Developing Games for GBA?

I was thinking of developing a version of an upcoming game for Game Boy Advance/GBA SP that is simultaneously being developed for PC. However, even tho I have the HAM SDK for GBA, I'm not too sure where any carts or cables are available for developing a game and porting it onto the GBA cart. There was going to be a book published, but Nintendo talked them out of publishing that book. I just thought to myself that my game could be a good portable, handheld game on GBA as well as PC. I believe that C or ASM code would be the only languages that GBA uses, am I correct? I was almost considering porting a BlitzMax game project onto a cartridge, but I'm not too sure about the process of porting a game like that.

You may be able to reuse the resources like pics/sounds... as to code part, you may need to redo the programming....

Don't know the licensing thing tho.

Ahh, okay... Well, knowing Nintendo, their licensing is like "Fort Knox" unlike Sony or Microsoft. They don't get that "Official Nintendo Seal of Approval" license on the box for nothing... Then again, what are Nintendo's guidelines vs. that of the PC, Sony, or Microsoft XBox team, other than a game having to be "family friendly?"

Well, I guess that if you grab the dev kit from here:

http://www.jandaman.com/games.mvc?c=GBADEVKIT

As well as get the thumbs up from this guy:

http://www.miyamotoshrine.com/theman/photo/index.shtml

Then I should have a legit game for the GBA. Just have to convert it from Blitz to the HAM SDK via C or C++, or whatever the GBA SP uses, then we're all kosher.

@ 8IronBob, I have the .pdf version of the book that you are looking for.

oh, oh Please, Please I want PDF, I want PDF

Sweet, right here, my buddy!

rmgolf1@...

I was developing a game on the GBA for a while using GC++ using devkitadv. GBA Flash carts come with USB cables and software. THey can be imported from China and other such places where Nintendo has little sway.

I believe it was necessary to copy a header image off a "licensed" GBA Cart (I believe it's a graphic of the Nintendo Logo) in order to compile your own games - without this, carts won't run on the GBA. When I was fooling around with this stuff, the dev sites were too scared to include the header image with their dev kits, but gave explicit instructions on how to get one.

Copying an image [1] of a company's logo [2] for the purpose of using their hardware for an alternate (arguably fair) use than it was designed [3] theoretically violates:

1. International Copyright Law
2. Trademark Law
3. The DMCA

It's a dirty trick, but I'm positive I read about an analogous court case in the USA in which all three were overruled when a company was caught producing cloned printer ink cartridges which needed to have an image of the original manufacturer's logo on them in order to work. The cloner won. Hooray!

Heh, that's for cloning existing games, but if you still design your own game, convert it from Blitz code to C++, port it over to GBA, send your game concept to Nintendo, or a third party company, see if it meets their standards. If it does, well, then they may put it into mass production with your permission. For a company logo, well, I do somewhat have my own, but to apply my developer logo on there, that's gonna take some thinking... If you don't believe me, I'll just put together my opening game sequence in a minute.

On another note, tho, I'm sort of curious... Can the GBA SP only render 2D games, or can it do 3D? I really haven't noticed the possibilities... Also, what is the screen resolution supported? Last, but not least, what media formats can the GBA SP support? I currently run my games on .PNGs, .WAVs, and .MP3s. I'm not too sure if the GBA can recognize these formats...

Well, you gotta have a dream, I guess...

Yeah, and have Miyamoto-san give you the nod, hopefully... You may have a chance putting the game on an emulator program, then sending the ROM to a third-party, bigger company before anything like that happens...

Completely incorrect. Did you even read my post?

Hardware acceleration is 2d only - 3d must be done via software.



Maybe you also haven't noticed http://www.google.com/search?q=gba%20resolution



The hardware itself only supports the most basic bitmaps and raw audio samples - anything else must be converted via software.

You're not going to get anywhere if you don't learn to research this kind of basic stuff on your own.