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Gameduino Project Aims To Game-ify the Arduino

Posted by Soulskill on from the pocket-sized-arcade dept.

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."

11 of 83 comments (clear)

  1. Minecraft by devxo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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!

    1. Re:Minecraft by lkcl · · Score: 2

      is that the same as minesweeper? :)

    2. Re:Minecraft by somersault · · Score: 2

      It's not the graphics output speed that would be the limiting factor, it would be calculation of the actual 3D scenes. I expect even running Wolfenstein would be pushing it to its limits. With the memory limitations you'd probably have to do with very very basic textures if any, and without an FPU it would be very slow to calculate the movement and rotation of a lot of vertexes.

      --
      which is totally what she said
  2. A coprocessor which runs FORTH? by Joce640k · · Score: 3, Funny

    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...
  3. Not just for games by AC-x · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Having video output from an arduino would be useful for all sorts of projects, not just games.

    1. Re:Not just for games by nostrad · · Score: 2

      It's an FPGA on there with verilog code available. Go grab the Xilinx WebPack (free, windows/linux), get a JTAG cable (I've seen Xilinx USB-clones for less than $50 on eBay) and get cracking.

      Getting to know the tools is hard, learning to think in VHDL/Verilog is hard (at least if you're not used to thinking in terms of logic gates and other hardware) but you can transform that board into pretty much any hardware you'd like and control it from the arduino. The reason for the 400x300 is probably memory limitations on the Spartan chip, some clever design/coding to optimise memory to your application should help with that.

  4. XGameStation also provides retro-gaming hardware by Yesfan001 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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

  5. Re:Car analogy? by marcansoft · · Score: 2

    And using a SPI interface to control it is like using Lego as a drive train from the V8 to the rest of the car.

    But, you see, anything with Arduino in the name is instamagically popular. As stupid as using an Arduino is, this project has a much bigger chance of success as an Arduino shield than as a standalone board.

    I'm too lazy to check, but I'm willing to bet there are Arduino shields out there that only use the Arduino for power.

  6. This won't get you sued by tepples · · Score: 2

    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.

    1. Re:This won't get you sued by tepples · · Score: 2

      Nintendo and Sony routinely sue companies that deal in homebrew-related hardware.

      It's interesting that this list doesn't include Microsoft. I know there to be a homebrew scene at least on the original Xbox.

      Hence present tense. In the past tense, Microsoft was one of the companies that sued Lik Sang out of existence.

      I imagine there to be less of one on the 360 (XNA aside)

      As I understand it, the far smaller 360 homebrew scene is due to XNA and Media Center Extender. XNA is an official way to make and sell homebrew games, and MCE does much of what the Xbox version of XBMC did.

  7. The CPU-PPU parallel port on the NES by tepples · · Score: 2

    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.