Flappy Bird

Project Demo
Overview
This project implements a complete recreation, and expansion, of Dong Nguyen's popular 2013 mobile game,
Flappy Bird
. The game is structured like the original, including
gravity-based motion, scrolling obstacles, hand-drawn sprites, scoring, and sound effects. Our version expands upon this by introducing multi-modal gameplay, letting the player use either a button, their voice, or a handheld remote to generate flaps. Our project was implemented on the RP2040
microcontroller, generating a 640×480 VGA video signal entirely in software while simultaneously handling real-time input, physics, optimized collision detection, and audio
synthesis.
The motivation for this project was to recreate a game we had enjoyed when younger, while also exploring the limits of what can be achieved on a
resource-constrained microcontroller.
Generating VGA video, mixing audio, and handling sensor input concurrently presents a high workload for the system, so we met timing constraints by making optimizations like only checking the pipe nearest to the bird for collisions, or using fixed-point arithmetic.

Detailed Project Description

Flappy Bird implements complete game logic — board/state, rules, turns, scoring and win detection — behind a responsive interface.

How It Works
1. The game state (board, players, score) is modelled in data structures.
2. User input is validated against the rules before the state is updated.
3. The screen is redrawn after each move and win/lose conditions are checked.
4. Scores and settings are saved between sessions.

Technology Roles
- RP2040
- C
- VGA
- IR
- IMU
- audio

Implementation Steps
1. Design the board/screen layout and list the rules precisely.
2. Set up the project in C, Arduino IDE and create the game screens.
3. Model the game state (board, players, score, turn) in data structures.
4. Implement move validation, turn handling and win/draw detection.
5. Add rendering, animations, sound and score persistence.
6. Play-test extensively for rule errors and edge cases; polish the UI.

Key Features
- Rule enforcement
- Smooth rendering
- Score tracking
- Restart / settings

Expected Output
On completion the student will have a playable game with correct rules and score keeping.

Deliverables
- Complete source code with comments
- Database schema / data model and screen flow
- Project report with screenshots and results
- Demonstration-ready build