Sure. I wrote the Tecmo and CAVE cores for MiSTer, and it's a long road to a complex core like an arcade game, or in this case, a ray tracer.
If you're just starting out, then you've gotta begin with the basics: blinking a few LEDs, etc. From there you can progress to more and more complex circuits as you learn to code in VHDL or Verilog.
I'd recommend buying a couple of 2nd hand books on VHDL and/or Verilog to get familiar with the syntax. There are some good free books too:
Thanks! I have already read the 8bitworkshop one, but I was on vacation back then so I couldn't get my hands dirty. The samples are also definitely going to help. I do like the approach of using something like Verilator, though. The barrier to entry for actually doing stuff on the board seems too large for me at the moment -- Need to install and learn software (Quartus), and my everyday computer is a Mac so I have to use a slow VM!
I'm using SpinalHDL for all my hobby projects, and I use Intel Quartus, Xilinx ISE, or Yosys, depending on the FPGA family.
This project is an FPGA based ray-tracer that uses Xilinx ISE written in SpinalHDL: https://github.com/tomverbeure/rt.
This project uses SpinalHDL to drive an LED cube, which uses Quartus: https://github.com/tomverbeure/cube (it also uses a VexRiscv). And here is a small project that drives an LED matrix with WS2812B LEDs, that runs on an Upduino2 with a Lattice UP5K FPGA, which uses open source Yosys/NextPNR: https://github.com/tomverbeure/led_matrix.
I just switched to the X1E after using Mac for the past 20 years. I'm running Ubuntu 20.04.
It's an amazing machine: excellent build quality, screen, and variety of ports. The only thing I can complain about is the battery life, which isn't great.
You installed cpufreaq yet? It is a life saver and a battery saver too. I run most of the time with 4 cores, turbo disabled, and capped at about 50%. Makes a huge difference in battery runtime.
If you're just starting out, then you've gotta begin with the basics: blinking a few LEDs, etc. From there you can progress to more and more complex circuits as you learn to code in VHDL or Verilog.
I'd recommend buying a couple of 2nd hand books on VHDL and/or Verilog to get familiar with the syntax. There are some good free books too:
http://freerangefactory.org/pdf/df344hdh4h8kjfh3500ft2/free_...
This little book is great if you're interested in how to build video game hardware for FPGA:
https://gumroad.com/8bitworkshop#JGZkq
I also have a repo of examples I wrote for the DE10 Nano:
https://github.com/nullobject/de10-nano-examples