GBA Programming

[markgreyam]

i'm about to ditch my soul destroying accounting software programming job before it kills me stress-wise, and pick up some part time efforts to keep me financially solvent while i study game programming and take a much needed break, to hopefully re-enter the IT industry as a game programmer.

part of this is wanting to code homebrew for the GBA, for which i believe i'll need a flash card, at some way of transferring it to the cart. can anyone offer any advice as to what flash card would be preferrable, and if i need some sort of specific reader for the cards or if i they maybe come with usb connectors to copy code across. and also where to buy them from?

oh and if anyone could recommend any gba homebrew sites that would be muchly appreciated as well. i'm kinda starting from scratch here, and while i have a basic c++ knowledge, i'll be working on that, and then opengl/directx as well as GBA stuff on the side. but i need to sort out any required materials before i leave my full time job for less pay, but greatly inversed sanity levels.

[VR46]

good luck firstly; you can buy the cart & leads from places like gbaflash.co.uk or gbax.com, 700 homebrew GBA bits here: www.pdroms.de

[kernow]

gbadev.org

I can help you with a toolchain too if you like?

and a few easy code examples..

[in5ane]

Don't people say game programming is just as bad as normal programming? Well, yes they do. It's probably longer hours, you won't be playing games, half the people there won't be games players, and you'll hate games afterwards.

Plus why buy carts and stuff when homebrew stuff works fine in emulators?! Splash out on some hardware when you got something substantial running

[Taurine]

Madness!

I can't see the logical leap people seem to make:

I like playing games - so I'm sure I'll like developing them.

I can't see a link between playing them and creating them at all. Could someone who works in the industry comment on the reality of that?

I develop software professionally, but I do not dream of moving from the financial sector to games. From what I've heard games development jobs are poorly paid and require health-destroying levels of overtime most of the way through every project.

Tip to the original poster - why give up the day job? Just do some games development projects in your spare time, at least until you have more of a feel for it. Start by developing more than your basic level of C++ understanding. You could always help out on one of the many open source game projects around, that way you'd even have more scope for getting advice and help in understanding the concepts - from the other members of the project.

That is assuming this really is a question about GBA development and not just a wrapper for a question about flash carts that would otherwise attract the attention of the moderator...

[markgreyam]

I can't see the logical leap people seem to make:

I like playing games - so I'm sure I'll like developing them.

the thing is, i've loved games since i was 6, and i've wanted to develop games since i was in uni, but i was pretty slack at the time, and picked up the first job i could out of uni, which ended up being tech support, but which lead to my programming job, accounting software in visual basic. ever since i hit the 5 year mark there i've been getting majorly stressed about the fact that i've done nothing with my life to this point, and i've really wanted to pursue my original dream. plus, accounting software, and as far as i can see, most application software (ive talked to friends who code other apps) is as about as creative and interesting as doing the actual accounting itself. i cant do this **** for much longer without going insane, and im talking weeks here, not months.

I can't see a link between playing them and creating them at all. Could someone who works in the industry comment on the reality of that?

I develop software professionally, but I do not dream of moving from the financial sector to games. From what I've heard games development jobs are poorly paid and require health-destroying levels of overtime most of the way through every project.

i know, and i have to say that it concerns me, but at the moment, my current job is providing me with health-destroying levels of stress (or rather, my lack of progress with my goal is). either way, application software programming (or, at least, accounting software programming) brings on terminal levels of boredom and when i go home each day dreading going to work the next day, and at least the sunday out of every weekend involves me getting bad physical stress symptoms, i need a change one way or the other. even if nothing else, i need a part time break from work, that the 2 weeks left of annual leave i have cannot provide. the entire time i would be thinking that i would just have to go back. to summarize, i hate my current job, and all other simliar app software positions look equally painful, ive always wanted to code games, and trying to do it while working in a job i hate isnt working for me at the moment. im simply trying something new. if i fail, then ill reluctantly put myself back into the standard IT workforce, and then shoot myself within the first 6 months.

Tip to the original poster - why give up the day job? Just do some games development projects in your spare time, at least until you have more of a feel for it. Start by developing more than your basic level of C++ understanding. You could always help out on one of the many open source game projects around, that way you'd even have more scope for getting advice and help in understanding the concepts - from the other members of the project.

i've tried, and spending 8 hours a day doing something you despise leaves you with little motivation to do something constructive when you get home. i think i've probably hit some major depression, and like i said, hardcore stress, so either way i need to get out. it's probably a hard situation to understand if you're not in it, but i appreciate what you're saying. and apologies if i sound overly dramatic.

That is assuming this really is a question about GBA development and not just a wrapper for a question about flash carts that would otherwise attract the attention of the moderator...

i suppose i can't take offence at that when what you're suggesting is probably what a lot of people do. i've always been an anti-piracy person. thats not to say i've never pirated a game before. but my 120+ original games for the 3 current gen consoles, and my ~10 GBA games will hopefully attest to the fact that i not only do put a crap load of my money into games (im not without the occasional lecture from my parents about not spending so much money on 'those games' that are constantly arriving in the post) but that i can see the hipocrasy in wanting to be a games programmer all while never paying a single cent for the games you play.

besides, if i was going to do that, i wouldnt have made up a big story and just said that i wanted to 'back up' my existing games onto a single cart. having said that, the ability to take Bubble Bobble, Astro-Boy AND Grand Theft Auto Advance with me at the same time without having to have two loose cartridges would be quite nice.

holy crap, mega post. not intended, but you get that.

[kernow]

Basic C++ knowledge is cool, but I recommend you learning a lot of low level C

with the GBA its just you and the hardware, no fancy libraries or API's like DirectX et cetera

it took me days to just get a pcx on the screen (properly, using lz77 compression, and proper binary image format) , anyway, if you don't know any C at all, or have some previous strength in another low level language, I imagine you will find it near impossible.

[gingerj]

Game programming is an awful job almost as bad a network admin job. Long hours, dull work and low pay.

Go brush up on the .NET structure and live it large or go learn Data warehousing (SAP/ORACLE) and live it large. Why whore yourself at the low end of the tech industry...

If you think what your doing is boring, try sitting there for 10 hours a day EVERYDAY looking at C++ code.....

[markgreyam]

Game programming is an awful job almost as bad a network admin job. Long hours, dull work and low pay.

Go brush up on the .NET structure and live it large or go learn Data warehousing (SAP/ORACLE) and live it large. Why whore yourself at the low end of the tech industry...

If you think what your doing is boring, try sitting there for 10 hours a day EVERYDAY looking at C++ code.....

is game programming really that bad? surely some of the smaller companies (Irrational, Creative Assembly) wouldn't be as bad as what you hear from the EA style hell-on-earth description.

i'm not sure what you mean by living it large with .NET or Data warehousing. are you talking contract work? sounds just as exciting.

it's easy to get confused with a career path in IT i've discovered. tech support is hell, VB accounting software is as soul destroying as they say, yet everyone says game programming sucks worse, and the only 'way out' is contract work in more equally boring positions. i really don't want to work with accounting software anymore, and the majority of other application software looks equally painful.

i can't do what 90% of the population seems to manage; just throwing away 8-10 hours a day with a job you hate just to make a living. if it's not interesting, i'll go ****ing crazy. right now i'm writing code to transfer a bunch of access DB's into SQL in .NET. and i wan't to shoot myself.

[in5ane]

What can I say, IT is very boring. I did computer science because I played on my PlayStation a lot in '98- what excuse do you have

[mrsquare]

Go for it man - I'm literally (monday) about to take up a graduate placement at a big games company, so I'll let you know how it goes.

My theory is that I have absolutely no interest in accountancy or stuff like that - how the hell am I going to be motivated when making software for it? Games, however, I am interested in, and I'd love to be a part of the creative process, and feel that I would genuinely work better and harder for a finished product that I care about. I spent 6 months working my arse off on a GBA game for my final year project, and loved every second of it - doing that full time seems like not a bad way to earn a living...

The pay really isn't bad at all either (maybe for smaller companies though), and you've got to remember that you probably won't be programming for your entire career - project manager type positions potentially await if you want 'em.

On the GBA side - yeah, www.gbadev.org is a lifesaver - make full use of their forums, which are populated by some extremely talented and helpful people. C/C++ is all you'll need - the GBA is very easy to control simply by bit-shifting various values into its registers - try some of the tutorials (eg The PERN Project) to get you started.

[markgreyam]

What can I say, IT is very boring. I did computer science because I played on my PlayStation a lot in '98- what excuse do you have

i got into games when my parents bought me a C64 in the early 80s. i did a bit of programming but i never really got into that side of it, the games were too good

i went into uni in '95 with the intention of persuing some at-the-time undefined career path in Biology. 1st year biology bored me senseless, and and i failed it, and 1st year Comp Sci, which at the time was Ada programming, enthralled me, and i got a Distinction for it. so i changed my direction to CompSci, and even did programming stuff in my spare time (like a DOS text only poker game). but all the while the games were taking the majority of my time. then i finished uni, and didn't know what to go, because as all of us that have been to uni know, it was all very generic in every area, with no real direction. i fell into a accounting software tech support job that became an accounting software programming position, which worked for me until i hit the 5 year mark late last year and realised i had essentially wasted 5 years, because VB is dead end work that is purely DB/****ty app based, and i needed to get out. depression quickly set in as i realised that the skills i'd honed over the last 3 years of coding were good for nothing except more of the same. i've been looking for a way out, and further study never seemed an option until now. so i've just continued to float around. now i'm literally kicking myself out so i have to do something.

</life story>

My theory is that I have absolutely no interest in accountancy or stuff like that - how the hell am I going to be motivated when making software for it?

thats EXACTLY why i've been stuck here instead of moving to another equally boring postion doing similar work. i have no passion or interest in the end product, so how much effort/motivation do i have to do the work required for it. and if anything, it makes it HARDER TO go home and try and do extra work when all you can think about is the **** you have to go back to. moving to more of the same just would start me with the depression at my job, but more non releated dead end VB work to have to start on from scratch. **** that.

when i think about it, the two most exciting things i ever did here was to code a drag and drop control interface for an invoice customisation module, which was more like an RTS game interface than anything, which bombed with end users, cause drawing a selection box around items and dragging them, or right clicking for context sensitive menus on customisation elements is clearly well above and beyond the intelligence level of our end user base. that took about 1 month, and only other time i've enjoyed it here is the 15 minutes i spent one morning to prove to a couple of the guys at work that you could do a 'real time' space invaders clone in visual basic; i have a semi finished c++ version of a space invaders game that they played and joked that you couldnt do it in VB because of it's input->action logic instead of the c++ style of having something constantly running and polling for input that it then acts on, so i took it on, and the base elements took 10 mins to complete (the 'timer' control in visual basic is ugly and slow, but it did the job). so thats 1 month and 15 minutes of enjoyment out of a 3 year visual basic programming position.

thanks for your advice as well mrsquare, it's nice to hear some positive input. if it fails and it sucks, well at least i'll know. the last thing i want to do is die wondering. staying here isn't doing anything for me except <insert excession stress symptoms here, palpatations, indigestion, depressive states>.

[mrsquare]

no probs

seriously though - get cracking on that GBA game. I found it was about 1000x times easier to get companies interested with a working game demo, as it shows a genuine level of enthusiasm for the job. Seeing as you've already got 5 years of programming experience behind you, you should have no trouble getting interviews (applying as a graduate was a nightmare - everywhere wants X years of programming experience or X many completed projects).

The GBA is a nice system to do, as its fairly simple, but still current gen. Get a flash card and you can take it along to interviews with you and demo it personally, which is always nice. The advice I was given (which I'd certainly agree with) was to try to make something 'complete' rather than something flashy. Anyone can send in a half finished 'proof of concept' demo, but it takes a bit more dedication to stick at something until its fully bug free and completely implemented. My final game (which was a side-scrolly beat-em up thing) had menu systems, intros, sound + music, multiple levels, tutorials etc, and people usually commented on how polished it was.

As nice as the GBA is, it can feel a bit simplistic at times - I'd def. agree with your idea of working on a little bit of OpenGL or something at the same time. It doesn't have to be anything huge, but just shows you can work with basic 3D, and have a reasonable grasp of the concepts involved.