Kiwi-8

A cross-platform Chip-8 interpreter written in C-style C++ using SDL2, ImGui, and OpenGL.

Compatibility Notes
Downloads

Features

• Windows and MacOS
• Graphical user interface
• Audio
• Color customizer
• CPU frequency selection
• Command line support
• No SCHIP support

Controls

controls        <-->        keybindings

1 2 3 C                     1 2 3 4
4 5 6 D                     q w e r
7 8 9 E                     a s d f
A 0 B F                     z x c v
increase speed              page up
decrease speed              page down
quit                        esc
toggle fullscreen           enter
toggle menu                 left alt
show fps                    right alt
soft reset                  f5
pause                       p
mute                        m

Usage

Kiwi8 [filename] [-FMLSV]
-F      Launch in fullscreen
-M      Launch with audio muted
-L      Disable load/store quirk
-S      Disable shift quirk
-V      Disable vertical wrapping

Building on Windows

The following must be installed and added to your PATH:

vcvarsall
cl
python3
nmake

1. Change current working directory

   cd Windows

2. Configure environment for 64-bit architecture

   vcvarsall.bat x86_amd64

3. Compile with Microsoft's nmake utility

   nmake

Building on MacOS

The following must be installed and added to your PATH:

install_name_tool
clang
python3
make

1. Change current working directory

   cd MacOS

2. Compile with GNU's make utility

   make

Resources

• Chip-8 wikipedia
• Emu-Docs
• Cowgod's Chip-8 Technical Reference
• SDL Wiki
• ImGui
• /r/EmuDev

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"I can highly recommend this project to anyone wanting to get their feet wet in reverse-engineering, game-programming, and/or cross-platform development. It's been a great educational excercise involving major aspects of modern day applications such as input handling, user-interface design, 2D graphics rendering, audio generation, code profiling and more!"

- Tom