CHIP-8 / CHIP-8 HIRES / SCHIP Emulator

CHIP-8 / CHIP-8 HIRES / SCHIP Emulator writen in GO with simple code to be easy to be studied and understood.

CHIP-8 Space Invaders Game	Superchip (SCHIP) Spacefight 2091!

Blinky (Color theme)	Single Dragon (Color Theme)

CHIP-8 HiRes Astro Dodge (Color theme)	On-screen Debug (Color theme)

Features

• Pause and resume emulation
• Reset emulation
• Step Forward CPU Cycles for Debug
• Step Back (Rewind) CPU Cycles for Debug (Need to be activated on command line with -Rewind)
• On-screen Debug mode
• Increase and Decrease CPU Clock Speed
• Color Themes
• Save States
• Fullscreen
• Binary and Hexadecimal rom format
• Emulation Status from all games I have to test

EMULATOR Usage

1. Run:

   $./chip8 [options] ROM_NAME

• Options:

  -Debug Enable Debug Mode

  -DrawFlag Enable Draw Graphics on each Drawflag instead @60Hz

  -Rewind Mode Enable Rewind Mode

  -SchipHack Enable SCHIP DelayTimer hack mode to improve speed

  -help Show Command Line Interface options

2. Keys

• Original COSMAC Keyboard Layout (CHIP-8):

  1 2 3 C

  4 5 6 D

  7 8 9 E

  A 0 B F

• Original HP48SX Keyboard Layout (SuperChip):

  7 8 9 /

  4 5 6 *

  1 2 3 -

  0 . _ +

• Keys used in this emulator:

  1 2 3 4

  Q W E R

  A S D F

  Z X C V

  P: Pause and Resume emulation

  I: Step back (rewind) one CPU cycle in Pause Mode

  O: Step forward one CPU cycle in in Pause Mode

  K: Create Save State

  L: Load Save State

  6: Change Color Themes

  7: Decrease CPU Clock Speed

  8: Increase CPU Clock Speed

  9: Enable / Disable Debug Mode

  0: Reset

  J: Show / Hide FPS Counter

  H: Switch DrawMode (@DrawFlag OR @60Hz)

  N: Enter / Exit Fullscreen mode

  M: Change resolution

  ESC: Exit emulator

EMULATOR Build Instructions

MAC

• Install GO:

  brew install go

• Compile:

  go build -ldflags="-s -w" chip8.go

Windows

GO allows to create a Windows executable file using a MacOS:

1. Install mingw-w64 (support the GCC compiler on Windows systems):

brew install mingw-w64

2. Compile:

• 32 bits:

env GOOS="windows" GOARCH="386" CGO_ENABLED="1" CC="i686-w64-mingw32-gcc" go build -ldflags="-s -w"

• 64 bits:

env GOOS="windows" GOARCH="amd64" CGO_ENABLED="1" CC="x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc" go build -ldflags="-s -w"

• If you receive the message when running the executable, you need to ensure that the video drivers supports OpenGL (or the virtual driver in the case of virtualization).

• If you receive this message : "APIUnavailable: WGL: The driver does not appear to support OpenGL", please update your graphics driver os just copy the Mesa3D library from https://fdossena.com/?p=mesa/index.frag (opengl32.dll) to the executable folder (really slow).

4. Compress binaries

brew install upx

upx <binary_file>

Linux

Instructions to build using Ubuntu.

1. Install requisites:

sudo apt install pkg-config libgl1-mesa-dev licxi-dev libxcursor-dev libxrandr-dev libxinerama-dev libxi-dev mesa-utils build-essential xorg-dev libasound2-dev upx

2. Build:

• 32 bits:

env GOOS="linux" GOARCH="386" CGO_ENABLED="1" go build -ldflags="-s -w"

• 64 bits:

env GOOS="linux" GOARCH="amd64" CGO_ENABLED="1" go build -ldflags="-s -w"

3. Compress binaries:

upx <binary_file>

Documentation

Chip-8

Cowgod's Chip-8 Technical Reference

How to write an emulator (CHIP-8 interpreter) — Multigesture.net

Wikipedia - CHIP-8

trapexit chip-8 documentation

Thomas Daley Wiki (Game Compatibility)

David Winter Documentation

Chip-8 Database

Archive chip8.com

Columbia University - Columbia University

Tom Swan Documentation

Superchip (SCHIP)

HP48 Superchip

SCHIP

Chip-8 Reference Manual

Chip-8 Extensions

CHIP‐8 Extensions Reference

CHIP‐8 Extensions (Github)

Chip8 Hybrids

EMMA02 Opcodes Documentation

MegaChip