Hello. I've been wanting to make a Game Boy game for some time now, but the problem is that I don't know where to start. I'd like to know who would be the most reliable person for Game Boy development, so then I can hopefully get to work on my first Game Boy game. I don't want to make anything complicated(I think even Tetris would technically be more advanced than what I'm making), so please take that into consideration.

Thanks in advance.

Gameboy, Gameboy Color, or Gameboy Advanced?

There is a big GBA gamedev community...

http://www.gbadev.org/...

I liked this tutorial for the original gameboy: http://gameboy.mongenel.com/asmsc.... It's a bit dated, but it works. If it is your first system, the NES is without a doubt the best place to start, due to the huge community (relatively speaking) and amount of support, information and tutorials for it. I think that helped me figure out some stuff on the GB.

Z80 processors have a huge community, as well, since it spans so many systems.

TI calculators, specifically, have an enormous amount of assembly content out there.

I'd expect the resource material for doing GB, if you look in the right places, is at least as thorough as the current state-of-the-art for NES.

 

Well, I'm just speaking from experience. I had a bunch of experience with assembly coding before looking at any GB tutorials, and I really had to futz around a lot before I got anything to work. I don't remember it being quite as tough with the NES...maybe my memory fails me. But the NES101 tutorial by Michael Martin for instance just worked right out of the box, no tinkering or prior knowledge had to be relied upon to (run the tutorial). The fact that I, with some experience, stumbled with the GB is what prompts me to suggest that it might be harder to start with GB than NES. The tutorials are just of lower quality, they have not been refined for a long enough period of time to weed out problems that would cause most newbies to give up. I am aware of no large, cohesive communities like this and nesdev where there are numerous experts who are generously willing to give advice immediately for the GB, for instance (I guess nesdev has a few people, though, but the support is not as robust). Maybe a handful of democoding folks in Finland or something but you'd have to hunt for those guys, they like to hide. Like little trolls in dark forests. (said affectionately and with subconscious reference to other scandinavian things of which I am very fond)

*edit* to further refine my point, yes, of course the GB has been reverse engineered thoroughly, and documented. But to bring lots of people into the community, you have to have very very robust support, documentation written FOR newbies, and people at the ready to help. I, myself, might not be coding for the NES if it weren't for these characteristics of the nes community. Hunting through sparse, old documents and tools, and finding people who can help for the GB would be an uphill battle if I was starting from scratch.

*edit* And finally, I'll just qualify all the above with: I'm not that smart. I usually need help when I learn things. Some folks are super smart, and have an uncanny ability to synthesize sparse information all on their own. If the OP is such a person, more power to him...didn't mean to discourage, just pointing out facts about the communities surrounding each system so he can make his own decision.

Gameboy's CPU is not Z80 at all (just a bit simular evolution of 8080), it is unique, with a ton of its own quirks, inculding very confusing one (the 16-bit increment bug with OAM corruption). So don't expect getting much help from Z80 community.

Also, I personally don't know any ready-to-use solution to create and add music and sound effects to a GB project, while on the NES we have like 4-5 now, complete with convinient tools and many people who knows how to use it.

Good to know.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zil...
I had the impression it was a stripped down Z80 (i.e. lacking a lot of common Z80 instructions) with a few unique instructions added in.

But I guess it's different enough that not a lot of Z80 knowledge would transfer.

 

The Gameboy CPU produced by Sharp, who had a license for Z80 (probably 8080 as well), and liked to use Z80-like mnemonics for all their CPUs/MCUs, so that's likely the reason why it is believed to be a stripped down Z80. But in fact it is rather alternatively evolved 8080, with some features of Z80 (just a minority), and a number of unique extra opcodes that, for one, give it an addressing mode somewhat similar to 6502's zero page. So only the 8080-compatible chunk of Z80 knowledge would transfer, for the most part.

Hey, OP here. I just wanna clear a few things up.

First of all, the game I plan to make for Game Boy is basically Checkers(aka Draughts), in the form of a homebrew Game Boy title. Like I said in my last post, the game will be very basic in comparison to even the earliest Game Boy games. That said, if Game Boy development really is that difficult(as in "pretty much impossible to code for" difficult and not "I've never programmed in my life before" difficult), I'll consider either seeking a programmer(which is unlikely) or developing for NES but that will mean dropping the Checkers idea entirely(I just hate the idea of a Checkers game being released on a home console rather than a handheld.). So in that case, I do have an arcade-style platformer planned for NES when the Checkers game is finished or cancelled.

I wouldn't say GB is impossible to code for...it's just, if you have little to no programming experience, you're in for a rough time, I think, due to the poor tutorials and community support. The documentation is there, sure, you'll just need to be more determined to use it effectively. If you have little to no programming experience, there are.. I'd say perhaps even dozens, of people willing to help you with NES coding both here and on nesdev. And some gb folks over there, too...they do exist. On the other hand if you're a rockstar programmer familiar with embedded C/asm on some other platform, you'd probably pick it up with little trouble. 

I find the GB easy to code for - at least in C. The main problem is the lack of a proper game oriented sound engine (which plays VGM and sound effects). Appart from that, the basic usage of tiled backgrounds and sprites on top is quite simmilar to other platforms, and shouldn't be very hard to get into.

One hacky solution for the issue with GB music would be porting FamiTone or some other sound engine to GB; wavetable would always play triangle, no true stereo sound (maybe fixed pseudo stereo), no DPCM - but at least music and sound effects could be done in a convinient way.

This is where you can start: http://www.devrs.com/gb/... and http://gbdev.gg8.se/wiki/articles...

That would be more than enough. Great musicians can work around the limitations. And I'm quite sure that this will get many people developing for the GB. I know several people who would like to produce games for the GB but just can't be bothered as there's no real sound engine.

FamiTone would be perfect.