CHIP-8 MC

An experimental CHIP-8 emulator in Minecraft 1.16.2. Inspired by SethBling's Atari 2600 emulator.

Features

• Implements all CHIP-8 opcodes from Cowgod's Technical Reference
• Fully functioning 64x32 monochrome display
• Runs on Minecraft's 20 Hz clock (the timers also decrement at 20 Hz)
  • About 3 fps
• Fully functional on-screen keyboard in the chat window (set focused height to 40 px in chat settings)
  • Buttons work by toggling on and off
• Preloaded with some ROMS (more can be added)
• Basic debug tracelog with opcode and PC
• SOUND IS NOT IMPLEMENTED (and I don't plan to because Minecraft doesnt have a tone generator)

How it works can be found in technical.md.

Usage

• Create a new world in Creative mode and set the world type to superflat void.
• Download chip8mc.zip and place it into the datapacks folder.
• Upon load, a wall of white wool should appear. This is the screen. Face the screen looking towards positive X.
• Load a rom with /function roms:<rom_name> and start the emulator with /function chip8:start.
• The on-screen keyboard should appear. Click individual buttons to toggle them on/off (set focused height to 40 px in chat settings).
• To enable debug output into the chat, run /scoreboard players set Global enable_debug 1.
  • Chat is output to Minecraft logs which can be accessed to see a tracelog

Adding new ROMs

• Place the ROM binary into the python_helpers folder.
• Edit line 3 in rom_to_scoreboard.py to say with open('<file name + extension>', 'rb') as f:.
• Edit line 6 to say with open('<..\data\\roms\\functions\\<rom_name>.mcfunction', 'w') as f:.
• Run rom_to_scoreboard.py.
• Activate the new ROM in game with /function roms:<rom_name>.