Software program engineers and {hardware} hackers that need to show their chops have turned the first-person shooter Doom right into a measuring stick of kinds, with the objective being to get the sport to run on as small of a {hardware} platform as potential. Through the years now we have seen some spectacular tasks that managed to get Doom working on all the pieces from a toothbrush to a GPS receiver and a thermostat . It’s nonetheless a problem to get the sport working on fashionable embedded methods, however as these units develop by way of computational horsepower, it’s turning into considerably simpler.
So perhaps it’s time for a brand new problem? A software program engineer named Nicola Wrachien thinks so. After getting Doom to run on a SparkFun Issues Plus Matter microcontroller improvement board not too long ago, Wrachien determined to tackle a brand new venture that concerned porting Quake to a equally resource-constrained embedded system. For these unfamiliar with the sport, Quake was one other first-person shooter that adopted Doom’s launch by a number of years. However this time, the sport featured improved graphics, higher physics, and all kinds of different updates that drive up the system necessities.
The {hardware} platform utilized by Wrachien was centered round an Arduino Nano Matter board that includes the MGM240SD22VNA from Silicon Labs. It is a pretty highly effective embedded system with spectacular specs, however even nonetheless, they pale compared to the necessities of this late-Nineties online game that wanted a minimal of 8MB of RAM and a Pentium-class CPU. The Nano Matter, by comparability, comes outfitted with 256KB of RAM.
The primary board was integrated right into a customized PCB designed by Wrachien that takes the form of a gamepad and has 16 pushbuttons and a pair of analog thumbsticks. A 320 x 240 pixel Adafruit LCD show was additionally included, along with audio amplifiers and audio system. A pair of 16 MB flash reminiscence chips have been leveraged to retailer the sport knowledge.
With the {hardware} sorted out, Wrachien bought began on the port of the supply code. This course of began with SDLQuake1.09, which allowed for improvement on a contemporary Home windows-based laptop. The following activity concerned some heavy optimization. Constants, for instance, have been saved in flash reminiscence as an alternative of RAM to avoid wasting area. Different optimizations, like utilizing array indexes as an alternative of tips to array parts, and decreasing the dimensions of a few of the allotted knowledge varieties have been additionally applied. After some work on the show buffer and plenty of different optimizations, the code was able to be ported to the Nano Matter board.
When all was mentioned and accomplished, the total gameplay expertise had been applied. This included the 3D engine, the entire sport’s logic, enemy AI, lighting results, secrets and techniques, and teleporters. It took some overclocking of the MGM240SD22VNA to get there, however on common, Quake ran at 27 frames per second.
It appears to be like just like the bar has simply been raised. Shifting ahead, we’ll now must ask: however can it run Quake ?
Enjoying Quake on an Arduino Nano Matter board (📷: Silicon Labs)
It may be more durable this time! (📷: Silicon Labs)
A have a look at the {hardware} (📷: Silicon Labs)