CHIP-8 Emulator/Interpreter

This is a CHIP-8 interpreter, built with SDL2. It mimics the CHIP-8 system and includes emulation for the COSMAC VIP hexadecimal keyboard layout. It's still not complete, but works enough to load some ROMs and play a bit.

What is CHIP-8?

Screenshots (Pong/Tetris/Blitz):

Setup

Prerequisites

This project is dependant on the SDL2 library. Please make sure you lookup how to install it for your system before continuing.

Installation

1. Download the latest version from the releases tab and place it in a directory of your choice. (As of now, windows, mac and debian-based linux distros have builds. If you're running something else, you may have to compile from source.)

2. Create a roms directory in the same directory as the executable. This is where you'll place the CHIP-8 ROM files.

3. Place your CHIP-8 ROM files in the roms directory.

Usage

1. Open a terminal in the same directory as the CHIP-8 Interpreter.

2. Run the following: ./Chip8Interpreter <name of the ROM> <delay>. The deplay parameter is optionnal, it's only there because some games seem to work better at different speeds. So just try, and see what works. The default is 2 miliseconds.

Controls

The original COSMAC VIP had a 4x4 hexadecimal keyboard, which I mapped as the following (on a QWERTY keyboard):

1 2 3 4
Q W E R
A S D F
Z X C V

Other keyboard layouts should also work with the same key placements.
About the controls for the actual games, it's always different... just trial and error I guess, or you can look them up.

Compile from source

I'm not going to write instructions on how to compile from source because I figure if you're trying to do this, you already know what you are doing. :)

Acknowledgements

This general high-level guide is what got me into making this. It was a lot of fun! I suggest you try making one too.