Chip8 VM Emulator

This is an emulator for the chip8 VM. As input, it takes a ROM (.rom) file and runs it as if it were running an a chip8 VM.

Building and Testing

The emulator source and tests are built using cmake. By default, the project is built in RELEASE mode. To build the project in debug mode, pass "debug" as the CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE.

mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=debug ..

SDL is a required dependency of the project. For convenience, the headers have been included in the project and the libraries statically linked. This is allowed under SDL's expanded zlib license.

Creating a ROM file

ROM files can either be found online or created. You can use the Chip8 Assembler I've written to assemble ROM files of your own. See that project's README for instructions on how to assemble your own ROMs.

Running the emulator

The emulator can be run by building it and supplying it the ROM file of choice. Here's a screenshot of the emulator running on the 'stars' example:

./chip8emu stars.ch8

See the /examples directory for some ROM file examples.

Note that verbose logging is enabled when the project is built in DEBUG mode.

Credits

• CMake
• SDL
• Thanks to Sergey Naydenov for the 'stars' ROM in the examples.