.. _third-year-project:
FPGA Based VGA Driver and Arcade Game
=====================================
:date: March 7, 2010
During the third year at the university, students were doing their
individual projects. Learning about FPGAs was on my TODO list, so I decided
to propose my own project.
After some consultation with PhD students and a lecturer a topic was chosen:
VGA driver and an arcade game.
.. image:: static/arcade.gif
Pong
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The project was started with an implementation of the classic Pong game.
The development of this game was pretty much a learning exercise and was
deliberately kept simple.
Main features:
* Two player game
* Ball acceleration
* Score display and winner announcement
* Audio feedback
Space shooter
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For the second part of the project, a space-shooter game was chosen. This
time, the majority of effort was put to technical the side of the game. The
following features were added:
* Coloured and animated graphics
* Multi-tone sound generator
* NES controller interface
* Binary-to-BCD converter
* etc.
.. image:: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2780/4412904401_de070b471c.jpg
The gameplay is quite simple. User controls the spaceship at the bottom.
Aliens arrive in three rows, weakest at the front. Third level aliens can
turn invisible and avoid missiles.
Nintendo controller interface
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I wanted to have some custom built hardware that I could interface to with
the FPGA. At first, I thought I will build a controller, but in the end I
decided that an old NES gamepad would look much better.
Since the FPGA can handle 3.3V at most, and the gamepads need 5V, a logic
level shifter was needed. For this purpose I decided to design a PCB.
The conversion from 3.3V to 5V and from 5V to 3.3V is done by 74HCT4066 and
74LCX125 respectively. NES sockets are hard to come by, so we had to buy a
2-to-4 expander and scavenge the ports from it. A reset button and piezoelectric
buzzer were also added to the board, which is connected to the development
board using a Hirose FX2 expansion header.
More details, including schematic and board layout can be found in the
dissertation.
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