One thing I've always wanted to do is make a LCD electronic game. I've always wanted to make a racing game (probably something like a copy of Road Fighter) and a platform game (I would love to try and do a Mr Do Castle game...). Most electronic games just consist of a Microcontroller, Display, Controls (in buttons), a piezo buzzer and a power source. Quite simple. Most of this is fairly straight forward, I have a wide choice of microcontroller, controls I can recycle a SFC pad, even the case I can use basic vacuum formed plastic. However the display is a sticking point. The choices I have are. To use a LCD dot matrix display but I don't want to make it look like a gameboy. To use LED display. I can get a block of foam or wood and cut out basic shapes, getting a PCB soldering LEDs to fit in the hples, adding a difuser and using coloured pens or even coloured plastic I can get a good approximation of a early 80s LED display game. To use a custom LCD screen, this is what I would love to do as the detail and charm of them would add to the nostalga effect and make you forget for a few minutes that you are playing a simple game. I have written to a dozen LCD makers and hoping one might reply and give me a price that won't mean selling a kidney or two. I would also probably pay someone with some talent to draw the screen out from my rough sketch. Probably a mad idea (and I'm at home with a sligh fever, coughing my guts up) but one I would like to try and do.
Cool idea. I've wanted to do this too back when I was in school (game&watch style), unfortantly my electronic skills isn't that great. I wish you good luck with this :thumbsup:
I would use the second method for the screen. A custom LCD screen is gonna be expensive unless you order 2000 (and that would be incredibly expensive too...).
I think a matrix of small square LED would be coolest.. That and PWM the piezo to get somewhat interesting clicks (2-4 bit PCM). Maybe a DAC/PWM on the display too for brightness if that's not too Game/Virtual Boy for you. It will be difficult to make your own matrix, but I haven't seen any square LED matrix so perhaps it's worth it for a coherent display... I don't think you could have a meaningful game in less than ~32x24 pixels with 3 shades, which would be completely easy to do with under 20 dot LED matrix but I think the spaces between the LEDs are probably too big. Maybe some additional alpha/7-segments would help so you can keep the score off screen. If your MCU has an ADC, you could also encode the digital buttons in analog (or have analog controls) to save on I/O.
I want to avoid using square matrix displays as I want to have real draw graphics, one place has got back to me and would be willing to make me a small batch of TN LCD reflective displays for "Samples", although I would still need to pay for them. I have started to sketch out ideas of how I will do the games, the racing game I will probably do a simple racing game like Auto Race and make it more complex as I go along. Been looking at platform games and think I can do an interesting Mr Do Castle like platform game. The display is quite easy I think, a multiplexed LED driver, A PCB with White LEDs / Coloured LEDs, a CNC plastic cut out stencil, a difuser and a transparent OHP inkjet colour print out for the character shapes and colour. I might hack a dreamcast pad for the triggers as it would make a racing game more fun. Going to do the basic concept in er BASIC as I can write it in a very assembler like way. Will upload some pictures over the next few weeks.
