You Don't Know What Your Missing!!
Results


We are both very impressed that we managed to achieve all of our goals for this project. Though at points it seemed that we might have to settle for a reduced version of the project, perseverance and a ton of hours in the lab paid off. We are very pleased with both the image quality and game playability. We feel that we used the Mega163 to the edge of it capabilities for this project.

The only metrics to really judge our project by are pixel resolution, image clarity, and color depth. As we proceed with our design, we realized that these would have to be balanced because of the Mega163's limited abilities (amount of SRAM, low clock speed). We ended up fixing our design at 4 bits SRAM per pixel which allowed for a maximum of 32*48 pixels total. This allowed us a color depth of 8 (3-bits, with 1 bit unused). Image clarity is only tainted by the slight dot crawl, which is only visible at color boundaries.

With regards to the actual game, it is very playable and includes all the standard features of snake. These include random nibble placements, body elongation as the snake eats, as well as several difficulty settings. We decided to show off our color abilities so the snake changes it's head color when it eats a nibble. The color change depends on the color of the nibble that is eaten. Therefore it is possible, by eating several nibbles within several moves of each other, to create a snake that has many different body colors at the same time. When the snake hits a wall or itself, the game ends. The player can then press the software reset button and the game begins anew. As far as we can tell, the game is bug-free, and there is nothing the user can do to crash the game.