gbadev.org forum archive

This is a read-only mirror of the content originally found on forum.gbadev.org (now offline), salvaged from Wayback machine copies. A new forum can be found here.

Beginners > Dev environment setup/getting started

#5492 - OrangyTang - Tue Apr 29, 2003 7:07 pm

Hi everyone, I've just got my hands on the MB v2 cable to start programming for the GBA, and I'm wondering the best place to start. I've been programming a while now, completed several games in Java and been programming in C++ for almost a year now. A few questions:

I did C programming for a course at uni, but havn't touched it since. Is it worth coding in C for the gba, or should I be fine with C++? Is there any particular gotchas with using C++ other than avoiding fancy polymorphic code?

I'm pretty familiar with Visual Studio, is there any way to setup a gba project so i can get single click compile? I assume I'd need some sort of custom makefiles, but beyond that i'm not sure. Edit: I see theres something linked in the FAQ, i'm heading there now..

Since i'll be using a link cable, not a flash cart, is there any differences i should be aware of? (other than 256kb limit and the different memory start position). I did see metioned that WRAM performed best with one type of code, but can't remember whether it was ARM or Thumb - do i need to worry about this? In a similar way, will the fact that i'll be testing on a GBA SP change anything? (i'd guess not, but you never know..)

Whats currently the best emulator out there for development? Still VisualBoyAdvance?

Thanks![/url]

#5496 - Daikath - Tue Apr 29, 2003 7:47 pm

the most used emulator is VisualBoyAdvance.

Go to www.gbadev.org and go to tool -> emulators -> devkitadv and after you downloaded that go to tools -> misc -> gba apwizard. Then you get to choose GBA project from MS Visual C++ 6.0. Just make sure that the Devdir in the make file is ok. Otherwise it wont compile.

Also select build instead of compile :), somehting else to look out for (if your not too experiened with makefiles). Go to the O_FILES bit in the makefile and put there the C file (if) you want to add and add filename.o instead of C.

Then put this line in the main C file.
extern const u16 SilohData[]; (this is an example for a array, something similair would be neccecary for functions. This helps keep the code tidy).
_________________
?There are no stupid questions but there are a LOT of inquisitive idiots.?