Game Boy BrickBreak

This is my variation of a "brick breaking" games for the Game Boy. I'm following along the guide from gbdev.io. My goal is to become more comfortable working with assembly; the specific flavor of assembly is the Rednex Game Boy Assembly from Rednex Game Boy Developemt System.

I've been wanting to work with assembly for awhile because it seems interesting and that intersected with my interest of Game Boy (/Color) ROM hacks.

Setup

(For when I forget)

Build Requirements

RGBDS (Rednex Game Boy Development System), to have the tools to compile our game:

brew install rgbds

fswatch for file watching:

# Mac OS X
brew install fswatch

Emulicious emulator + debugger. I setup an alias emu that calls the Emulicious -jar in my .zshrc:

alias emu='java -jar /Applications/Emulicious/Emulicious.jar'

Run compile on save script:

In one shell, run the watch script that listens for when our assembly changes so it compiles:

./watch.sh

In another shell, run the Emulicious emulator:

emu brickbreak.gb

Note: Emulicious can auto restart the ROM on .gb update by ensuring File -> "Reload ROM On Change" is selected.

If you want to run manually (not on save):

# Compile the assembly
rgbasm -L -o main.o main.asm

# Create the ROM
rgblink -o brickbreak.gb main.o

# Add header info to ROM
# "Fixes" the header
rgbfix -v -p 0xFF brickbreak.gb

# Create symbols file so debugger
# can use label names
rgblink -n brickbreak.sym main.o

Todo:

• Setup auto compile and rebuild on save
• Add score
• Add start screen
• Add more levels
• Elongate paddle

Screenshots