Chip'N'im-8 | Chip-8 Emulator

[FlanGrande]

Hi there,

I'm getting started with Nim. As a first project, I made a Chip-8 emulator a while ago. Eventually, I decided I wanted to have a proper UI around it for debugging and choosing roms. It's not the most comprehensive emulator out there, but hey, it's mine 😄

After looking around for good UI libraries for Nim, I finally found godot-nim, and it's AMAZING.
I don't know how you pulled it off, but the way Nim is integrated within Godot it's simply flawless. Pretty much everything I needed to do (2D), I could. Note though that I mainly used it for UI and interfacing.

Chip'N'im-8

The reason of this post is that I would like to add it to the demos repo for anyone to use, but I have nooo clue how to do it. I have never contributed to other people repos, so I'd appreciate a helping hand to do it. I thought of adding it as a submodule, but it's up to you! I will probably not update it much more if at all.

I don't if this is realistic, but I would love, if possible, to have someone check the code and tell me how am I doing in terms of writing... Nimonic code 🤣

[panno8M]

Very well done project. Glad to see such a great piece of work.

The reason of this post is that I would like to add it to the demos repo for anyone to use,

It will be easiest to run git subtree to get the project in, but I think it's not a bad idea for you to follow this guide and practice contributing.
In any case, you can delegate it to me but, I would like to find your name in the Contributors section so would like you to do this work if possible.
I will be responsible for the migration associated with the gdext-nim update.

I'm adding the contribution guide to godot-nim/demo now, so you'll have to wait a bit for the details.

if possible, to have someone check the code and tell me how...

I've looked over your project and I think it's well written, you've written it in the way Nim and gdext-nim recommend, and you've mastered the standard libraries. I thought it would be possible to handle a large number of Labels in an seq, but that's not really necessary. That's about all I can point out, to be honest.
Cheers to Nim's ease of writing and your skills!

[panno8M]

It may be better to put the chip-8/ directory directly under src/. classes/ is the directory where Godot class files are placed.

Pretty much everything I needed to do (2D), I could.

It sounds like there is something you wanted to do but couldn't. Can you tell us it to improve our library?

[FlanGrande]

I meant to mention it actually.
Literally the only thing was I tried to use
vector2.One
But the compiler kept complaining:
Undeclared field: 'One'

It could be something I am doing wrong, however, I can use vector2 normally, so instead I did
vector2(1.0, 1.0)

Which worked.

vector2.One is in vector2.One so I expected it to work.

I tried vector2.Up too and it doesn't work either.

As far as I recall everything else worked!

[panno8M]

Since those constants are defined for types, you should do the following:

Vector2.One
Vector2.Up

Note that Vector2 is capitalized; vector2 is the constructor and Vector2 is the type name.

[panno8M]

CONTRIBUTING.md added. It is probably sufficient material to proceed the work.
Please reply to this comment if anything is unclear.

[FlanGrande]

Thanks for that, I will have a look. Did you try to run the emulator?

Nim's code could manage thousands of labels easily, but Godot was using GBs of RAM in the process. That's probably a skill issue on my part, there must be a better way (apart from lazy loading which I hate implementing 😆)

[panno8M]

I just got it running.
chip-8/globals depends on sdl3, so the build won't pass unless sdl3 is installed. i think you need to isolate the dependence on sdl3 to the sdl3 rendering backend, or put that in the README.

And you should also mention in the README that people needs to run git submodule update --init once.

[FlanGrande]

I forgot about SDL3, I think is not in use for the Godot version so I will get rid of it. It's some legacy code from the initial version I made without Godot.

[FlanGrande]

I also get this error when I run the editor:

wizard editor*     Info: godot executable found. launching...
ERROR: Error loading GDExtension configuration file: 'res://nim/src/classes/ChipNim8.gdextension'.
   at: parse_gdextension_file (core/extension/gdextension_library_loader.cpp:275)
ERROR: GDExtension dynamic library not found: 'res://nim/src/classes/ChipNim8.gdextension'.
   at: open_library (core/extension/gdextension.cpp:701)
ERROR: Error loading extension: 'res://nim/src/classes/ChipNim8.gdextension'.
   at: load_extensions (core/extension/gdextension_manager.cpp:291)

In case it helps, there's no gdextension files in /nim/src/classes

[panno8M]

Maybe once you have launched with .gdextension in classes. There is probably some cache left over from that time.

I think if you delete the .godot/ and then reopen the editor, it will fix it.

[FlanGrande]

If you don't mind, I will do a PR with the project as it is now, then later on I will update the README.md of my project with better information about my emulator to also learn about updating the fork after an initial PR has been done, although I believe is pretty much the same process?

This is to have practice in case I introduce some new feature in the future. Unlikely thou.

[panno8M]

I don't mind. I too wanted that opportunity when I first started using git. Take advantage of it.