Arcade Hardware in FPGA

[nico24]

I'm beginning to get comfortable with a simple CPU/computer in FPGA, but would like to understand how sprite rendering engines work. What would be a useful beginner arcade core be for understanding the basics? I've looked through and it's not totally obvious, although the BW Raster from Atari is probably the simplest. Any pointers to a good learning curve would be really useful, if there are any resources out there.

Thanks,

Nick.

[Darfpga]

I'm beginning to get comfortable with a simple CPU/computer in FPGA, but would like to understand how sprite rendering engines work. What would be a useful beginner arcade core be for understanding the basics? I've looked through and it's not totally obvious, although the BW Raster from Atari is probably the simplest. Any pointers to a good learning curve would be really useful, if there are any resources out there.

Thanks,

Nick.

Are you comfortable with électronique design? If yes then may be you can start studying schematics and compare with HDL code.

Arcade uses many different rendering method depending on how many sprites are necessary to be displayed. Early arcade try to use the less memory as possible. So usually sprites are based on a single line buffer ( often flip-flop). Sprites graphics are stored one after the other at the right place within the buffer while not displayed and then the buffer is read starting from the next begining scanline.

My first port was bagman. Sprite mechanism is very simple but the HDL code I write uses a multiplexed ram access method less simple. So maybe I can suggest to start with Pooyan (Konami classic at gehstock MiST repository).

[slingshot]

Try to understand how the usual tilemap rendering works first, sprites can be really confusing if you start with them at the beginning.

[nico24]

Darfpga - thanks - I'll take a look.

Slingshot - do you have any examples of tilemap rendering? I'll try and search.

[slingshot]

Darfpga - thanks - I'll take a look.

Slingshot - do you have any examples of tilemap rendering? I'll try and search.

Almost all arcade cores (notable exception is the Williams Defender), and consoles have tilemap oriented displays.

[nico24]

I think I'll persevere with the book Designing Video Game Hardware in Verilog. It eventually goes into tilemap and sprite rendering techniques. Just need to keep plugging away with understanding the code.