petersid2022 / chip8

an emulator for the Chip8 virtual machine written in Go

Chip-8 Emulator in Go

According to Wikipedia:

CHIP-8 is an interpreted programming language, developed by Joseph Weisbecker made on his 1802 Microprocessor. It was initially used on the COSMAC VIP and Telmac 1800 8-bit microcomputers in the mid-1970s.

Installation

To run the emulator, make sure you have go version 1.20.x or newer, installed on your system. Then, follow these steps:

1. Clone this repository: git clone https://github.com/petersid2022/chip8.git
2. Navigate to the project directory: cd chip8
3. Build the project: go build
4. Run the emulator: ./chip8

As an alternative, if you already have a directory like $HOME/bin in your shell path and you'd like to install chip8 there, you can just: go install that compiles and installs the package.

Key Bindings

Chip8 keypad         Keyboard mapping
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

<Escape> to quit
<Backspace> to restart

Resources

If you're interested in learning more about how this emulator works, or about the Chip-8 system in general check out the following resources:

• Cowgod's Chip-8 Technical Reference: A comprehensive guide to the Chip-8 system.
• Chip-8 Wikipedia page: General information about the Chip-8 system.
• How to write an emulator (CHIP-8 interpreter)
• Chip 8 Games
• go-sdl2: The Graphics library used to render the emulator.

TODO

• Add Sound (Bleeper)
• Add the Super Chip-48 extended instructions.
• Add the XO-CHIP extension, which includes:
  1. 7 new opcodes
  2. 16-bit addressing for a total of ~64kb RAM
  3. Second display buffer allowing for 4 colors instead of the typical 2
  4. Improved sound support
  5. Modified Fx75 and Fx85 instructions to allow for 16 user flags instead of typical 8

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. Please see the LICENSE file for more details.