[HN Gopher] Guide to making a CHIP-8 emulator (2020)
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Guide to making a CHIP-8 emulator (2020)
Author : AlexeyBrin
Score : 36 points
Date : 2025-11-29 15:49 UTC (7 days ago)
(HTM) web link (tobiasvl.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (tobiasvl.github.io)
| spit2wind wrote:
| I've wondered if there's a good "standard" project a person could
| use to get up to speed on a new language and get an intuitive
| sense for working with it. For example, plenty of Java
| programmers can write a working Python program, but it's not
| "pythonic".
|
| Would writing a CHIP-8 emulator be such a project? It seems non-
| trivial, yet not too big, the kind of thing that if you
| implemented it once, implementing it again in another language
| would be much faster (apart from the language learning).
| rootnod3 wrote:
| It's my goto for new languages, but Gameboy instead of Chip8.
| It covers good parts of new languages when learning them.
| anthk wrote:
| Nice; here there is one made in POSIX AWK:
|
| https://git.luxferre.top/dale-8a/files.html
|
| BTW, kudos for the author for playing Anchorhead too :D. The
| ZMachine is one of the things I love too among minimal VM's.
|
| Another nice one it's mu808, but sadly it needs some quirky stuff
| to handle bufferings https://codeberg.org/luxferre/mu808
|
| The author could rewrite in TCL/JimTCL and forget about
| buffering.
|
| On the software for it (IV0 actually), the offer looks more
| limited than the CHIP8, but the opcodes and implementation are
| much easier to understand (no pixels, just raw I/O, even chars).
| Enough to implement Lunar Lander, some calculator, a Bulls and
| Cows game and so on.
|
| Altough after trying something like EForth running under Subleq
| (Muxleq was tons faster), I can say Eforth offers you a much more
| powerful language having to thinker with Muxleq, altough the IV0
| machine (and a few ones such as VTL-02) will run under 6502 based
| legacy microcomputers, such as the Kim-1 or the Apple1, C64,
| Apple 2 and so on. With mu808 I still coudln't output strings
| bigger than 9 chars. With EForth under Muxleq you can run a
| Sokoban like nothing.
| fluffet wrote:
| Happy to see this :-)
|
| This guy starring my chip-8 implementation was a moment of pride
| for me. It was buggy but before this guide there wasn't too much
| material out there that was made for stupid people like me.
|
| It's a great starter project for emulation. You'll realise how
| all emulators work, and as a bonus, interpreted languages. Really
| recommend it.
| jan_Sate wrote:
| I've also made my own implementation of CHIP-8 emulator. I was
| surprised that it only took me a few hours to got it working. I
| reserved a week for the project.
|
| One thing interesting about making emulator is that, it's all-or-
| nothing. You can't tell if your implementation's working until
| you finish it. For my case, I did end up having a few minor bugs,
| which I promptly fixed and got the whole thing working correctly.
|
| Maybe I should try implementing extensions next, when I've got
| the time for that. :)
| jgwil2 wrote:
| This is great. Another great resource for CHIP-8 is Octo:
| https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Octo
|
| It's a CHIP-8 emulator with a few extra capabilities and the
| readme collects a bunch of other resources.
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(page generated 2025-12-06 23:02 UTC)