gaming

135 Articles

Bluetooth HID Gamepad And HC-05 Serial Hack

August 10, 2016 by 20 Comments

“Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” Don’t bother us with stupid questions, they both co-evolved into the forms that we now serve up in tasty sandwiches or omelets, respectively. “Which came first, the HC-05 serial-flash-hack, or the wireless Bluetooth Gamepad?” Our guess is that [mitxela] wanted to play around with the dirt-cheap Bluetooth modules, and that building the wireless controller was an afterthought. But for that, it’s a well-done afterthought! (Video below the break.)

It all starts with the HC-05 Bluetooth module, which is meant to transfer serial data, but which can be converted into a general-purpose device costing ten times as much with a simple Flash ROM replacement. The usual way around this requires bit-banging over a parallel port, but hackers have worked out a way to do the same thing in bit-bang mode using a normal USB/Serial adapter. The first part of [mitxela]’s post describes this odyssey.

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An Apple II Joystick Fix For Enjoyable Gameplay

August 3, 2016 by 29 Comments

We all remember the video games of our youth fondly, and many of us want to relive those memories and play those games again. When we get this urge, we usually turn first to emulators and ROMs. But, old console and computer games relied heavily on the system’s hardware to control the actual gameplay. Most retro consoles, like the SNES for example, rely on the hardware clock speed to control gameplay speed. This is why you’ll often experience games played on emulators as if someone is holding down the fast forward button.

The solution, of course, is to play the games on their original systems when you want a 100% accurate experience. This is what led [FozzTexx] back to gameplay on an Apple II. However, he quickly discovered that approach had challenges of its own – specifically when it came to the joystick.

The Apple II joystick used a somewhat odd analog potentiometer design – the idea being that when you pushed the joystick far enough, it’d register as a move (probably with an eye towards smooth position-sensitive gameplay in the future). This joystick was tricky, the potentiometers needed to be adjusted, and sometimes your gameplay would be ruined when you randomly turned and ran into a pit in Lode Runner.

The solution [FozzTexx] came up with was to connect a modern USB gamepad to a Raspberry Pi, and then set it to output the necessary signals to the Apple II. This allowed him to tune the output until the Apple II was responding to gameplay inputs consistently. With erratic nature of the original joystick eliminated, he could play games all day without risk of sudden unrequested jumps into pits.

The Apple II joystick is a weird beast, and unlike anything else of the era. This means there’s no Apple II equivalent of plugging a Sega controller into an Atari, or vice versa. If you want to play games on an Apple II the right way, you either need to find an (expensive) original Apple joystick, or build your own from scratch. [FozzTexx] is still working on finalizing his design, but you can follow the gits for the most recent version.

Video Games In As Few Dimensions As Possible

July 17, 2016 by 34 Comments

First there were text games, then came 2D dungeons. When Wolfenstein 3D broke out on the gaming scene, it created quite a fuss. But if all you’ve got is a strip of WS2812 LEDs, those are a few dimensions too many.

[treibair] has started up a project on Hackaday.io to develop 1D video games to be played on a single LED strip. While the end application is something with a cool physical interface, probably driven by a microcontroller, prototyping is a lot easier on the big computer. He’s writing it in Processing, though, so that the transition to the Arduino is easier in the end.

There are a couple of other games out there in 1D, including Line Wobbler (YouTube) and, naturally, Wolfenstein 1D. We even saw a one-dimensional “snake” clone at Make Munich a few months back. (Would the author please stand up?)

We think the idea is a good one, and lining up everyone’s 1D gaming experience in one place would be a great help. So link up code and reviews in the comments!

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Triple Monitor Travel Battlestation

July 7, 2016 by 19 Comments

[AbyssalUnderlord’s] schedule has him packing up and moving between school, home, and internships every three months. Not an easy task when your computer is a triple monitor CAD and gaming powerhouse. To make his moves easier, he built this portable computer / monitor frame.

The design started with a CAD model. The basic materials for the build are aluminum angle and steel-slotted angle stock. There was no welding involved in this build. Pop rivets, nuts, and bolts hold just about everything together. An angle grinder was used for all of the cutting. [AbyssalUnderlord] used drawer slides to move his monitors from stored to deployed position. The small red extensions at the end of the drawer slides allow the monitors to be positioned in a standard 3 wide triple monitor setup. It’s a clever design.

This schedule isn’t going to last forever so [AbyssalUnderlord] didn’t want to make any permanent mods to his tower or monitors. Blue camping foam acts as a cushion between the hardware and the new case.

We’ll admit that this isn’t the prettiest of builds, but it looks plenty rugged and it gets the job done. As mentioned in the Reddit thread, a few coats of spray paint would go a long way toward improving the aesthetics. Just don’t spend too much time playing Overwatch, [AbyssalUnderlord].

If you like DIY portable setups, check this Transformers-themed portable workbench, or our Hacklet all about portable work stations and toolboxes.

Kerbal Space Program For The Apple II

May 31, 2016 by 14 Comments

[Vince Weaver] tried to use his time machine to jump a few years in the future to get a less buggy version of Kerbal Space Program, but as usual with time travel, nothing went right and he ended up heading to 1987. Finding himself in an alternate timeline where KSP had been released for the Apple II, he brought back a copy.

Well, that’s the narrative proposed by [Vince Weaver] on his YouTube channel. The real story, and hack, being that he wrote a version of KSP for the Apple II in Applesoft Basic. He has used the language for the ridiculous before. You can build a rocket, select a pilot, launch, and if you’re lucky (or skilled), reach orbit.

We loaded up his disk image on an Apple II emulator and gave it a try. We managed to murde—lose a few pilots, but that was about it.  It was hard not to get distracted by the graphics and remember to point the rocket the right direction. Either way, it was a neat bit of fun in retro computing. Video after the break.

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Computers Beating Computers At Cricket

May 23, 2016 by 11 Comments

Some see gaming as the way to make AI work, by teaching computers how to play, and win, at games. This is perhaps one step on the way to welcoming our new gaming overlords: a group of Cornell students used an FPGA to win a computer cricket game. Specifically, they figured out how to use an FPGA to beat the tricky batting portion of the game in a neat way. They used an FPGA that directly samples the VGA output signal from the gaming computer, detecting the image of the meter that indicates the optimum batting time. Once it detects the optimum point to press the button, it triggers a hacked keyboard to press a button, whacking the ball to the boundary to score a six*.

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Tiny ATtiny85 Game Console

April 10, 2016 by 10 Comments

[Ilya Titov] has made a game console. Not just any game console, but an extremely small ATtiny85-based console suitable for putting on a key ring and assembled into a very professional product with PCB and 3D printed case. This is a project that has been on the go since 2014, but the most recent update is a new version designed for tighter and more easy assembly.

All construction is through-hole rather than SMD, and aside from the ATtiny85 the console uses an OLED screen, piezo buzzer, tactile switches and a handful of passive components. Power comes from a single CR2032 coin cell which sits under the screen. Best of all the PCB design is available as a PDF and the 3D printed case can be found on Thingiverse.

There are two games for the console, as well as the Breakout clone whose code is in the 2014 piece linked above he’s written UFO Escape, an obstacle-avoiding side-scroller. You’ll have to burn both game and 8MHz internal clock bootloader to the ATtiny85 yourself. There are no cartridges with this console, though if the processor sits in a DIP socket the game can be changed over simply by swapping processors programmed with the appropriate game.

He’s produced a full assembly video with some UFO Escape gameplay thrown in, shown here below the break.

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