FPGA-based Multi-player Game

In this project, an IoT system is established to allow multiple users to play a car-racing game. It is produced as part of the EIE 2nd Year Information Processing coursework.

Overview

This project is an IoT system where multiple FPGA boards (DE10-lite), which act as controllers, are connected to PCs, which act as client nodes and communicate with a UDP server on AWS. The server handles communication between the player nodes, synchronising the data to run the game.

To run the game

To run the AWS cloud server:

1. Start an instance on AWS and create the database tables.
2. Run the server code AWS_Server/AWSserver_1-vs-1 or AWS_Server/AWSserver_multi-vs-multi.

On local computer:

1. The .sof file Nios2_FPGA/Golden_Top/DE10_LITE_Golden_Top.sof is the programming image file obtained by compiling the Quartus hardware design files. To get it downloaded in the FPGA, launch 'Tools -> Programmer' and click 'start'. Now the FPGA is programmed and the hardware is operating.
2. Next, download the software executable file (.elf) into the Nios II processor: The .elf file Nios2_FPGA/Golden_Top/software/cwgamefpga/cwgamefpga.elf is obtained by compiling the software application and the BSP. Launch the Nios II Command Shell in the directory Nios2_FPGA/Golden_Top/software/cwgamefpga and enter nios2-download -g cwgamefpga.elf. This downloads it onto the FPGA to run the compiled C code on the NIOS II processor.
3. Then, run the local processing code (LocalProcessing_LocalFPGAHost/LocalFPGAHost_localprocessing.py).
4. Finally, open Unity_LocalGameHost in Unity and the game starts.

Directories

doc

This folder contains the project requirement specification, the final report of the project and an explanation video showing how the game is run.

AWS_Server

This folder contains the code stored in the AWS cloud. It includes:

• the code to create and use the noSQL dynamoDB database, storing game and user data.
• two versions of the cloud server: one only allows 1v1 game, the other one allows multiplayer-vs-multiplayer team competition

Unity_LocalGameHost

This directory contains the Unity project files for the game.

LocalProcessing_LocalFPGAHost

This is the code running on each local client node, processing raw data from the FPGA and relaying data to the local game host - Unity.

Nios2_FPGA

This folder contains the quartus files and the platform designer files for the FPGA board.

Testing

This folder contains the testing programs used in the development stage.