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Gameduino Project Aims To Game-ify the Arduino
beckman101 writes "Gameduino is a DIY game platform built on a shield for the Arduino. It's open source hardware (BSD and, for the code, GPL). Okay, that's fairly cool. But what makes this project special is that this inexpensive board has hardware that's capable enough to be interesting. The result is a lo-fi game console built on an FPGA that gives you retro graphics without being, you know, too retro. Games actually look good."
If someone made a Minecraft for the device, I could buy it. The current codebase is way too heavy for the type of game it is - it doesn't even check if you should see an object, it just draws everything anyway. Make a lightweight version of Minecraft and it's perfect!
some real cool shit once in a while !
this thing can actually develop into a more powerful gaming platform if people just concentrate on it.
and, its actually free !!
Read radical news here
The thing has a compressor with access to the video RAM which runs FORTH? I bet the guy who came up with that design has a beard....
No sig today...
Having video output from an arduino would be useful for all sorts of projects, not just games.
Being an electronics beginner, I have found the Arduino to be incredibly easy to use. Ok, it saves you from all the technical detail of wiring up a micro-controller, but it's a great way to get into this sort of hardware. Useful sites -
arduino.cc
http://balau82.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/getting-started-with-arduino-uno-on-ubuntu/
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/32392/?mod=MagOur&a=f
http://hubpages.com/hub/Arduino-Uno
Another option for retro-gaming hardware is Andre LaMothe's XGameStation line of DIY kits.
Looks like they now have a "Chameleon" line of kits, in both 8- and 16-bit flavors, which are similar to Arduino or BASIC Stamp systems.
I have not personally used these, but they appear to be pretty cool.
Enjoy.
- -
Pete
I mean, cool factor is always cool, but does this really provide better capabilities than what is possible with homebrew on some other system that would cost you no more to get started on?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Adding an FPGA to an arduino is about as intuitive to me as adding a V8 to a Prius.
does this really provide better capabilities than what is possible with homebrew
This won't get you sued, unlike homebrew where Nintendo and Sony routinely sue companies that deal in homebrew-related hardware. If the video can be redone into more consumer-electronics-friendly formats (composite, S-Video, component), it might even be possible to use this as a platform for developing and selling your own standalone TV games.
The Uzebox is another ATMega-based game console, except this one doesn't cheat with a big FPGA on top of it. They cheat by overclocking the AVR.
One thing that seems missing from a quick overview of the Gameduino... what about the gamepads? They talk about video, audio, sprites, registers, etc... but nothing about controllers.
On the Nintendo Entertainment System, data between the CPU and the PPU was pushed through an 8-bit parallel port whose practical maximum was 1 byte per 8 CPU cycles, or about 224 kB per second. That'd be fine, except all transfers had to finish during vertical blanking, the 8% of the time that the PPU was resting between frames. There was a faster hardware-assisted copy that could push 256 bytes in 512 cycles, but it worked only for OAM (sprite display lists), not background maps or graphical tiles. If this Gameduino has a clock rate faster than 1.8 MHz, and/or it allows copies to VRAM during draw time, it already has more VRAM bandwidth than the NES.
The asteroids page claims that a game uses a set of four push buttons (left, right, up, fire). This means an Atari 2600 joystick or a Sega Genesis gamepad would likely work with the appropriate connector, as those are electrically similar in a way to a set of common-ground push buttons. Or an NES or Super NES controller could be connected as an SPI slave.
32k is small for the intended usage :
- a gaming device.
Games need the caracter map to be able to display full-colour tiles, using several palette, features truckloads of sprites (up to 256) collision detection, etc.
(==the equivalent of rather good console/arcade video chip of the late-8bit to 16bit era)
That's purely overkill for debugging, where one only needs to display ASCII (a 256 character set of monocrhome tiles - no palettes, except maybe for selecting a different foreground colour on specific character position on screen), and maybe a couple of monochrome sprites (cursors).
(== the equivalent of a VGA in text mode)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The world of minecraft has a basic geometry (a huge 3D grid of cubic blocks) that makes occlusion culling almost trivial, given that the engine is re-adapted to that.
See Cube and Sauerbraten, for engines which were written with occlusion culling in mind from the ground up, and which support way much more complicated geometry at quite impressive framerates.
The problem is that the minecraft engine was probably written in a completely different way and adding this feature would require a complete rewrite of the engine.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
We're talking about a processor that can reach up to 66MHz. Which isn't too stellar from the point of view that we share today concerning Processor speed, but consider:
No need for a heavyweight OS (no need for multitasking, no need to consider other programs running).
No need for a hypervisor or other DRM (seriously, nobody but the maker of commercial software wants it)
No need for "generalist" hardware (just plug in the hardware your current game needs).
The result is surprisingly little overhead. Almost 100% of the hardware's capability goes into the game. Yes, we'll have to optimize again and we'll still never reach anything resembling a game that has been around for less than 10 years. But imagine the idea, building your own mix-and-match (mobile) game console. Or how about a wearable game rig? Yes, the games will be no more sophisticated than what you can do on your mobile phone. If that. But still, we'll probably see far less "retro" games than we'd expect from such limited hardware, I wouldn't deem it impossible that we can reach a level where simple 3D games become very possible.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I have a Hackvision. It's based on Arduino technology, but doesn't require an Arduino or external controllers (although you can add them -- the platform is hackable). Some good games like Space Invaders and Asteroids.
http://nootropicdesign.com/hackvision/
The Uzebox is another one, which has a bigger developer folllowing than the Chameleon boards and even has an emulator for development use.
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
Is almost shipping, check it out!
http://www.fpgaarcade.com/
Gadget factory has a Papilio Arcade with an Spartan 3E, video out and joystick in for $99.99. there are plenty of arcade games and you can run Arduino software, etc.
you don't actually need additional hardware, one atmega is enough: http://avga.prometheus4.com/index.php?p=4-0