Difference between revisions of "F19: Space Impact"

Revision as of 21:18, 10 December 2019

Abstract

Space Impact is a classic game from the days of the Nokia era. Our objective is to design a game in which a player is prompted to protect a spaceship from incoming missiles by moving the ship up and down. The player will also have the ability to fire back at the incoming enemies. The enemy ship's movements will speed up as the game progresses, increasing the difficulty of the game.

Example Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jh49RWFnZHk

Objectives & Introduction

Introduction:

We intended to design an embedded system whose sole purpose is to run an arcade game with just an RGB LED Matrix and a microcontroller. The game itself involves a user controlling a spaceship through an accelerometer, guiding the spaceship across many enemy spacecraft and obstacles. These obstacles are generated randomly and appear from the right-hand side of the screen. The player shoots the obstacles with bullets by pressing a button clearing a path for him or herself. The game starts on the press of the button and ends when the players runs out of health by taking too many hits. The objective of the game is to survive as long as possible acquiring as many points as he or she can.

Objectives:

Interfacing the RGB LED Matrix with SJTwo Microcontroller
Coding simple to use display functions for displaying spacecraft, bullets, enemies at any given position
Randomizer to generate random locations for enemies
Tasks that can move the spacecraft and detect collisions between:
- Bullet to Bullet (Cancels out)
- Bullet to Enemy (Clears enemy and increments score)
- Enemy bullet to ship (Damage to ship and decrements energy bar)
- Ship to Ship (Extra damage to energy bar)
Interrupt to be generated on press of button to start game/fire bullets
Score Counter and Energy Counter to be displayed at the top and updated in real time as the game progresses
Title Screen and Game Over screens
MP3 driver for playing audio

Team Members & Responsibilities:

Nikhil Pabbisetty: Wiki Page, LED Matrix Interfacing, Game Design
Hari Haran Kura: Game Design, Game Sounds, Github Repository
Daniel Tsai: Game Design, PCB Design

Schedule

Week#	Date	Task	Current Progress	Actual Completion Date
1	10/01/2019	Project Proposal Submission.	Completed	10/01/2019
2	10/15/2019	Create our own Wiki page of Space Impact. Discuss the various challenges that might come up with during the design phase and report it as top questions. Discuss what kind of components would be needed for our design.	Completed Completed Completed	10/15/2019 10/15/2019 10/15/2019
3	10/22/2019	Finalize the Bill of Materials. Place order for Hardware components. Downloading All the Software and Document(Datasheet) required for designing and field testing.	Completed Completed Completed	10/22/2019 10/22/2019 10/22/2019
4	10/29/2019	Delegation of tasks to each team member. Reading the 64x64 LED-Matrix datasheet.	Completed Completed	10/29/2019 10/29/2019
5	11/05/2019	Test LED Matrix by writing GPIO driver. Initial PCB Circuit and Design using Eagle.	Completed Completed	11/08/2019 N/A
6	11/12/2019	Implement Drivers for input controls. Display the spaceship and control its movement using input buttons. Generate projectiles from the spaceship on user input.	Completed Completed Completed	11/11/2019 11/12/2019 N/A
7	11/19/2019	Use Accelerometer as input controls for spaceship instead of buttons. Randomizer to generate enemies at random locations at end of the screen. Move the enemies towards space ship and generate enemy bullets.	In Progress	N/A
8	11/26/2019	Implement collision detection between 1) Spaceship and enemy (Game Over) 2) Spaceship's bullets and enemies (Kill enemies) 3) Spaceship and enemies' bullets (Reduce health of spaceship) 4) Spaceship's bullets and enemies' bullets (The bullets should cancel out each other)	In Progress	N/A
9	12/03/2019	Add Score counter and health meter.	In Progress	N/A
10	12/10/2019	Final testing and Fine-tuning.	In Progress	N/A

Parts List & Cost

S.No.	Parts	Seller	Quantity	Price
1	SJTwo Microcontroller	Preetpal Kang	1	$50
2	RGB LED Matrix Panel - 64x64	Sparkfun	1	$85
3	PCB	JLC PCB	1	$10
4	Serial MP3 Player	Aideepen	1	$8

Design & Implementation

Hardware Design

The main component in our hardware design is the 64x64 LED Matrix. It uses 5 data lines (A,B,C,D,E) which is used for row selection of LED Matrix. The following are its technical specifications: Module size: 192 x 192mm Pixel pitch: 3mm Pixel density: 111,111 pixels/ sqm Pixel resolution: 64 pixels (W) x 64 (H) pixels Max power consumption: 18W Module thickness: 14.66mm (without magnet), 26.55mm ( with magnet) Weight: 0.31kg Scan mode: 1/ 16 scan Power Supply: 5V regulated power input, 4A max

Hardware Interface

Our design for LED control was based on the below simplified block diagram. We are using the SJTwo board GPIO pins for turning on and off an LED in the LED matrix. R1 G1 B1 is used to control the colors of LEDs in the top half of the matrix (0-31 rows) and R2 G2 B2 in the bottom half of the matrix (32-63 rows). GPIO were also selected for the CLK, LAT and OE purposes. ABCDE pins are used for row selection. Each pin is made high or low based on the requirement. Using these pins we can form our LED animation based on transmission pattern.

Software Design

Our approach to the software design involved the use of eight different tasks for the various moving elements of our gameplay. Seven of these tasks are dedicated to updating the matrix buffer of size 32x64 which is just a two-dimensional array holding the R2, G2, B2 and R1, G1, B1 values. The eighth task has the highest priority which is used to refresh the display. This task get the latest values from the matrix buffer and is used to display a frame of the game on the LED Matrix display. The matrix buffer is constantly updated in real-time by the other seven tasks such as:

Title Screen:
- Used to initially display the title screen
- Waits for a button press to launch the game and then suspends itself
Life Display:
- Displays the health bar of the spaceship
- When health runs out, suspends all other tasks and displays end screen (Game Over)
Move Spaceship:
- Used to display the spaceship at a location based on input from accelerometer
- Collision detection between the Enemy ships and User Spaceship
- On detection, changes the color of spaceship temporarily indicating damage
Spaceship Bullet
- Displays bullet on button press
- Displays super-weapon on button press
- Checks for collision between bullet and enemy bullet along with bullet with enemy ship
Enemy Bullet
- Displays enemy bullets
- Checks for collision between bullet and enemy bullet along with bullet with user’s spaceship
Kill Animation Task
- Used to display explosions on collision between bullet and enemy
Moving Enemy ship
- Generates the enemies at random positions from the end of the screen
- Moves the enemies in right to left direction towards the user

The last task is the refresh display task mentioned above. This task includes a display function that controls the Latch, Clock, Output Enable pins of the LED Matrix display. This function reads the matrix buffer and extracts the R2, G2, B2, R1, G1, B1 values using shift operators.

Implementation

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Testing & Technical Challenges

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<Bug/issue name>

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Conclusion

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Project Video

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Project Source Code

Sourceforge Source Code Link

References

Acknowledgement

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References Used

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Appendix

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