Chip8 Emulator

This repository contains an implementation of a Chip-8 interpreter written in C. It supports the complete set of the standard Chip-8 instructions however doesn't include support for Super Chip-48.

CHIP-8 is an interpreter programming language developed by Joseph Weisbecker in the mid-70s and was initially used on the COSMAC VIP and Telmac 1800 8-bit microcomputers to make game programming easier. CHIP-8 programs are run using a CHIP-8 virtual machine.

This reference explains the virtual machine (instruction, registers, stack, memory, display, and keypad) and the opcodes supported.

Keyboard Layout

The computers which originally used the Chip-8 Language had a 16-key hexadecimal keypad with the following layout:

1	2	3	C
4	5	6	D
7	8	9	E
A	0	B	F

Dependencies

• Mingw-64 compiler
• SDL2 library (64-bit)
• A copy of a Chip-8 ROM

Compatibility

Verified compatible with Windows (64-bit).

Building and Running

To build the project run:

  git clone https://github.com/CheesyFrappe/chip8-emulator.git
  cd chip8-emulator
  mingw32-make

Running from the command line:

• You need to provide the path to a ROM file as an argument. Check dependencies for the ROM file.
• So you can start the INVADERS game available in the bin directory by:

  cd bin
  .\main.exe ./INVADERS

License

This project is open source and available under the MIT License.