SA,
In my childhood, I loved to play games on Atari, Sega,..etc, actually I was addicted. Once My Sega has been destroyed and couldn't work anymore, I tried to open it to see what's inside that box that could make those games. I found bunch of resistors, ICs,..etc. How those silicon chips made those games, I'm wondering. I was also eager to know how those " dead pictures" can become alive.
A video game console is a product that many sciences involve in, from Electronics Engineering who assemble the circuits, to Game Programmers, and Audio Engineers...etc.
I had always the interest to explain to myself how those black boxes work. I will write few blogs in the next few weeks on how to generate a video/audio signals to plot a pixel, then draw lines, triangles, polygons, which can be used to write a small game!.
There are a lot of constraints while using 8/16bit uCs for a console like Sega, that shows the engineers at that age was Amazing, they knew a lot of tricks and optimization, many of them can be found at Michael Abrash's Book on Zen of Graphics Programming. He has also participate on Microsoft's XBox GPU.
Knowing how video game consoles work, will let you know how your GPU also work, writing a software renderer will let you know how current APIs like DirectX or OpenGL has been written.
I will stick with PIC24 from microchip, it is a fast uC, and in the next blog, I will explain the basic circuitry that is needed for that project.
In my childhood, I loved to play games on Atari, Sega,..etc, actually I was addicted. Once My Sega has been destroyed and couldn't work anymore, I tried to open it to see what's inside that box that could make those games. I found bunch of resistors, ICs,..etc. How those silicon chips made those games, I'm wondering. I was also eager to know how those " dead pictures" can become alive.
A video game console is a product that many sciences involve in, from Electronics Engineering who assemble the circuits, to Game Programmers, and Audio Engineers...etc.
I had always the interest to explain to myself how those black boxes work. I will write few blogs in the next few weeks on how to generate a video/audio signals to plot a pixel, then draw lines, triangles, polygons, which can be used to write a small game!.
There are a lot of constraints while using 8/16bit uCs for a console like Sega, that shows the engineers at that age was Amazing, they knew a lot of tricks and optimization, many of them can be found at Michael Abrash's Book on Zen of Graphics Programming. He has also participate on Microsoft's XBox GPU.
Knowing how video game consoles work, will let you know how your GPU also work, writing a software renderer will let you know how current APIs like DirectX or OpenGL has been written.
I will stick with PIC24 from microchip, it is a fast uC, and in the next blog, I will explain the basic circuitry that is needed for that project.
Good work , attending isA
ReplyDeleteWell done Ahmed ^_^
ReplyDeleteI'd like to co-work in this project, do you welcome this ?
Ahmed Adel
Embedded SW Engineer
011 1088 9232
DeleteKindly write your email.