Bomb Jack display hardware

This video shows a quick game demo using the video hardware with char and sprites layers.

The Commodore 64 runs the game logic code and during the vblank send the updates sprite positions to the hardware. This leaves most of the frame time available for game logic processing.

This video shows the sprites board and background character screen board working together to produce an animated display with two layers. This boosts the graphical capability of the host retro machine, in this case a Commodore 64.

Each 16x16 pixel sprite can have seven colours with one transparent colour showing the layers behind. Some sprites can also be 32x32 pixels. Some sprites can also be full height, with a repeating 16 pixel vertical pattern. Each sprite has a choice of 32 palettes.

The character background layer has 1024 characters of 8x8 pixel, with seven colours and one transparent colour.  Each character has a choice of 16 palettes.

Characters and sprites support horizontal and vertical flips.

The other two layers are currently opaque pixels and not visible.

This video reviews the delivered components and PCBs, reviews logic analyser tests, and then tests video output on a Commodore 64.

The user port interface has an auto-increment memory address, which makes it over six times faster than the 4-bit alternating latch prototype user port interface.