An interpretative emulator for CHIP-8 written in C++ and SDL2
As of now, the emulator is able to completely run a good number of CHIP-8 programs. There's still a bug somewhere in the opcode execution (apparently) which is causing some programs to not run properly. The implementation of display, keyboard and timers are complete and there are no issues with them as far as I know. Sound hasn't been implemented yet.
To be able to use SDL2
$ sudo apt install libsdl2-dev
Clone this repo
$ git clone https://github.com/aayushsrivastava/CHIP-8-Emulator.git
$ cd CHIP-8-Emulator
Compile
$ make all
I haven't tried compiling it on Windows. But there isn't any platform-dependent code in there so it shouldn't be causing any problems afaik. You'll probably want to look up how to setup SDL2's development libraries on Visual Studio or Mingw32.
$ ./chip8-emulator [path to rom file]
The CHIP-8 consists of a hex keyboard (read the References for more info). They have been mapped to the following keys:
1 2 3 C 1 2 3 4
4 5 6 D ---> Q W E R
7 8 9 E ---> A S D F
A 0 B F Z X C V
(CHIP-8 Keyboard) (Mapped Keyboard)
You can easily find a lot of public domain CHIP-8 programs/games on the internet.
- chip8.h contains the implementation of CPU and timers.
- display.h wraps the SDL2 procedures to create and maintain a screen instance.
- keyboard.h maps the original Chip-8 key states to the qwerty keyboard. It also keeps track of when user wants to quit the program.
- Graphics, keymapping and timing, all make use of SDL2 to maintain platform independence.