Question: Arcade cores

[NML32]

Just curious will there be more Arcade cores added to the Mist or have we reached our limit to what can be ported to the Mist?

When I asked about Bagman and Crazy Kong I think the reason they weren't candidates for porting had to do with the type of Ram used (SRAM or SDRAM). Sorry if I didn't explain it correctly I really don't know much about the programming side of the FPGA.

I'm thankful for the ones that have already been ported.

[MasterOfGizmo]

The current collection of arcade cores is definitely not the limit. The currently available cores use fpga internal memory for rom and ram. This is limited. Bit there's no reason besides some development effort to not use the sdram for ram and rom. Just like most computer cores also do.

It's just that noone has done that so far. With computer and console cores you get many games at once. Thus implmenting them is more rewarding.

[NML32]

Good point

[RobertK]

Just a brief question: where can the source code of the arcade cores be found?

Here and here only the Pacman core source is available.

Or has the source never been published by the author?

[wsoltys]

Have a look here: https://github.com/wsoltys/pacedev

[RobertK]

Sorry for this ultra-newbie question, but since there is much more in this repository than I would have expected: what would be the right *.qpf project file to open, if I would like to rebuild e.g. the galaxian.rbf file for the MIST board? Or is this a too complicated process to describe it in a few words?

[Newsdee]

I don't know for this repository but usually yes, it's enough to open a .qpf in Quartus II and conpile it.

That's assuming all files are in the repo though. I guess for some arcade cores you might need to add roms if the code links them inside the .rbf. If that is the case the filenames would be inside the .vhdl files.

[wsoltys]

The pacedev repository was an attempt to make a common framework and adapt existing cores to it for different platforms. Unfortunately the guy behind didn't updated it quite a while. Not every core is ready or even does work. I've ported a few of those cores to the mist and whenever you find a mist folder below the synth directory you could load the qpf and compile (like here: https://github.com/wsoltys/pacedev/tree ... atrol/mist).
At least most of the time because the thing with a framework is if you change a file for one core you change it for all other cores as well and it might be that not all solutions will compile.
If there's no mist directory you need to port the core because all other solutions are for other platforms and won't compile or work straight out of the box on the mist.

[Newsdee]

It would make sense to centralize some common code in the MiST cores, but then it can make it more difficult for others to add something independently (without fully understanding the whole).

[RobertK]

Ok, thanks, so we have the MIST source for the following arcade cores...
https://github.com/wsoltys/pacedev/tree ... atrol/mist
https://github.com/wsoltys/pacedev/tree ... ogger/mist
https://github.com/wsoltys/pacedev/tree ... acman/mist

...but not for the other arcade cores (Galaxian, Pengo, Invaders).

I tried to compile Frogger and Pac-Man, but I got compiler errors (my Quartus II setup should be ok, as other cores can be compiled without errors).

I'm a complete newcomer to VHDL, but to get rid of the ugly green background in the Pac-Man core, all we would need to do is change the PACE_VIDEO_BORDER_RGB constant in the project_pkg.vhd file, right?

[wsoltys]

...but not for the other arcade cores (Galaxian, Pengo, Invaders).

Invaders is here: https://github.com/wsoltys/pacedev/tree ... aders/mist

I tried to compile Frogger and Pac-Man, but I got compiler errors (my Quartus II setup should be ok, as other cores can be compiled without errors).

I'll try to fix the compilation when back home tomorrow. Hopefully it won't break other cores then

I'm a complete newcomer to VHDL, but to get rid of the ugly green background in the Pac-Man core, all we would need to do is change the PACE_VIDEO_BORDER_RGB constant in the project_pkg.vhd file, right?

Yes.

[wsoltys]

I've uploaded the compile fixes to my repo. Pacman doesn't work but I don't have the time to investigate why.