Chipz

A CHIP8 emulator written in Zig.

Features

• Supports CHIP-8, SuperCHIP and XO-CHIP
• CHIP8 database integration: automatically apply known quirks and settings to your game
• Signature, custom hand-made font
• Can run in your browser

Build and use

Common build parameters

There are a few common build parameters that you might find useful:

• -Dno-bin: Do not emit a binary for chipz, useful for a clean web build or for incremental compilation
• -Dstrip: true/false, enables or disables stripping the executable
• -Drom_path: Path to the rom to include as the rom to play by default (when no argument is given). This rom should be located in src.

Desktop

This will produce the simplest, cleanest build:

zig build -Doptimize=ReleaseFast -Dstrip=true

And to use, you can play the default game, or pass an URI to a game as the first argument:

# Just plays the default game
./chipz

# Plays a local game
# Go download this one: https://johnearnest.github.io/chip8Archive/roms/slipperyslope.ch8
./chipz slipperyslope.ch8

# Plays a game downloaded directly from the internet
./chipz https://johnearnest.github.io/chip8Archive/roms/snake.ch8

Use the --help parameter to print out an exhaustive help.

Web

Note: build in Debug mode doesn't work yet

# Build for web
zig build -Dtarget=wasm32-emscripten -Doptimize=ReleaseFast -Dno-bin

You will need to host the resulting build on a server, or alternatively, use emrun which is integrated to the build script:

# Build and run for web
zig build -Dtarget=wasm32-emscripten -Doptimize=ReleaseFast -Dno-bin emrun

This will open a page in your browser, showing the default game included during the build. To load a game from any URL, add it as parameter to chipz URL under the game key. For example:

http://127.0.0.1:6931/chipz.html?game=https://johnearnest.github.io/chip8Archive/roms/turnover77.ch8

Roms

This repository contains a few roms source code used to print all possible characters in all possible resolutions:

• small_font_display.8o: print characters from 0 to F with the small font
• big_font_display.8o: print characters from 0 to F with the big font
• hires_both_display.8o: print characters from 0 to F in both formats, in hi-res mode

You can build them with zig build roms.

The build script uses c-octo to build the roms and you can reuse it to build your own roms! Just add them to the roms directory and re-build.

In-game keyboard shortcuts

Key	Action
F1	Open the rom information panel
F2	Open the quirks list panel
F3	Open the emulator internals panel
F4	Open the instructions view
O	Pause/Resume execution
Space	Step through one instruction
L	Next platform
K	Previous platform
Escape	Exit current dialog or window