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led-bloon

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Joined: 21/12/2014
Location: Australia
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Posted: 03:58am 16 Mar 2022

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Interesting...
Pico Doom
led

Miss you George

Grogster

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Joined: 31/12/2012
Location: New Zealand
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Posted: 05:37am 16 Mar 2022

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This is amazing, and just goes to show how powerful that tiny little 2040 chip can be!

Link about developing and squeezing it into the limited RAM of the PICO...

YouTube video from the OP link..

That they were able to port this game to the PICO's relatively low RAM specs, is fascinating, and just shows how useful those PIO's are!!!!

Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops!

Mixtel90

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Joined: 05/10/2019
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Posted: 07:29am 16 Mar 2022

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Sheesh!!!!!! That's simply stunning!
With I2C networking for up to four players too...

It goes to show what can be done when you use all the resources of that chip (with some really neat data compression).
There are some *very* clever people around. :)
Edited 2022-03-16 17:33 by Mixtel90

Mick

Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini
Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs

Geoffg

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Joined: 06/06/2011
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Posted: 07:50am 16 Mar 2022

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Great demo video.

But what I find amazing is that their website spends a lot of time talking about how they built the game but there are no practical details. For example, what are the pinouts for the VGA? And the Audio? Game play keys? And so on. I could not even find a compiled .uf2 file.

I guess that you need to be a C++/Pico/Doom expert and dig through the source yourself and compile your own version. In that case this just an exercise in hubris and making a great looking demo video. What a pity if that is true.

If anyone does find a detailed description of how to wire it up please post it here - I was looking forward to trying it out.

Geoff

Geoff Graham - http://geoffg.net

matherp
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Joined: 11/12/2012
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Posted: 08:08am 16 Mar 2022

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Quote For example, what are the pinouts for the VGA? And the Audio? Game play keys? And so on. I could not even find a compiled .uf2 file.

https://github.com/kilograham/rp2040-doom/releases/tag/v0.1

Designed to run on this

Note he is clocking the Pico at 270MHz so may not run on all boards

UPDATE

Load the 4Mb uf2, you need a usb keyboard connected to the PICO USB port so will need other power. I've got it up and running - very very impressive
Edited 2022-03-16 18:23 by matherp

Volhout
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Joined: 05/03/2018
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Posted: 09:25am 16 Mar 2022

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Absolutely fabulous. I am impressed to read how far this guy (team) has gone to proof it is possible. They actually changed everything from the vanilla game and used compression on about everything they could, just to fit it in RAM (and ROM). This is really impressive. And all this for a one-off (well, potentially 3-off: Heretic and Wolfenstein will be simple now, but then it ends...)

In retrospective .... I ran DOOM on a 66MHz 486....
With double 270MHz ARM cores doing video generation and audio you should be able to isolate 10% of that power to run the game itself and achieve similar game experience.
The challenge was not the CPU power but the memory restrictions ....

A fantastic achievement.

PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS

JohnS
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Joined: 18/11/2011
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Posted: 09:49am 16 Mar 2022

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WOW.

John

Geoffg

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Posted: 10:21am 16 Mar 2022

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Excellent Peter, thanks. The hardware is not too expensive so worth buying outright.

Geoff

Geoff Graham - http://geoffg.net

thwill

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Joined: 16/09/2019
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 4311

Posted: 10:42am 16 Mar 2022

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Damn, and I'd gone a whole month without buying a piece of electronics gubbins.

Best wishes,

Tom

MMBasic for Linux, Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures

Volhout
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Posted: 10:49am 16 Mar 2022

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They must use GP20 and GP21 for the I2C interconnect in multiplayer.

PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS

Volhout
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Posted: 10:53am 16 Mar 2022

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thwill said Damn, and I'd gone a whole month without buying a piece of electronics gubbins.

Best wishes,

Tom

Too bad.... It's like smoking.... very addictive...

PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS

Mixtel90

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Posted: 11:04am 16 Mar 2022

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The thing is, is using an I2C sound chip cheating? ;)

Mick

Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini
Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs

Michal
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Joined: 02/02/2022
Location: Poland
Posts: 125

Posted: 12:05pm 16 Mar 2022

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Or maybe someone would be tempted to write an IBM PC/XT emulstor?
In the end, it's 128kB RAM, 4.77MHz and CGA.

Michal

Volhout
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Posted: 12:07pm 16 Mar 2022

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Mixtel90 said The thing is, is using an I2C sound chip cheating? ;)

The board has PWM audio

PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS

matherp
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Joined: 11/12/2012
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Posted: 12:36pm 16 Mar 2022

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Quote The board has PWM audio

The code uses the DAC on the board not PWM

struct audio_i2s_config config = {
.data_pin = PICO_AUDIO_I2S_DATA_PIN,
.clock_pin_base = PICO_AUDIO_I2S_CLOCK_PIN_BASE,
.dma_channel = 6,
.pio_sm = 0,
};

Geoffg

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Posted: 01:12pm 16 Mar 2022

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matherp said The code uses the DAC on the board not PWM

I'm amazed that they put in such a huge effort to write a brilliant program and then leave people to dig through the code to figure out details like this.

Geoff Graham - http://geoffg.net

Mixtel90

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Posted: 02:40pm 16 Mar 2022

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I just accept that all such things are done through profound wizardry, Geoff. I know nothing of these C magik spells (and not much of anything else either!). :)

Mick

Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini
Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs

JohnS
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Joined: 18/11/2011
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Posted: 02:58pm 16 Mar 2022

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Geoffg said

matherp said The code uses the DAC on the board not PWM

I'm amazed that they put in such a huge effort to write a brilliant program and then leave people to dig through the code to figure out details like this.

I suppose people could read the copious documentation.

I suspect not everything someone might ask is yet in there, but that has applied to every system's documentation I've ever met I think, MMBasic included.

John

thwill

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Joined: 16/09/2019
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Posted: 06:47pm 17 Mar 2022

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Just got it up and running myself - absolutely no fuss.

It's amazing what the little Pico can do.

Peter given this board is available off the shelf (and it sounds like you have one) have you considered a PicoMite port/fork for it ? - the answer "No" is fine, you can't port to everything.

Best wishes,

Tom

MMBasic for Linux, Game*Mite, CMM2 Welcome Tape, Creaky old text adventures

JohnS
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Posted: 07:24pm 17 Mar 2022

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Port in what sense?

I'm wondering what features in particular?

(Obviously not the graphics etc which use both cores flat out highly overclocked and all the RAM & flash.)

John

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