Meanwhile I'll keep digging.

Have a great day.

Edit: I found where the signal is generated and I am now trying to understand how to set the FrontPorch/BackPorch/Sync

 

 

Edited April 1, 2017 by maddog_fr
Situation changed