Designing Video Game Hardware in Verilog

This book attempts to capture the spirit of the ''Bronze Age'' of video games, when video games were designed as circuits, not as software. We'll delve into these circuits as they morph from Pong into programmable personal computers and game consoles.

Instead of wire-wrap and breadboards, we'll use modern tools to approximate these old designs in a simulated environment from the comfort of our keyboards.

At the end of this adventure, you should be well-equipped to begin exploring the world of FPGAs, and maybe even design your own game console. You'll use the 8bitworkshop.com IDE to write Verilog programs that represent digital circuits, and see your code run instantly in the browser.

List of Chapters:

• Boolean Logic
  
• Discrete Hardware
  
• Clocks and Flip-Flops
  
• HDL (Hardware Description Language)
  
• Intro to Verilog
  
• The 8bitworkshop IDE
  
• A Simple Clock Divider
  
• A Binary Counter
  
• Video Signal Generator
  
• A Test Pattern
  
• Digits
  
• Scoreboard
  
• A Moving Ball
  
• Slipping Counter
  
• RAM
  
• Tile Graphics
  
• Switches and Paddles
  
• Sprites
  
• Better Sprites
  
• Racing Game
  
• Sprite Rotation
  
• Motion Vectors
  
• Tank Game
  
• Shift Registers
  
• Sound Effects
  
• Tilemap Rendering
  
• Scanline Sprite Rendering
  
• The ALU: Arithmetic Logic Unit
  
• A Simple CPU
  
• A Configurable Assembler
  
• Racing Game With CPU
  
• A 16-bit CPU
  
• Framebuffer Graphics
  
• A Programmable Game System
  
• A Demo Program
  
• Practical Considerations for Real Hardware
  
• FPGA Examples
  
• Appendix A: Verilog Reference
  
• Appendix B: Troubleshooting