CHIP-8 Interepreter / Emulator for Tulip Creative Computer

Set up a Tulip Desktop environment via the the instructions for the following project: https://github.com/shorepine/tulipcc

Install SDL2

# Ubuntu etc
sudo apt install libsdl2-dev libffi-dev

# Fedora etc
sudo dnf install SDL2-devel libffi-devel

# Arch
sudo pacman -S sdl2 libffi

Build and Run Tulip Desktop

git clone https://github.com/shorepine/tulipcc.git
cd tulipcc/tulip/linux

# Build Tulip Desktop (installs to ~/.local/share/tulipcc)
./build.sh

# Run Tulip Desktop
./dev/tulip

# Navigate to Tulip Desktop default user directory
cd ~/.local/share/tulipcc/user

# Get Tulip8
git clone https://github.com/stewlab/tulip8.git
git -C tulip8 submodule update --init

# start Tulip Desktop
cd <tulipcc_project_dir>/tulip/linux
./dev/tulip

note: Run this in Tulip Desktop or another Tulip CC environment

# Be sure you are in ~/.local/share/tulipcc/user (or /user if on an actual device)
cd("<host_user_home_dir>/.local/tulipcc/user")

# Run Tulip8 w/ default program
run('tulip8')

# Run a custom CHIP-8 program custom
# 1. edit tulip8/tulip8.py, and change the following line to point to your custom .ch8 file
program_path = "slipperyslope.ch8"
# 2. save the file, and run tulip8 again

Chip-8 uses a hexadecimal keypad layout. Here's a visual representation:

Note: Esc exits the app

**User Keyboard**
1 2 3 4
Q W E R
A S D F
Z X C V

maps to

**Chip-8 Keyboard**
1 2 3 C
4 5 6 D
7 8 9 A
0 B F E

This is designed so that you can use chip8.py in pretty much any Python Frontend application. It just needs to be constructed with methods to draw pixels, and play/stop a beep/tone

# Chip8 class constructor from chip8.py
 def __init__(
        self,
        screen_width,
        screen_height,
        draw_pixel_callback=None,
        play_audio_callback=None,
    ):

• Working features

  • keyboard input
  • audio
  • graphics
  • loading external .ch8 files

• Needs work

  • speed / optimization
  • key_up implementation