Getting started in GBAdev
Welcome to GBAdev! If you have decided to try to develop something for the GBA and you're completely lost, this guide is for you. Note that this will only mention the most popular and recommended options. Check gbadev resources for a long list about many relevant toolkits and libraries you can use!
Developing your game
Broadly speaking there are 3 paths you can take to get started. Which one you choose depends on your previous knowledge about programming, and how much of your game you want to create yourself.
High level development
This is ideal if you just want to get a game done, without worrying too much about how the hardware works. Unfortunately, there is nothing similar to PC engines like Unity, Godot, and the GBA doesn't support languages like C#, Python or Java.
Our recommendation is to use butano, a C++ library that simplifies GBA development a lot. It has become quite popular, so you will easily get support for it. You should follow the getting started instructions. It comes with a lot of examples of how to use all its features, check them out!
If you prefer something higher level, BPCore-Engine is an engine that allows you to develop games using Lua as a language.
Low level development
If you're comfortable writing to I/O registers and reading low level documentation like GBATEK there are a few options:
C and C++
The most popular option is to use devkitARM and libtonc. Follow the instructions in the getting started guide to install devkitARM and check the examples and the template. Once you have verified that you can compile the examples read the tutorial Tonc (by the author of libtonc) to understand how GBA development goes.
libgba is another library provided by devkitPro, but it isn't as recommended as using libtonc. Both of them fulfill the same role, the main difference of the codebase is that libtonc has a text engine with lots of features. However, libtonc has way better documentation (libgba doesn't have almost any example or documentation).
If you want to use a completely different library than libtonc or libgba, you can try sdk-seven.
If you don't want to use devkitARM, there are some alternatives. For example, check gba-toolchain, which also supports libtonc and libgba, and it uses CMake instead of Makefiles.
meson-gba is another option. It uses the Meson build system, it integrates many of the libraries mentioned before (with bugfixes that devkitPro doesn't have), and it supports different compilers and runtime libraries. If you're using sdk-seven, you should really consider using this.
Some tutorials out there mention DevKit Advance. This is a very outdated toolchain (the last release was in 2003!), don't use it! Use devkitARM instead, which is updated regularly.
Assembly
Even though you don't need to use assembly to develop for GBA, it is still an option, and you will need it if you're creating things like a 3D game, or an audio mixer.
All of the C and C++ options also support assembly, so you can use them without any issues.
There is also gvasm if you want an option that only focuses on assembly.
Nim
Check Natu. It provides a library to write games and tooling to convert assets.
Rust
Check the agb library.
Development from scratch
If you don't want to use any libraries to create your game, it's possible to ignore all of them and create everything yourself. This is only recommended if you're very comfortable with low level development. It will be hard to get other people to help you if you're not using any of the popular libraries that other people use.
One example of how to build a GBA ROM from scratch with a regular ARM GCC toolchain can be found in GBA bootstrap.
Tutorials
Tonc is currently the best tutorial for GBA development.
Emulation
The recommended emulators are:
NanoBoyAdvance: The most accurate emulator at the moment. However, it doesn't have debugging options.
mGBA: Very accurate, and it is possible to connect the GNU debugger (GDB) to it and debug your games as if they were regular PC programs!
no$gba: Not as accurate as the other two, but it has an incredible debugger.
Note: VisualBoyAdvance is a very outdated emulator, and not very accurate. Prefer mGBA over VBA.
Community
Join us in discord! This link has an up-to-date invitation to the gbadev discord server were most of the GBA devs hang out nowadays. There is also a forum, if you prefer that.
