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Impressive project. How much of the time was spent writing the gameplay code as compared to the "engine". To put it another way, how much of the experience was
by endianswap 15y ago
Impressive project. How much of the time was spent writing the gameplay code as compared to the "engine". To put it another way, how much of the experience was writing the code to handle VGA and audio out as compared to the scoring system, movement, etc.?
Similarly, how much time was spent writing "code" that targets the PowerPC processor versus the FPGA module?
- phamilton 15y agoThe VGA is a DMA controller built into the board, so all graphics were just modifying the framebuffer. We spent 6 weeks getting the game to work (~10-15 hrs/ week). This was all in C targeting the PowerPC and included effective double buffering for graphics as well as all the game logic. We then spent another 2 weeks getting interrupt driven sound to work. This was also in C, but was valuable because in order to understand the nature of the generated interrupts we had to understand the underlying bus architecture. We had 3 weeks to do a basic hardware module (a slave on the peripheral bus that powered some 7-segment displays and generated interrupts when switches were pressed) and then to do the creative portion (which was another slave). Finally, we built the Audio DMA controller, which took 4 weeks. The Audio DMA controller was by far the most challenging because the rebuild cycle was 20 minutes (terrible EDK) and debugging was difficult. So I'd say about 50-50. It was a pretty cool course. No homework, no final, no text books. Just the project and all the documentation we could get our hands on.
- endianswap 15y agoThanks for the details, posts like this are definitely the main reason why I miss attending university.