shreyas42 / chip8emulator Goto Github PK

Chip8 is an interpreter from the 1970s that was used to develop games like Space Invaders and Pong. This project implements the Chip-8 ISA as well as virtual hardware for the keyboard and display.

The Chip-8 features a simple ISA - originally consisting of 36 instructions. The Super Chip-48 extended this to 46. This project implements only the Chip-8 ISA and ignores the Super Chip-48 instructions.

• 16 8-bit data registers V0 to VF.
• 16-bit I register to hold memory addresses. Only the least significant 12-bits are used.
• 16-bit Program counter (PC). Only the least significant 12-bits are used.
• Stack consisting of 16 16-bit entries to hold return addresses.
• 8-bit Stack Pointer (SP) which points at the top of the stack.
• An 8-bit Delay Timer (DT) and an 8-bit Sound Timer (ST).

• Chip-8 uses a 4KB memory region. All addresses are 12-bits wide.
• Chip-8 interpreter data is loaded at address 0x0.
• Chip-8 program data is loaded from address 0x200.
• All instructions are aligned at 2 bytes. Sprites are padded to respect this alignment criteria.

• SDL - The project depends on SDL to implement the virtual hardware, including the display and keyboard.
• MinGW compiler - This project assumes that the compiler being used is MinGW-gcc for Windows.

Note: If you would like to use a different C/C++ compiler for Windows and/or wish to use an IDE with an automated build process, configure your IDE to look in the right directories for includes/libs/binaries and avoid using the provided Makefile.

After the program has been successfully built, you can run the executable located in the bin folder. Roms for Space Invaders and Pong have also been provided, but keep in mind that Space Invaders currently has some issues with the game speed.

• You can find the tutorial I followed here: Creating a Chip-8 Emulator in C.
• Chip-8 Reference Guide, including details about the ISA and hardware.