This week I pretty much finalized the PPU User Library. Andrew and I worked together to debug the User Library functions related to the Sprites and the Sprite-Engine itself. Most notably on the Library’s side, the way I was writing patterns to Pattern-RAM (holding graphics data) was incompatible with the Sprite-Engine. This has been fixed. Now the library is fully tested with all parts of the PPU. Any further updates to this library will be for user experience / convenience.
I wrote an updated test tech-demo for use in the final presentation. Features “The Mall” demo again, but with updated graphics, world animation, foreground objects, and new sprites. Currently, the tech-demo is missing audio, but this will be included by the final presentation.
I finished the snes_controller_mod_instructions document. This will be included in the fpgame-usr public repository when the project is ready. Unfortunately it cannot be included here since it is larger than 8MB (it is an image-heavy step by step guide). In next week’s status report, I’ll add a link to the repository where it will be included.
I got the kernel modules to autoload. This required minor modifications to the kernel module source code. More importantly, these kernel modules are copied to the SD Card image file in a new automated build process. Steps to use this build process are included in the Work-in-progress build_from_source_guide. This document will be kept with our source files in a separate repository from the user repository called fpgame-src. This repository is for advanced users (or Andrew and I) to build the hardware and kernel modules from source. Regular users will not need to do this. The work in progress document is included below:
build_from_source_guide_WIP
Lastly, I started updating some diagrams for the final presentation slides. There were some major system interconnect changes since the design review report and presentations. These changes will be covered briefly in the final presentation.
Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to write the “high-level guide to FP-GAme document” I was assigned in the last status report. This was dropped in favor of two new documents: Getting Started, Developer’s guide. Neither of these documents have enough information in them yet to show. They will be done by the end of next week.