chip8wasm

This crate provides a wasm-bindgen wrapper around the CHIP-8 core emulator from chip8sys. It exposes a web-friendly API for JavaScript and TypeScript clients while keeping emulator logic inside the Rust core.

Repository: https://github.com/nebulous-code/chip-8

Install (crates.io)

cargo add chip8wasm

Build for Web

Use wasm-pack to build the package for browser consumption.

wasm-pack build --target web --out-dir pkg --out-name chip8wasm

The output in pkg/ is a standard ES module package that front ends can consume via bundlers like Vite.

JavaScript Usage

import initWasm, { Chip8Wasm } from "chip8wasm";

async function run(romBytes) {
  await initWasm();
  const emulator = new Chip8Wasm();

  emulator.loadRom(romBytes);
  emulator.tick(10);
  emulator.tickTimers(1);

  const framebuffer = emulator.framebuffer();
  console.log(framebuffer.length);
}

run(romBytes);

API Highlights

• loadRom(romBytes) loads a ROM byte buffer.
• tick(cycles) advances CPU cycles.
• tickTimers(ticks) advances delay/sound timers.
• setKeys(mask) sets keypad state via a bitmask.
• framebuffer() returns an unpacked pixel array.

Related Crates

• chip8sys: The emulator core that chip8wasm wraps.

Contributing

Fork the repository and open a pull request with the changes.