pirx Posted January 14, 2006 Share Posted January 14, 2006 (edited) Hi! This is possibly the final (or close to final) version of my Chip8 and SuperChip8 emulator. This time almost all games are instantly playable because I mapped various keyboard settings to our favourite Atari game controller (joystick that is). Other changes include: ; Added sound emulation ; Configured all games for use with joystick ; Adjusted emulation speed for (almost) all games ; Removed faulty game X_MIRROR (this file was corrupt) ; Added configuration file ; Added joystick mapping to Chip8 keys ; Fixed directory listing under SpartaDos (X). It runs from HDD now. ; Fixed inversed shooting - it shoots correctly when a key is pressed. ; Reduced flickering a bit in Chip8 mode ; Fixed faulty scrolling routines (ANT is perfectly playable now!) Right now this is the best Chip8 emulator known to me . Too bad most of old games are lost on tapes of the pre-internetian era. Please let me know if you find any faults in this software or if you find any not included games for Chip8. If anyone is interested, I will release sources, too. Have fun! Edited January 17, 2006 by pirx 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted January 14, 2006 Share Posted January 14, 2006 one of the strangest emulator ever... after my pokemon mini emu!!! Pirx - you rock! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pirx Posted January 15, 2006 Author Share Posted January 15, 2006 after my pokemon mini emu!!! Heaven, did you do Pokemon Mini emulator for 8-bit Atari? I wanted to do it next Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted January 15, 2006 Share Posted January 15, 2006 re: pokemon mini emu i have one for PC when i was interested what this small beast can do... but are you sure that the 800 is fast enough to do that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pirx Posted January 15, 2006 Author Share Posted January 15, 2006 (edited) but are you sure that the 800 is fast enough to do that? Well, it would be too slow for the real, fully-blown emulation, but it might be possible to run recompiled Pokemon Mini games on 800. Let me explain this concept in greater detail: some 15 years ago I came up with the idea of emuler (one of the neologisms I loved to make up these days). Emuler is a set of utilities that gets software written for one machine, disassembles it, detects data areas, translates mnemonics from one microprocessor to another and assembles an executable for another machine. My source platform was meant to be ZX Spectrum (I bought one with Btronic to test this concept), destination platform would be Atari 800 of course. I wrote down some algorithms but later we shifted to making C64 conversions where this whole idea was not feasible due to serious differences between A800 and C64 (first of all sprites, attributes and character set lengths, not speaking about sound). So our C64 conversions were programmed from scratch using C64 graphics only. Another problem that came up when analyzing Z80 code was self-modifying code that sometimes pops up, but this would be not a case for ROM based machines, like Pokemon Mini. Of course this task would be VERY difficult (being possibly the most difficult thing I ever did on A800), but seems feasible but one small detail - memory usage. Pokemon Mini uses the whole 64 KB with one small empty space where stack is meant to be and juggling with 130XE+ banks would definitely slow down the whole thing a lot, not mentioning 20-bit data addressing. To prove the emuler idea is not as preposterous as one could think we manually converted Power Depacker from Amiga to A800 in this fasion: I made MAC65 macros for all M68K menmonics used in Power Packer and then we just copied mnemonic for mnemonic the Amiga routine to A800. I worked at FIRST run. Of course later Nosek/BC did the same routine in pure 6502 code making it shorter and run faster. Edited January 15, 2006 by pirx Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pirx Posted January 15, 2006 Author Share Posted January 15, 2006 (edited) To sum up - playing Pokemon Mini games on A800 is feasible but quite remotely. Edited January 15, 2006 by pirx Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
www.atarimania.com Posted January 15, 2006 Share Posted January 15, 2006 (edited) Now I understand why a number of games from Mirage Software looked like straight C64 ports -- Atari Frog http://www.atarimania.com Edited January 15, 2006 by www.atarimania.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
miker Posted January 15, 2006 Share Posted January 15, 2006 Hi Pirx! There's some problem during loading the game on real machine. The load suddenly stops. Maybe some interrupts are on or somethink. On emu all seems to be OK. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pirx Posted January 16, 2006 Author Share Posted January 16, 2006 There's some problem during loading the game on real machine. The load suddenly stops. Thanks Miker for this report. Could someone check if the previous version (beta) loaded fine on the real A800? Unfortunately I do not have the real stuff available and emulator seems to be too forgiving. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
miker Posted January 16, 2006 Share Posted January 16, 2006 Pirx: yes, it worked fine. I have tested it already. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pirx Posted January 17, 2006 Author Share Posted January 17, 2006 The version included here (1.1) should work on the real thing. Additionally joystick to keyboard mapping has been improved a bit. chip8.zip 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
krupkaj Posted January 18, 2006 Share Posted January 18, 2006 (edited) Have not tried this version on real Atari, but on emulator it looks great! Thanks for release. BTW what about joystick control in game list screen? Edited January 18, 2006 by krupkaj Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pirx Posted January 19, 2006 Author Share Posted January 19, 2006 BTW what about joystick control in game list screen? Would be some rewrite work as the file selector is reading "K:" at the moment. I can release the sources for anyone interested in changing this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pirx Posted February 6, 2006 Author Share Posted February 6, 2006 As I got few requests here comes the messy source code for the Chip8 emulator/interpreter. Have fun! chip8_v1_1_src.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted February 6, 2006 Share Posted February 6, 2006 ? really written in Mac/65? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pirx Posted February 6, 2006 Author Share Posted February 6, 2006 ? really written in Mac/65? Well, no - I have assembled it with OMC65 that is meant to be compatible with MAC (but is not, unfortunately). It should assemble under MAC65, though, after very few adjustments like removing .rept directive. If I happen to do something new on A800 I would rather choose ATASM http://sourceforge.net/projects/atasm/ It is much better than OMC65 in terms of compatibility (besides one unpleasant feature of not accepting dots "." in names of macros and labels). You can download OMC65 from the web page listed in my footer. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClausB Posted January 2, 2023 Share Posted January 2, 2023 On 1/14/2006 at 4:17 PM, pirx said: ... if you find any not included games for Chip8. I typed in the Rocket game from Weisbecker's original 1978 BYTE article. BYTE1278.CH8 3 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClausB Posted January 2, 2023 Share Posted January 2, 2023 https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1978-12 Page 120 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pirx Posted January 8, 2023 Author Share Posted January 8, 2023 (edited) @ClausB WOW What a blast from the past!!! If you could find a couple more games I'd made a new release - convert the sources to MADS and add joystick to the main menu. Edited January 8, 2023 by pirx Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slydc Posted January 8, 2023 Share Posted January 8, 2023 How about 200 Chip-8 games ? Just go here and download what you need: https://archive.org/details/chip-8-games 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pirx Posted January 8, 2023 Author Share Posted January 8, 2023 (edited) not a bad idea at all, but it would be great to get some help in selecting them, some do not work, some are duplicates, etc. (from what I remember) also my interpreter maps keys to a joystick, so a mapping would be super nice Edited January 8, 2023 by pirx Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slydc Posted January 8, 2023 Share Posted January 8, 2023 All the games does work as they have been tested with Emma 02. Some had bugs but Marcel (the author of Emma 02) has corrected them. Almost all the games have a ".txt" file which usually gives a small description of the game and which keys does what based on the original hex pad on the Cosmac VIP. The best would try them and select the best games to put with your emulator. I would love to help out but i don't have much spare time (like 1-2 hours per week). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pirx Posted January 13, 2023 Author Share Posted January 13, 2023 (edited) @slydc i looked again at the archive and it is very nice indeed! And my interpreter runs also super chip 8, so like 400 gamies could be there 😮 1-2 hours per week is just about perfect, we are not fighting for a deadline anyway. and who knows, maybe it won't be a big deal to add emulation of the other extended formats. anyways, i'll scrap a bit of time and revive the project in github https://github.com/pkali/Chip-8 the most important file is https://github.com/pkali/Chip-8/blob/master/CHIP8.CFG it contains mapping of the keys to a joystick, this was quite time consuming task, so I will be super happy to get any help here. I could also add mapping to the second controller, I've noticed some 2plr games there. Edited January 14, 2023 by pirx 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cas Posted April 30, 2023 Share Posted April 30, 2023 @pirx Hi Pawel, thank you very much for the CHIP-8 interpreter. I'm currently writing an article on CHIP-8 for the upcoming ABBUC magazine (June 2023). An English translation of the article will be available for free on AtariWiki. I would like to include the CHIP-8 interpreter on the magazine disk, if that is permitted (there is no licensing information on the Github repo). My hope is to spark some interest on CHIP-8 so that more programs are written or adapted for the Atari CHIP-8 interpreter. I'm creating a page in the AtariWiki with information on CHIP-8 and information an all CHIP-8 programs that have been successfully tested on the Atari CHIP-8 interpreter. I've also tried to assemble the CHIP-8 interpreter from source with "omc", but failed (Phase error in "fr55", I've opened in issue on Github). Maybe you have an idea what is causing this issue. A port of the sources to MADS as you hinted in January would be great. Greetings Carsten 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr SQL Posted May 1, 2023 Share Posted May 1, 2023 On 1/15/2006 at 9:44 AM, pirx said: Let me explain this concept in greater detail: some 15 years ago I came up with the idea of emuler (one of the neologisms I loved to make up these days). Emuler is a set of utilities that gets software written for one machine, disassembles it, detects data areas, translates mnemonics from one microprocessor to another and assembles an executable for another machine. My source platform was meant to be ZX Spectrum (I bought one with Btronic to test this concept), destination platform would be Atari 800 of course. I wrote down some algorithms but later we shifted to making C64 conversions where this whole idea was not feasible due to serious differences between A800 and C64 (first of all sprites, attributes and character set lengths, not speaking about sound). So our C64 conversions were programmed from scratch using C64 graphics only. Wow your description of Emuler from 15 years ago about an idea you had 15 years before in 1992 is very similar to the design concept I used for my Commodore 64 Atari 2600 Emulator GameLoader (recent sound example). Part emulator and part source translator, it creates a standalone prg binary. Does the A8 CHIP-8 emu work this way creating a native A8 binary from CHIP-8 instructions? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.