I am having the same difficulties, first of all recheck your design and make sure that the clock signals are exactly as described in the documentation of the vga in the doc folder under the university program path. If the clocks aren't configured correctly, the "ON" light on your screen shouldn't even light up when its connected to the board. After you have done that either 1: it will work, or 2: you will be stuck like I am. :D .
After tracking down which function fails to execute through the IDE. I found
my system gets stuck in the IOWR_32DIRECT command. which means that the Sram connection isn't working well. I am currently looking to see if the clock gets a -3ns shift as required in the sram spec and if maybe the vga_controller address space is protected in some way. If you solve your problem please inform me. Good hunting!
Jonathan.