Corning Community College
CSCS2650 Computer Organization
As we have been implementing our pong game and heading toward breakout, issues crop up regarding debugging, and performance issues enter into our awareness: just how much better is one approach over another? And what factors best measure efficiency and performance?
Since a multibase output function is being implemented for discrete, one aspect of the comporg project is ensuring you can call it from your hand-written assembly programs. You don't have to write a separate assembly version, merely ensure you can successfully use and call upon your C version (compiler translated into assembly, with any hand-tweaks in assembly you see fit).
For performance considerations, you will also be exploring the implementation of at least one other function (which again, could be in C, but must be callable from your hand-written assembly programs): displaying the framerate (how many frames per second is your game operating at).
Implement a function that provides a display of game framerate to the screen. Or time elapsed (in milliseconds most likely).
This could be done in one function, or two, you decide how you want to handle the parameters.
This function (and any other helper functions) can then be a companion on your other endeavours this semester in Vircon32, giving you quick access to some tools to help you figure out problems as they crop up.
You will want to go here to edit and fill in the various sections of the document:
Step 1: Divide the decimal number that you want to convert by the value of the desired base.
Step 2: Use the remainder from step 1 as the rightmost digit, aka the least significant digit, for the new base number.
Step 3: Replace the original decimal (base 10) number with the quotient from the first step.
Step 4: Repeat step 1-3 until the quotient in step 3 is zero.
Note: The remainder you get at each step will become part of the new base number. The new base number is obtained by putting the remainders in reverse order.
An example of converting the decimal number 29 to binary would look something like this,
| Step | Operation | Result | Remainder |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 29/2 | 14 | 1 |
| 2 | 14/2 | 7 | 0 |
| 3 | 7/2 | 3 | 1 |
| 4 | 3/2 | 1 | 1 |
| 5 | 1/2 | 0 | 1 |
with the first remainder value becoming the least significant digit.
In terms of our breakout, in which our brick structures are stored within our singly-linked list. When a brick is destroyed, it's likely that you're simply turning the visible flag to false. Once a brick is invisible, it still exists in memory even if nothing interacts with it. Freeing that brick from memory will improve performance, especially if you have a triple digit amount of bricks.
In our singly-linked list, we have two pointers: one at the start of the list and one at our current position in the list. Due to the limitations of the structure, we're unable to delete the node we're currently have selected with the current pointer. We're only able to delete the node before or after the one currently selected. In this example, we'll delete the one after.
To start, create a new brick struct pointer. We'll call it temp. Next, you'll want to assign temp to point at the node after the one currently selected by making use of current→next. The temp node is the node that'll be deleted.
In order to make sure our list still stays in one piece after the node deletion, you'll need to assign current→next to temp→next. This joins the list back together, and skips over the temp node.
Afterwards, free the memory allocation of the temp node. Vircon32 has this as a function called free();. See the Vircon32 C API documention for further insight.
.wav files can be included into your programs to produce sound.
You can include a sound for various reasons. A collision, scoring, when the menu or pause is activated, or continuous background music.
The first thing you will want to do is to include the .wav file in your Make.sh. To do that nano into your make.sh and add the following:
echo echo Convert the WAV sounds echo wav2vircon Paddle-ball.wav -o Paddle-ball.vsnd || abort_build wav2vircon Brick-ball.wav -o Brick-ball.vsnd || abort_build wav2vircon Miss-ball.wav -o Miss-ball.vsnd || abort_build
Depending on the number of .wav files you have, you may have more or less instances where you are calling wav2vircon.
You will also want to include it in your .xml file. Start by nanoing into your .xml file. Once your .xml file is open, add the following:
<sounds> <sound path="Paddle-ball.vsnd"/> <sound path="Brick-ball.vsnd"/> <sound path="Miss-ball.vsnd"/> </sounds>
It is important that the file ends with .vsnd and not .wav. the .vsnd file is created by the make.sh file.
Then in your program you will want to include the audtio.h library and define the sound.
#include "audio.h" #define your_sound number
To use sound in your program you will want to reference the audio.h library using the C API reference http://www.vircon32.com/api.html or you could also look at the shooterGameVideo .c file in github. Here is the link: https://github.com/vircon32/ConsoleSoftware/blob/main/Tutorials/ShooterGameVideo/Tutorial-Shooter.c
Adding sound to your game is actually extremely simple, where ever you want to use one of your sound files simply add the following line and specify which sound you want:
play_sound( your_sound );
If you are running into an issue where the audio is overlapping creating a staticy noise, a good idea is to set the sound that you want to play to a channel. Then use the play_channel(channel number, your_sound) function, which causes the target channel to start playing its given sound if it is stopped or paused. It will also restart playback on a paused channel. If the channel is currently playing, it will retrigger the original sound. For certain games, this may be a better situation as the sound never triggers in tandem.
assign_channel_sound(channel_number, sound); play_channel(channel_number)
If however you want the whole sound to play out without repeating itself in the middle, there is another way. the get_channel_state function gets the state of the channel you input as its perameters.
if(get_channel_state(0)!=channel_playing){ play_channel(brick_b); }
To be successful in this project, the following criteria (or their equivalent) must be met:
Let's say you have completed work on the project, and are ready to submit, you would do the following:
lab46:~/src/SEMESTER/DESIG/PROJECT$ submit DESIG PROJECT file1 file2 file3 ... fileN
You should get some sort of confirmation indicating successful submission if all went according to plan. If not, check for typos and or locational mismatches.
I'll be evaluating the project based on the following criteria:
39:dap0:final tally of results (39/39) *:dap0:helper functions present and operational [26/26] *:dap0:code assembles with no warnings or errors [7/7] *:dap0:all game and build related files submitted [6/6]
For those doing data/dap0, and wondering if this multibase function can be the entirety (or in fact considered as any) of your enhancement or polish: no.