Death Race in FPGA shows signs of life!

Yes, you can drive out of the playfield but it slows you waaaay down so normally you would avoid this. Each crash stops the car for about 3 seconds UNLESS you quickly reverse then forward again. And while your outside the playfield your car will only drive in low speed even when it's floored. Using the buttons on the eval board instead of steering wheels, pedals and shifters like the real game it's nearly impossible to play this game correctly. I did verify on an actual Death Race board you are able to drive out of the playfield as well.
 
thats pretty cool i noticed that while playing DR when you switched to DD that it changed the existing crosses into crashed cars & gremlins into autos .. the gameplay just kept on a going .. neato

i applaud your efforts
 
I have an original Death Race cabinet and several non-working boards. Would totally be interested in buying a FPGA board. Multigame is even better!
 
Since you asked, (I'm intentionally not bumping the thread incessantly). Making progress, I've been working a lot on extracting the prom data off of an Alley Rally loaner board without removing the proms or otherwise disturbing the board (which is running now after replacing a few IC's) At the same time I decided to take the route of simulating the analog sound hardware in logic, it's a little time consuming but I think will achieve the best result and allow the lowest cost FPGA to be used. (since I won't need TONS of ram to store sampled audio). I've got the motor sound running along with it's acceleration/deceleration function. I'm now onto the crash sound and the scream. I spent the last week or so making TONS of measurements on 3 different Death Race boards and 1 destruction derby board to get and idea of the unit-unit differences. Now with all the data it's coding time! One thing I did run across is the scan rate on the Alley Rally is slightly different than the DR and DD, 16.8Khz vs 17.3Khz This means the monitor might not be able to be adjusted to scan both frequencies without adjusting the Horz control. (This will be a hurdle for multigame) Since the FPGA can be reprogrammed with updates I'm considering doing a partial release allowing people to run the hardware in their cabs while I continue the work. If anyone is interested in being a "beta" tester let me know as I will shift me energy to getting some hardware slapped together for this. It could initially be just DD and DR without a menu where you select on the FPGA board which game you want. Also, anyone have opinions on whether to use this thread to keep track of who wants kits or should I start a new thread for this?
 
sounds like you are making great progress with this - way to go! i believe just sticking with this one thread is fine for an interest list since i am sure anyone with any interest is already following this thread = or at least i think so?

would love to be beta tester but will have to get my cabinet back together first

btw, thanks for doing this
 
scan rate on the Alley Rally is slightly different than the DR and DD, 16.8Khz vs 17.3Khz This means the monitor might not be able to be adjusted to scan both frequencies without adjusting the Horz control. (This will be a hurdle for multigame)

Are you able to switch frequencies in software? If so, could there be a setting for which cabinet the board is installed into and you toggle the output based on which game is being played? Or put a jumper for that on the board? Or are you saying the monitor would have to be adjusted when switching between games? Hopefully not the latter as that would be impractical!

I'm super interested in seeing this happen so would beta test.

I also agree it makes sense to use this thread to track interest in kits, and to share updates.
 
The output scanrate is tied to the game play speed and audio frequencies. There would have to be some pretty drastic changes to separate the functions. This is most likely a lot of effort and would open the door to more simulation errors. Not recommended.

The other possibility would be to just use the same master clock for all games, resulting in game play speed errors similar to playing PAL games on NTSC hardware, etc. Better than no game at all, and it's only 3% error to game play but that's enough to kill your timing on a different machine.

It would probably be easier to modify the monitor to support multi-sync.
 
Are you able to switch frequencies in software? If so, could there be a setting for which cabinet the board is installed into and you toggle the output based on which game is being played? Or put a jumper for that on the board? Or are you saying the monitor would have to be adjusted when switching between games? Hopefully not the latter as that would be impractical!

Yes, the FPGA can switch frequencies and in fact does so automatically when running the different games. My concern is the later meaning I'm not sure the monitor can be adjusted to lock to the two different frequencies without having to be adjusted when it changes. It all depends on the monitors horizontal PLL design and how much pull range it has. It might work on some monitors and not others. My option to fix this would be to modify one of the games to scan closer to the other by changing the master clock slightly and adding/subtracting video blanking as needed. This won't effect game play but would cause the video output to not be EXACTLY like the original. Maybe I can have a jumper setting to have original timing or modified timing.

For beta testing I'm looking for people willing to purchase a Terasic board for $150, I will send the download files and the rest of the hardware in "beta" form, (this would consist of a edge connector board to plug into the cabinet an audio amp board for sound and a few discrete components for the audio interface). Initially it would run the DR and DD code but wouldn't have a menu to switch so it would have to be switched on the board. As I add functionality I could send code drops which can be downloaded to the board to add functionality/fix bugs. This board will run the final project just the additional hardware would be cleaned up in the final version. I would also put together some basic instructions on verifying the cabinet hardware BEFORE plugging in the board so IDEALLY you would have a multimeter and be able to make some BASIC measurements.

My preference would be for you to buy the Terasic FPGA board from them and I just send the files for you to download but I could buy it, load it and then sell to you at the same price as well.

I will also bump this thread with a list of people currently interested.
 
The output scanrate is tied to the game play speed and audio frequencies. There would have to be some pretty drastic changes to separate the functions. This is most likely a lot of effort and would open the door to more simulation errors. Not recommended.

The other possibility would be to just use the same master clock for all games, resulting in game play speed errors similar to playing PAL games on NTSC hardware, etc. Better than no game at all, and it's only 3% error to game play but that's enough to kill your timing on a different machine.

There would be "significant" changes to the game logic but luckily on these three games it's the VERTICAL that paces all the game play speed. My plan would be to change the horz freq but keep the vert freq VERY close to the original so game play would be VERY close (undetectable by people, equipment could measure though) I've already broken out the audio since it's all analog on the original boards and I'm simulating with DSP functions.

The EASIEST is as you suggest and just change the master clock to get the h freq the same, unfortunately then the v freq will be off by 3% this might be easier for the monitor to handle but not sure. And as you said the gameplay WILL be off by 3% although this is still a pretty small amount.

The actual "resolutions" of these games is different, that is why I can't use the EXACT same master clock to drive both.
 
Ok I'm starting the "official interest list", so far I got:

creepykenny 1 DR cab
slots 1 DR cab
fuko 1 DR cab
ed12 1 ? cab

knowing which cab you have just helps me figure out which monitor frequency will work without adjusting the monitor. Either cab will work you just might have to adjust the Horz on the monitor to get the picture to lock up.

I also want to confirm for the people on the list that there interest in supporting Alley Rally as well? I haven't started coding this yet and won't do it if no one cares about it.
 
I'll be picking up a DE0-CV board to play with soon. My DR cab is in storage currently, so I'll need some time to dig that out and bring it home.

Regarding Alley Rally, I think it would be cool as hell to have it available in multigame form, but for me the primary interest is in getting DR/DD working. It looks like Exidy even sold a conversion kit to upgrade from AR -> DR as Alley Rally didn't do well on location.

There's also another Exidy driving game on the same platform called Car Polo that looks to be a 4 player game:
http://system16.com/hardware.php?id=989&gid=19369#19369
 
I'll be picking up a DE0-CV board to play with soon. My DR cab is in storage currently, so I'll need some time to dig that out and bring it home.

Let me know when you get it and I'll send whatever code I have at that point for you to test. Along with a prototype hardware to connect it to your cab.

Regarding Alley Rally, I think it would be cool as hell to have it available in multigame form, but for me the primary interest is in getting DR/DD working. It looks like Exidy even sold a conversion kit to upgrade from AR -> DR as Alley Rally didn't do well on location.

I agree with you on Alley Rally, I will plan to add it AFTER DR and DD. This will temporarily eliminate the H frequency issue since DR and DD are EXACTLY the same.

There's also another Exidy driving game on the same platform called Car Polo that looks to be a 4 player game:
http://system16.com/hardware.php?id=989&gid=19369#19369

I was under the impression this game used a CPU and different hardware. I'll try and lookup what documentation is online to see if it could be added to this hardware. Might have to modify game to be 2 player or possibly LINK two cabs together for 4 player game might be kind of cool. (just a pipe dream at this point)
 
I was under the impression this game used a CPU and different hardware. I'll try and lookup what documentation is online to see if it could be added to this hardware. Might have to modify game to be 2 player or possibly LINK two cabs together for 4 player game might be kind of cool. (just a pipe dream at this point)

Car Polo is also color too, so you'd have to factor that in if you're going to make it work in a DD/DR cab, the schematics are in the manual (available from KLOV) but I can't vouch for whether they're complete or not. Someone here on KLOV had a full 4 player cab missing the board and was having a hell of a time finding another so they might be happy as hell to see it happen, though I don't know them personally and don't know what the status of it is now.
 

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I did lookup the schematics and it's definitely very different hardware. It uses a 6502 CPU, same processor used in the Apple][. It could be emulated with the same FPGA board and an external processor but this is a completely new project. I think the roms were released/licensed to MAME by Exidy a few years back so they are probably available.
 
I did lookup the schematics and it's definitely very different hardware. It uses a 6502 CPU, same processor used in the Apple][. It could be emulated with the same FPGA board and an external processor but this is a completely new project. I think the roms were released/licensed to MAME by Exidy a few years back so they are probably available.

Yeah Exidy released the ROMs to public domain a few years back so they're widely available. It would be interesting to hear what that game actually sounds like, MAME has never emulated the sound.
 
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