CSCB58 Project: Summer 2017

Created by:

• Brennan Law
• Jeffrey Li
• Johnson Zhu

Project Details - Snake

Project Description:

Our project is a Verilog implementation of the game Snake. Like in the original video game, the player maneuvers a snake which grows in length after eating. The snake is to avoid obstacles such as the game boundaries and itself. If a snake hits an obstacle, the game ends and will need to be restarted.

Controls used on the FPGA board:

• KEY[0]: Move right
• KEY[1]: Move down
• KEY[2]: Move up
• KEY[3]: Move left
• SW[0]: Reset/start new game
• SW[2], SW[3]: Set game difficulty/speed
• HEX4, HEX5: Display score/apples eaten

Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mu3IAKBqEcE

Motivations

How does this project relate to the material covered in CSCB58?:

It involves using the VGA display to display the game, a datapath for game mechanics, and a controller to process player input.

Why is this project interesting/cool (for CSCB58 students, and for non CSCB58 students?):

It's the recreation of a rather complex video game using simple components such as an ALU and a FSM controller.

Why did you personally choose this project?:

Snake could be easily developed using high-level programming languages such as Python and C#, so it would give us more insight into how the low-level components of the computer work if we coded the game in a hardware description language such as Verilog.

Attributions

• Game mechanics based off of Pepino's Snake: Link
• VGA display based off of "Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road?": Link
• For loop code from ASIC World: Link