@gbadev

19 Followers
12 Following
66 Posts
The Game Boy Advance development community. Pushing new documentation, development tools and educational material while promoting the homebrew development scene
websitehttp://gbadev.net/
githubhttps://github.com/gbadev-org
discordhttps://discord.io/gbadev

If you haven't heard the latest big news yet, thanks to tremendous efforts of @avivace and @exelotl both @gbdev and @gbadev Mastodon accounts have been moved to a brand new dedicated instance @ fedi.gbdev.io!

Unfortunately, unlike for GBDev account, we weren't able to successfully transfer GBADev account's follower list during migration, so while we're still sorting things out, feel free to spread the word about our move in the meantime!

uxnds 0.4.4 is out, quickly catching up with the latest breaking architectural change from upstream:

https://github.com/asiekierka/uxnds/releases/tag/v0.4.4
Release uxnds 0.4.4 · asiekierka/uxnds

[NDS] Update to BlocksDS 0.8. Implement breaking screen drawing behaviour change.

GitHub

Announcing the upcoming Kickstarter for Collie Defense!
My new #TowerDefense game for the #GameBoyAdvance published by @TheRetroRoomRoo

Made with @deepnight’s LDtk and the help of the @gbadev community.

Sign up to be notified on the launch, so don't miss it!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/elland/collie-defense

New #GBA homebrew games and game ports that were submitted to the recent GMTK Game Jam 2023:

The Dungeon Puzzler's Lament — help the player get through dungeons by putting items and obstacles in the right places: https://setsquare.itch.io/dungeon-puzzlers-lament

Swapple — a reverse snake game where you play as fruit trying to cause a game over with minimal sacrifices: https://squareheron942.itch.io/swapple

Sleeping Construction — use movable platforms to guide a hard hat through the construction site: https://gitout.itch.io/sleeping-construction

The Dungeon Puzzler's Lament by setsquare, LostImmortal

What happens if the heroes can't solve your puzzles any more?

itch.io

@JoaoBapt is working on a #GameBoyAdvance version of Conway's Game of Life with heavy emphasis on optimizing the simulation for GBA's limited hardware — https://github.com/JoaoBaptMG/gba-conway

#GBADev

GitHub - JoaoBaptMG/gba-conway: Conway's Game of Life on the GBA

Conway's Game of Life on the GBA. Contribute to JoaoBaptMG/gba-conway development by creating an account on GitHub.

GitHub

Homebrew Games Summer Showcase 2023 is a video presentation of the latest in homebrew scene that has premiered June 29th of this year on YouTube — https://youtu.be/1AGMEZvU14g

Expect to see plenty of upcoming and already available #GameBoy and #GameBoyColor titles, as well as a handful of #GameBoyAdvance games and game ports, among 140 releases by 116 developers and dev teams spanning 17 retro consoles and handhelds!

Homebrew Games Summer Showcase 2023

YouTube

So, a brief update on the last few GBA cartridges that are currently unemulated. These carts have unique hardware that needs to be reverse-engineered (sometimes extensively), which makes them difficult to implement. Additionally, they're pretty rare and expensive.

There's only 3 of them: Nintendo Play-Yan, Glucoboy, and Campho Advance. I call them the "Triforce of Terror" because they're not easy to emulate. Each one is a monumental challenge in its own way.

#emulation #gba

STEPPER v1.4 is out!

This update adds CV and audio sync as well as theming support and UI improvements. I was so happy I had to do a new demo to celebrate!

Demo:
https://youtu.be/alqqxq4blh8

Available now on itch:
https://badd10de.itch.io/stepper-gba

Devlog:
https://badd10de.itch.io/stepper-gba/devlog/539905/stepper-v14

Source code:
https://git.badd10de.dev/stepper/

#musodon #musicproduction #gbadev

STEPPER v1.4 is out! A 16-step sequencer for the Game Boy Advance

YouTube

fun #gbadev thing I learned this week:

if you disable DMA at the exact same moment that it internally starts (within a few CPU cycles), the whole GBA will lock up.

So, say you're using HBlank DMA to achieve one of those fancy scanline parallax effects. When cleaning up the scene you want to stop the effect, so you cancel the DMA right away in your main game code.

Bad news! You've now introduced a 1 in 400 chance that the game will crash any time the player dies, goes through a door, etc. Only on hardware, not on emulators! Even worse, in some cases (from what I can tell) it will trash _all_ the memory, obliterating their save file!

The solution is simple: just make sure to only clear DMA when you're certain DMA is not about to trigger (e.g. at the start of your VBlank handler). But woww I can't believe it's taken all these years for me to learn about this!

It is now possible to use your #GameBoyAdvance as a USB gamepad thanks to copyrat90's gba-pico-gamepad project! It allows to set up communications with a GBA through a Raspberry Pi Pico and a GBA Link Cable, as well as provides support for several input APIs. Detailed info on building and usage can be found at project's Github page: https://github.com/copyrat90/gba-pico-gamepad

Watch a demo video showcasing a GBA used as a gamepad for various systems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmBufgcb4Gw

#GBADev

GitHub - copyrat90/gba-pico-gamepad: Proof-of-concept GBA to USB controller, which uses RPi Pico as a bridge.

Proof-of-concept GBA to USB controller, which uses RPi Pico as a bridge. - GitHub - copyrat90/gba-pico-gamepad: Proof-of-concept GBA to USB controller, which uses RPi Pico as a bridge.

GitHub