Introduction

This is a CHIP-8 Virtual Machine built in C.

Resources

These were the most useful CHIP-8 references used during development:

• Mastering Chip-8
• Cowgod's Chip-8 Reference

Requirements

You need to have SDL2 installed, including development headers.

On macOS:

brew install sdl2

If necessary, ensure your library path includes SDL2:

export LIBRARY_PATH="$LIBRARY_PATH:/opt/homebrew/lib"

On Ubuntu/Linux:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install libsdl2-dev pkg-config

Make sure you also have a C compiler (gcc or clang) and make installed.

Usage

To use this project, follow these steps:

1. Clone the repository to your local machine:

git clone <repository_url>
cd <repository_name>

2. Build the project:

make

3. Run the program with the path to your game file:

./chip8 rom/game.ch8

Debug Logging

To enable debug logging and save the output to a file (debug.log), use the following command:

DEBUG=1 ./chip8 rom/game.ch8

When DEBUG is enabled:

• All log levels (INFO, ERROR, WARNING, DEBUG) are written to debug.log
• INFO, ERROR, and WARNING messages are also displayed on the console
• DEBUG messages are only written to the log file

Without DEBUG:

• INFO, ERROR, and WARNING messages are displayed on the console only
• No log file is created

Games

You can find public-domain CHIP-8 games here.

License

This project is released under an open license for educational and personal use.