Homebrew Tile-Based FPGA Game Console

Note: I made this video almost a year ago and it was posted on my other channel.

This is a game console that I made for my capstone project. I did not have enough time to make a really cool demo or remove the many bugs in the video controller. Although I have already completed the course, this is still an ongoing project which I will improve upon over time. The next thing I'm going to try is putting a soft processor on the FPGA. I forgot to demonstrate the brightness control but you can probably imagine what that would look like. Sorry for the poor focus and my terrible voice.

Technical Details:
640x480 VGA resolution, 16-bit color depth (RGB555)
LPC2148 ARM Microcontroller @ ~59 MHz
Spartan-3e 500k gate FPGA @ 150 MHz
16 MB Video RAM
2 Scrollable Tiled BGs of 32x32 Pixel Tile Size
Paletted or Non-Paletted BGs and Sprites
Tile Maps of 32x16 Tiles (1024x512 Pixels)
16 32x32 pixel sprites
Paletted or Non-Paletted BGs and Sprites
44.1 KHz 8-bit stereo audio (112.5 MHz PWM)
SD card storage for audio and graphics data
NES controller input
BG Transparency, adjustable opacity, and brightness

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• FPGA
• homebrew
• game
• console
• microcontroller
• LPC2148
• MCU
• digilent
• nexys
• nexys2
• development
• dev
• board
• SD
• card
• PWM
• audio
• VGA
• micron
• cellularRAM
• video
• controller
• capstone
• project
• spartan-3e
• maple
• story
• maplestory

[darinandrade]

hi, i heard what you said about the program not being on the sd card so where is the program and how do you load it? and how hard is it to write the code for it? and what does it have as far as sprites or bobs if you want large characters? 32x32 is back to nes and large items would use up the sixteen sprites pretty quick.

[PatheticComputing]

@darinandrade The program is stored in the microcontroller flash memory and executes automatically on power up. The program is written in C. Not sure if you would consider that hard or not. The addition of sprites was one of the last things I implemented and I did it in a hurry. I'm well aware of its limitations.

[HaZaRdxScopeZ]

Dude this is really cool! I wish I could create stuff like that. Did you learn this in high school, or collage? What class did you learn it in?

[PatheticComputing]

@HaZaRdxScopeZ Hi, I pretty much learned this stuff on my own. I have a degree in computer science, but this is more of a computer engineering project. The closest class I took that would pertain to this is computer architecture, but that class was a joke.

[Quaker763]

that transperancy/opacity is really REALLY good

[trimer34]

Dude you should be working at NASA ..

Am sure we would be visiting many galaxies by now with your help ..

[FPGAPete]

Very Nice! I love the way you built the VGA adaptor. Impressive you are learning this on your own! I am trying to do that as well.

[donpalmera]

I'm building something similar with a Nexys 2 and a LPC2294 board .. Nice work!