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Beginners > need a build script (Linux NOT Cygwin)

#32155 - spiroth10 - Sat Dec 18, 2004 7:27 pm

Im not really a newb to coding... I have some C knowledge, though Im not a great coder... Im pretty sure I can at least do something with a GBA...

I want to setup a Dev environment, and as everyone says devkit advance is the best, Id like a build script for it. I KNOW ITS BEEN PULLED OFF THE WEB.
I dont really care if Im doing something that theyre supportive of or not...

I dont wanna use HAM, because it's too cluttered with extra stuff (I.E. Emacs, gedit, mcedit, or any other text editor I already have is good enough...)

and most of all, windows crashes too much, so I dont want to use that (Im using it now so I can play GBS/GSF/etc. files on winamp)

lastly, no matter how much it sucks, I cant afford a flash cart... I have $19.00, so Im going to be testing on VBA, unless I can get some tools REALLY cheap, which I seriously doubt. Will this be good enough?

thanks in advance...

#32161 - Dib - Sat Dec 18, 2004 9:04 pm

I would never, ever recommend a person developing a GBA game unless they have a flash cart. What's on your PC does not look or act the same as what ends up on the actual hardware. What seems distinguishable with detailed sprites on one may not be so on the other. Palettes are known to differ as well.

In my experience with VBA especially, I've never had any game run at exactly 100% speed all the time, it's always variable. How would you know if your bin on the GBA hardware won't experience slow down in some areas? Or that it won't run too fast or too slow?

And on a less technical point, nothing is more rewarding while developing than seeing your work on the actual hardware.

#32428 - valefor - Wed Dec 22, 2004 7:58 pm

Perhaps the script given at http://www.lifl.fr/RD2P/JITS/GBADevelopmentOnLinux will help you.

I was looking for the same thing as you and it was very difficult to find a 'unifed' tutorial (a lot of different versions, with mistakes, etc). So i decided to write an Howto. It is not finish yet, but you can get a preview at http://paul.chavent.free.fr/gba-howto.html . It's in french for now but i have contacted some person to translate it. When it will be finish i will submit it to the ldp. Every suggestions are welcome !

#32435 - Abscissa - Wed Dec 22, 2004 9:26 pm

spiroth10 wrote:
I want to setup a Dev environment, and as everyone says devkit advance is the best


It's not, it's dead. Hasn't been updated in ages. Use DevKitARM (http://www.devkit.tk) instead.

#32484 - sgeos - Thu Dec 23, 2004 6:27 am

spiroth10 wrote:
I cant afford a flash cart... I have $19.00, so Im going to be testing on VBA, unless I can get some tools REALLY cheap

That's about enough for an MBV2 cable. Not a flash cart, but it's better than nothing. =)

-Brendan

#32488 - gauauu - Thu Dec 23, 2004 8:54 am

Dib wrote:
I would never, ever recommend a person developing a GBA game unless they have a flash cart. What's on your PC does not look or act the same as what ends up on the actual hardware. .....

And on a less technical point, nothing is more rewarding while developing than seeing your work on the actual hardware.


Wow, that's a strong recommendation.

How about when the person decides it would be fun to learn GBA programming, but wants to try it out a little before sinking the cash into a flash cart?

Or if you are working on a team, and there's 1 flash card that your teammate in bangladesh owns....that's probably fine for the real testing, so it won't hurt you to do the testing on an emulator.

Ok, sorry, I'm way off topic. I'll stop now.