This is a small demo project showing how one may use a digilent zybo board and a playstation controller to create a small space invaders like game.
There are 2 main components to the demo. The hardware description (a combination of VHDL and Vivado specific files), and software (c/c++ files).
The project directory structure is as follows:
- bd: Board layout and pin constraints
- ip_repo: IP modules, including VHDL for IP functionality (meaty bits).
- scripts: Project support files. Used by the Makefile to regenerate the project (after git clone).
- sdk: Where software applications live (the actual space invaders game).
- vivado: Location of regenerated project files. Nothing in here needs to be committed to git.
It is strongly recommended that you stick with the Makefile for all operations where possible. The Vivado IDE is not Git friendly, hence the Makefile wraps operations to ensure that a git compatible project and supporing files is generated. Once the project itself is generated, you may use most GUI features as usual, with the exception of SDK features, which should also be started from the Makefile.
> git clone https://github.com/Aloz1/Zybo-SpaceInvaders
> make open_gui
> make open_sdk
> make clean
Hardware within this project shows how a PS1 controller may be decoded in VHDL (with some help from
software via AXI). Source code related to PS1 controller protocol decoding is in
ip\_repo/PMOD\_PSX\_1.0/hdl.
The general hardware layout is described by the overall board block diagram.
There is also a VGA interface utilised by the project, but this was not written by me.
The general structure of the game relies heavily on multithereading (multitasking in FreeRTOS terms). This design decision was chosen to demonstrate an understanding of multithreading, and to experiment with the idea of a massively multithreaded game. Each space invader lives within its own thread, with signaling occuring between invaders to indicate a change in direction. Invaders and lasers both derive from Collidable, meaning they are also able to signal to each other when they have collided. Signals are passed between threads using xTaskNotify.
Note: Files relating to VGA were not written by me.