Doom like Raycaster on XGS AVR 8-Bit

Here is a Raycaster like doom, wolfenstien, etc. running on the XGS AVR 8-Bit. Video was recorded using a camcorder so it looks much better than can be seen here. Find out more at: http://www.xgamestation.com/view_product.php?id=46

Category:

Gaming

[XGSDEV]

Yes, the processors have vastly more computing power, but of course what kills you is the lack of custom graphics hardware, so when you have to generate the graphics in software and drive the NTSC/VGA screen, you eat up about 90% of the computational bandwidth (depending on how complex the engine you make), thus at the end of the day you wind up with a "soft" NES/Atari and about 1-2mhz of processing power left :)

[XGSDEV]

No this is an Atmel AVR 644p microcontroller pushed to the limits :)

[mantanz]

Wow, that is awesome! I have just started game coding (full time course learning C++ and DirectX) abd I want to do stuff for the older consoles eventually.. might have to pick one of these up!

[moptim]

@XGSDEV but isn't analog rgb generation quite cheap in terms of processor time? as you only have to output your rgb values into an 8-bit or a 16-bit port and a simple (and cheap to assemble) resistor network works as your DAC, converting it into analog. then just.. hmm the sync signal is what I have little idea about. but I think you need nothing but rgb and sync signals for a working vga?

[alizta]

@fronkenpoop It is insanely expensive to get a custom chip produced, not to mention insanely unreliable. Not feasible for a project of this sorts. One could do a two micro controller board though. What i wished for was a system with a bit more ram, like 512kb. Also, i would love to have a frame buffer. But I'm going to be realistic... not likely to happen.

[fronkenpoop]

@XGSDEV It's a shame there is no dedicated video / sound hardware, otherwise I'd buy one of these.

[ohazi]

It might be interesting to reimplement some of the graphics hardware on a small FPGA and see what you can do then...

[antzrhere]

That Atmel AVR chip isn't all that bad is it? I fancy one of them myself...

28MIPS? ...32 registers? Compared to CPUs of the 8bit era it really is fast - The Gameboy/NES was only rated at 1 and 1.79MIPS respectively and were limited to 7 general purpose Registers (8 total).

[rolandsta1]

like Doom TM

[hboy007]

now that is really impressive! I want to implement that myself!

[NinjaRunningWild]

Some walls in there would be a better test of the engine.