8ChocChip is an emulator for the Chip8 software that I am working on to learn the basics around emulation.
This uses SDL to handle graphics, input, audio and some other small things. libconfig is used to manage config and save data files.
There are a couple of things left to do until I would say it works well enough
- Proper flag/feature compatibility unlike many out there
- Cleaner/more optimised code
- Windows Support
- MacOS Support
- Switch to SDL from SFML
- Save state
- Configurable keys
- Database for auto setting selector
- Other Chip8 variants
- Per program settings (Keybindings, graphics, sounds, etc)
To run 8ChocChip you can either launch the executable file with the command line and specify a rom to instantly launch into like this /path/to/exectable/8ChocChip --rom /path/to/rom.8ch.
Or you can normally launch the executable to open the UI and manage it from there.
Some basic ROMS can be found here.
More games are here
For a proper test suite you can check out https://github.com/Timendus/chip8-test-suite
Until a proper building section is created, just follow the commands that are used in the GitHub actions workflow for your platform.
https://github.com/JustDoom/8ChocChip/blob/master/.github/workflows/build.yml
Follow the commands but not everything is required to be executed exactly as the file does. Some parts are just setting up ssh or installing dependencies which you may have installed already or have different methods to accomplish the task.
To build this it requires C++, CMake and whatever SDL/dependencies need. Check build file above.
Thanks to these two blogs that helped me through creating this emulator.
- How to Create Your Very Own Chip-8 Emulator - This is actually based on a "broken" emulator guide so not everything will work. But it is good as a base and learning how to do your own research into the functionality of the emulator.
- Guide to making a CHIP-8 emulator - This one is a great resource on creating a proper emulator
Currently, three libraries are being used