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Daniil Mira
Daniil Mira

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C# Chip-8 Emulator (Interpretator)

Some words about Chip-8

Chip-8 is an interpreted programming language that runs on a virtual machine. It was first used in the mid-1970s on a 8 bit computer (as you can guess from the name).

Why to do it?

Chip-8 virtual machine and language are relatively simple and it is a very good starting point for getting into emulation in general.

How to do it?

Now as we decided why to do it. I want to share some links that got me inspired and helped a lot during the development of this project:

C#

C# is definitely my favorite OOP language. As a way to get some more advanced practice for this language, this kind of project was chosen.

Some problems that you might encounter

  • Different specifications of the instructions from different sources.
  • Slow image render without using any graphics framework.
  • A very long main switch loop. (Can be solved by using function pointers)

Ways to solve them

  • Different specifications: Can be solved just by simple testing of both different variants.
  • Slow image render: Can be solved by modifying image bits directly using pointers.
  • Long main switch loop: Switch loop can be substituted by a function pointers but in C# that my be not the fancies solution. Anyway I stuck to this solution at least for learning purpose.

Download link

GitHub Releases

Source code

GitHub

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