LEDmePlay - the NBTV videogame!

Forum for discussion of electronic television. Generally, stuff to do with CRTs and not using mechanical displays.

LEDmePlay - the NBTV videogame!

Postby DrZarkov » Tue Jun 09, 2015 4:06 am

I've been yesterday at the Maker Faire in Hanover. Two guys from Krefeld (funny enough: It's in the neighbourhood, while Hanover is about 250 km from here) built video-games in colour using an LED matrix of 32 x 32 pixels in full colour. They've demonstrated some clones of game classics like Pacman, Centipede, Frogger, etc. As a controller for the matrix they use an Arduino Mega 2560, the whole kit costs less than 100 Euro. Further information is on their homepage: http://www.mithotronic.de/ledmeplay.php

The hardware should also be usable for NBTV, but that would be a job for our software-gurus here...
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Re: LEDmePlay - the NBTV videogame!

Postby dominicbeesley » Thu Nov 05, 2015 12:44 am

It should be easy enough - funnily enough I'm working on something similar (a 32x64 led monitor).

A few years ago I made an NBTV graphics card for my z80 computer. I did write a computer game (a worm/chase game) but I didn't get any pictures of that...

http://z80homebrew.blogspot.co.uk/2009/ ... olour.html

D
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Re: LEDmePlay - the NBTV videogame!

Postby reshiram202 » Sat Nov 21, 2015 6:12 pm

Wonder if they could take one of those games and make it into an NBTV file to play on an actual televisor.
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Re: LEDmePlay - the NBTV videogame!

Postby DrZarkov » Sun Nov 22, 2015 5:52 pm

Technically it would be possible, yes.
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Re: LEDmePlay - the NBTV videogame!

Postby McGee2021 » Mon Nov 23, 2015 2:10 pm

That would be strange, playing classic 1980s video games on an even more classic televisor!
Fun times, ain't it?
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Re: LEDmePlay - the NBTV videogame!

Postby DrZarkov » Tue Nov 24, 2015 7:55 am

I've demonstrated such a thing last year at the "Classic Computing" in Berlin: A Philips CDi running "Tetris" connected via a converter to my mechanical TV. Tetris is one of the few games really playable on a mechanical TV. :)
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Re: LEDmePlay - the NBTV videogame!

Postby gary » Tue Nov 24, 2015 11:00 am

DrZarkov wrote:I've demonstrated such a thing last year at the "Classic Computing" in Berlin: A Philips CDi running "Tetris" connected via a converter to my mechanical TV. Tetris is one of the few games really playable on a mechanical TV. :)


What about the original and the best??? Pong! ;-)
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Re: LEDmePlay - the NBTV videogame!

Postby dominicbeesley » Tue Nov 24, 2015 9:58 pm

I tried a pong like game on my z80+televisor at 12.5 frames a second the ball either has to move very slowly or it is very difficult...having said that I was absolutely hopeless at pong!
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Re: LEDmePlay - the NBTV videogame!

Postby gary » Tue Nov 24, 2015 10:36 pm

dominicbeesley wrote:I tried a pong like game on my z80+televisor at 12.5 frames a second the ball either has to move very slowly or it is very difficult...having said that I was absolutely hopeless at pong!


Aaaah! So that explains the English cricket teams poor performance - they are still on 12.5 fps!
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Re: LEDmePlay - the NBTV videogame!

Postby dominicbeesley » Tue Nov 24, 2015 11:03 pm

Easy now! 12.5 frames per second is better than 6 runs a wicket!
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Re: LEDmePlay - the NBTV videogame!

Postby gary » Tue Nov 24, 2015 11:16 pm

I should add thought that the wonderful Z80 is exempt of any blame in this - my version of Pong written on the Dick Smith System-80 (circa 1980) worked beautifully! ;-)
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Re: LEDmePlay - the NBTV videogame!

Postby dominicbeesley » Tue Nov 24, 2015 11:51 pm

Aye, the one I built could manage around 16MHz and was rapid. It was the mechanical TV refresh rate that kind of let it down for arcade games. I really ought to dig it out and have another play with it at some point. I prefer 6502 assembler as a rule because its what I'm used to but z80 is just a bit more "grown up"!

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Re: LEDmePlay - the NBTV videogame!

Postby gary » Wed Nov 25, 2015 12:11 am

It is sad for me that my Z80 adventures occurred during my NBTV "hiatus" otherwise I also may have married the two.
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Re: LEDmePlay - the NBTV videogame!

Postby Steve Anderson » Wed Nov 25, 2015 2:39 pm

Gary, there's no reason you couldn't have a postponed marriage. Z80's are still available and single RAM chips that we could only dream of then are plentiful and cheap. Replace the old UV EPROM with a more modern EEPROM and you're almost done. I/O would be system dependant.

I'm sure Z80 assemblers/compilers/whatever should be available for modern platforms.

But unless you can find or have a ready-assembled system you'll probably have to build it yourself - but how retro!

I keep thinking of doing something with a Motorola 6809 which was the first thing I programmed in the early 80s. But when everything is built-in to PICs/Atmel chips and the like I wilt and it stays just a thought.

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Re: LEDmePlay - the NBTV videogame!

Postby gary » Wed Nov 25, 2015 2:51 pm

Alas, I am now married to my house and property which look like keeping me busy for a long time to come.

I had 2 Tricky Dicky System-80s (TRS-80 clones) but threw them out d'oh! (If I had kept all my d'oh! throw outs I could have been the caretaker of warehouse 13 - or would it have been warehouse 12 - I am so old...).

But I have at least one z80 chip (and I think a few more) and all of the peripheral stuff required - I even have the tools, knowledge, and experience to write my own assembler, interpreter, compiler, and development environment - NOW if I only had... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1WZ1GL5gCE
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