A cross-platform Chip-8 emulator written in C++. This project uses a custom "game" engine that I wrote for emulation using SDL2 (Simple DirectMedia Layer). This project also uses my own low-level sound generation code that implements a square wave, which is used by Chip-8 as the computer's "buzzer".
Chip-8 is an interpreted programming language that was first implemented in the mid-1970s as a means of developing games for low-spec computers that are also portable. Chip-8 programs (games) run on a virtual machine.
This project makes use of one external dependency to handle interfacing with platform specific API calls SDL2. You must have this installed in order to compile this project.
Once SDL2 is installed, you will be able to execute the following command:
sh compile.sh
This command will generate a main executable file in the root directory.
Next, download publically available .ch8 ROM files you would like to play and put them into the roms directory.
I recommend looking for 'space invaders', 'tetris', and 'breakout'.
Once you have the main executable created and you have some ROMs in the roms directory, execute the following command to load the rom and start playing:
./main <filename.ch8>
Chip-8 implementations makes use of a very strange key layout that was representative of DIY low-spec computers of the time. Instead of having a QWERTY style keyboard that we are familiar with today, computers that implemented Chip-8 used a 16-key keyboard. This 16-key keyboard represents a nibble's worth of storage space, representing 0 to 15 (or 0 to F) in hex.
The keyboard layout for this implementation of Chip-8 is labeled Emulator in following diagram.
Original Emulator
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