GBA Dev

XPCportables · Post by **XPCportables** » Sun Nov 12, 2006 9:04 pm

I have been really interested in developing an RPG for GBA lately, so I was wondering, do any of you guys program for GBA or know of any good tools and such. I am trying to learn C at the moment so I will be able to program for it, but wanted to know if anybody here would be able to help me if I were to run into problems or something. I was also wondering, is there a way to clear official gba carts, and write a new rom onto them with a flash cart programmer, because if there is, it would be a great way to cheaply distribute my game later.

timmeh87 · Post by **timmeh87** » Sun Nov 12, 2006 11:06 pm

id assume gba cartridges are write-once as apposed to any kind of flash. its cheaper.

Reaperman@home · Post by **Reaperman@home** » Mon Nov 13, 2006 6:54 am

they call it ROM for a reason. you'd expect not to be able to rewrite them or else we would be flashing them in our gba-writers instead of having to buy expensive flashcarts for that purpose.

A complex RPG is probably not the way to learn programming, but whatever. You'll figure that out. Ham's a pretty good system, but I always found dragonbasic easier to use. and it's free now. don't let anybody tell you that gba is hard to program for, it's far easier to get into than GP2X, for example.

sammy · Post by **sammy** » Mon Nov 13, 2006 11:33 am

I'd suggest buying a simple flash card reader instead of trying to use a rom. I've seen a Japanese site about making your own Eeprom for the Gba but it was very hard.
Dev kits are very hard to get so don't expect to find one.

vb_master · Post by **vb_master** » Mon Nov 13, 2006 3:06 pm

SuperCard CF would be a good card to use, only need a CF card then.

Reaperman@home · Post by **Reaperman@home** » Mon Nov 13, 2006 3:51 pm

when I was deving I actually used my supercard (sd) but it was just one more layer of "maybe it won't work now" after it tested fine in emulator. it's simply less compatable than most gba flashcarts, and you have to wade through the menu to get to your program. though as menus go, it's pretty slim.

speaking of it testing fine in emus, you really don't need a flashcart to dev on gba. it's a one-button move to compile and execute your code in the emulator. takes a couple seconds--literally. I can't recall if HAM does it, but Dragonbasic does.