Space Invaders

An emulator for the original Space Invaders cabinet based on the 8080 CPU.

Instructions

Compiling the project

You will need to install Rust and SDL2 in order to compile the emulator. The GitHub repo for the SDL2 Rust bindings details the installation process.

Once these requirements are fulfilled, the project can be compiled by running the following command in the project's root directory:

$ cargo build --release

Running the emulator

This emulator does not ship with the Space Invaders ROM, this will need to be sourced separately. Typically, this ROM is distributed as a collection of *.e, *.f, *.g and *.h files. These files will need to be concatenated as as follows to be used with this emulator (filenames may vary):

$ cat invaders.{h,g,f,e} > invaders.rom

Once the emulator has been compiled and the ROM file has been generated, the emulator can be invoked as follows:

$ ./target/release/emu /path/to/invaders.rom

Controls

Once the emulator starts, the game will go into "demo mode". To start the actual game you need to insert a coin by pressing the C key. This will start player 1's turn. Player 1 can begin their turn by pressing the left Ctrl key. Once in the game, the player character can be moved left and right with A and D respectively. Shooting can be done with the Space key.

Missing features

Player 2 controls
Sound
Game configuration

License

Licensed under the MIT License.