Chip8 Rust
Screenshot
A WebAssembly CHIP-8 Emulator is an intriguing project developed by Starr Horne. It serves as a CHIP-8 emulator written in Rust and compiled to WebAssembly. This project is created for the fun of it and to explore the capabilities of Rust and WebAssembly in emulating the CHIP-8, a simple, interpreted programming language from the 1970s.
Introduction
This CHIP-8 VM, built in Rust, offers a glimpse into how home computers operated in the late 70s. It's a great starting point for anyone considering writing their own CHIP-8 emulator. The project is also suitable for newcomers to Rust, as it doesn't require advanced features like generics and traits.
Resources
Here are some valuable resources for anyone interested in CHIP-8:
Features
This project leverages the relatively new wasm32-unknown-unknown target, which is essential for compiling Rust code to WebAssembly. The instructions for setting up this target are provided in the setup guide. Once the environment is set up, building the project is straightforward by running the provided build script.
The CHIP-8 emulator itself is designed to faithfully recreate the behavior of the original CHIP-8 environment, allowing users to load and run CHIP-8 programs directly in their web browsers. The use of WebAssembly ensures that the emulator runs efficiently and effectively, making full use of modern web capabilities.
Requirements
To get started with the project, ensure you have sdl2 installed with headers. On Ubuntu 17.04, you can install the necessary dependencies with:
sudo apt-get install libsdl2-dev libsdl2-gfx-dev
Usage
Clone the repository and run the emulator using the following command:
cargo run /path/to/game
You can find public-domain CHIP-8 games here.
Comments
Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or comments about this code. At the time of writing, the author is relatively new to Rust, so the code may not be 100% idiomatic. You can contact Starr Horne on Twitter @StarrHorne, or by opening an issue on the repository.
Credits
Most of the SDL-related code was adapted from the sdl2 crate's documentation and examples. Mike Zaby's rust chip8 repository also served as a reference, though no code was directly used.
This project is open-source and available under the MIT license, allowing anyone to use, modify, and distribute the code freely.
Explore the code and learn more about this fascinating project on GitHub.