Updated zig8's renderer to use streaming texture access to improve render performance.

#zig #ziglang #CHIP8 #gamedev

Trying to deal with buffer over/under runs in zig8's rather simple audio system.

Whenever I adjust the cycle rate of the emulator the sound gets out of sync. And at least in the sound test demo if you hold the key down to let the sound run a long time it starts to introduce delay.

#zig8 #CHIP8 #gamedev

This morning I'm working on improving the audio for zig8; moving the audio processing to a separate thread for more consistent timing and trying to get the sound just right so it's not so harsh. 😄

#ziglang #zig #CHIP8 #gamedev

made a #chip8 emulator with #rustlang

used #winit and #pixels to do the 2d rendering.

next up, intel8080!

There's some stuttering, not keeping the buffers full enough but it's a start.

https://github.com/agentultra/zig8

#ziglang #zig #CHIP8 #gamedev

Got the buzz test ROM working for zig8. You can has sound now.

Will still need some polish to make sure we degrade fine without sound if no default device is available.

Just cleaning up the code and will push it up soon.

#ziglang #zig #CHIP8 #gamedev

CHIP8 – writing emulator, assembler, example game and VHDL hardware impl

http://blog.dominikrudnik.pl/chip8-emulator-assembler-game-vhdl

#HackerNews #CHIP8 #Emulator #Assembler #VHDL #Game #Development

Switched to using SDL's audio API for zig8 to make things easier. Not that writing your own cross-platform backend in Zig is terribly hard.

Linux audio is just... a whole jungle I don't wanna have to support on my own.

#ziglang #zig #CHIP8 #gamedev

Added a toggle for the shader effect to zig8

#ziglang #zig #CHIP8 #gamedev

Zig8 now has swap-able color palettes! Defaults to white-on-black. But now we have a retro orange-on-dark-grey and gameboy inspired palettes as well. Works great with the CRT effect.

#ziglang #zig #CHIP8 #gamedev

Aha! It works! I'm using a public domain CRT shader by Timothy Lottes (thank you!) and it looks nice! From here I might hack it a bit to give it a nice glow effect.

#ziglang #zig #CHIP8 #gamedev

Sweet, I got the shaders compiling. Because they're pretty simple I just embed them in the Zig source instead of futzing around with the filesystem/build system.

Just gotta update the render code to render with our shader program!

#ziglang #zig #CHIP8 #gamedev

Shader compilation is coming along. Might be able to get it done and implement the shader tomorrow. For that retro feel.

I'm digging how easy it is to interface with C libraries in Zig.

We'll see how flexible the build system is when it comes time to do cross-platform releases.

#ziglang #zig #CHIP8 #gamedev

OpenGL initialization almost out of the way.

#ziglang #zig #CHIP8 #gamedev

Ok... going to work on this CRT shader for zig8 today.

#ziglang #zig #CHIP8 #gamedev

Alright, updated zig8 to have discrete display resizing. You can adjust the size as a percentage from the default size. Updates the window to match the display width.

Just makes it easier to adjust the size of the display without having to deal with window manager events and async programming.

#ziglang #zig #CHIP8 #chip8 #gamedev

I think I'm going to abandon dynamically resizing the CHIP-8 display based on the window client dimensions and stick with fixed sizes that you can adjust.

#ziglang #zig #CHIP8 #chip8 #gamedev

Working on getting resizing going for zig8. Then I might do a CRT shader and move onto experimenting with input buffering to see if it will help with responsiveness on slower clock speeds (or if I should just increase the clock speed range).

#ziglang #zig #CHIP8 #chip8 #gamedev

Alrighty, updated zig8 rendering to use textures. Should enable me to do easy re-scaling, palette swaps, and to integrate the visual debugger with IMGui later on.

#ziglang #zig #CHIP8 #chip8 #gamedev #emulator

Worked out the last instructions of base CHIP-8 and fixed the bugs I could find. Tested out with several hefty Chip-8 ROMs. zig8 is shaping up!

I have more of a roadmap to explore. Working on updating the rendering code and enabling swap-able color palettes.

I want to experiment with input buffering to make the inputs feel more responsive at lower CPU speeds.

And then on to implementing the visual debugger. I'll probably experiment with bringing in IMGui.

#ziglang #zig #CHIP8 #chip8 #gamedev #emulator