Gameduino: a game adapter for microcontrollers
(spoiler: it's an FPGA. But it's also cheap-ish, powerful, programmed and ready to go)
(spoiler: it's an FPGA. But it's also cheap-ish, powerful, programmed and ready to go)
Gameduino is a game adapter for Arduino - or anything else with an SPI interface - that has plugs for a VGA monitor and stereo speakers.
- video output is 400x300 pixels in 512 colors
all color processed internally at 15-bit precision
compatible with any standard VGA monitor (800x600 @ 72Hz)
background graphics
512x512 pixel character background
256 characters, each with independent 4 color palette
pixel-smooth X-Y wraparound scroll
foreground graphics
- each sprite is 16x16 pixels with per-pixel transparency
each sprite can use 256, 16 or 4 colors
four-way rotate and flip
96 sprites per scan-line, 1536 texels per line
pixel-perfect sprite collision detection
audio output is a stereo 12-bit frequency synthesizer
- 64 independent voices 10-8000 Hz
per-voice sine wave or white noise
sample playback channel
The adapter is controlled via SPI read/write operations, and looks to the CPU like a 32Kbyte RAM. There is a handy reference poster showing how the whole system works, and a set of sample programs and library.