Octo, the CHIP-8 IDE

Developers
,
1

CHIP-8 is a virtual game console dating to the late 1970s. Thanks to its simplicity it has become something of a rite of passage for anyone interested in writing emulators. Over the past few years I’ve built a collection of development tools for this platform, and the user community has written dozens of interesting games and programs.

I recently ported the whole toolbox to C and SDL2, creating the same kind of all-in-one game creation tool as “Fantasy Consoles” like TIC-80 and PICO-8:

yd9vpx

I know that Octode runs great on the PocketCHIP, and I imagine that it would be even better on a device like DevTerm! Code for the project is here:

Any interest?

9 Likes
2

Just in case anyone is curious, I recorded some clips showing how Octode would look given the resolution and aspect ratio of the DevTerm.

At 1x (which may be rather hard to read on a real DevTerm):

horizontal
horizontal1275×476 320 KB

And with the UI scaled to 2x (ui.win_scale=2 in the config file):

horizontal-2
horizontal-21275×476 424 KB

As you can see, the user interface is suited fairly well to a wide aspect ratio. It doesn’t hurt that CHIP-8 itself has a rather unusual 2:1 aspect ratio to begin with!

2 Likes
3

@JohnEarnest Thanks for links and samples. Welcome to the community!

4

Many months later, here it is running on the real hardware, at 2x scale:

editor
editor800×439 81.6 KB

The wide format display is a great match for CHIP-8’s 2:1 aspect ratio. Here it’s running Super Neatboy:

gameplay
gameplay800×454 74.1 KB

The built-in gamepad worked out of the box. While the mouse is a bit slow to navigate with, everything important has keyboard shortcuts.

6 Likes
5

Nice work on this IDE, it’s looks fun!
Is this C-Octo running on the DevTerm or the web version?

6

C-Octo runs directly on the device. The web version would probably also work in a browser on the DevTerm, but the UI wouldn’t be as pleasant to use, and performance/battery life would probably suffer. Apart from the “fantasy console” frontend, C-Octo also comes with a command-line frontend called octo-run which simply compiles and executes a source file; it combines nicely with anyone’s favorite text editor.

Incidentally, if anyone is interested in a reason to play with Octo, there’s a CHIP-8 game jam happening in October!

1 Like