Gameboy Development Forum

Discussion about software development for the old-school Gameboys, ranging from the "Gray brick" to Gameboy Color
(Launched in 2008)

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#1 2017-03-22 22:37:46

Alexander the bat
Member
Registered: 2017-03-19
Posts: 31

better programming SDK other then GBDK-N?

Since the GBDK-N's SDCC is hard coded to 32KB I've decided to try my hand on ASM and RGBDS and see if I can build a game from that unless I use Z80 more and do it that way I just want the best tool that's either C that can be brewed into Mac and I can start programming stuff, or try my hand with RGBDS and get into that old ASM and get better at that stuff!

plus can I define the header within' RGBDS more and get the size I need or that's hard coded as well?

I hope the RGBDS Brew version isn't 32KB hard coded when built if it is I give up until there's a way to code the header to be 256KB I'm not gonna program at all!

Last edited by Alexander the bat (2017-03-23 04:08:15)

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#2 2017-03-23 05:38:49

Xephyr
Member
From: France
Registered: 2015-02-26
Posts: 59

Re: better programming SDK other then GBDK-N?

If you're gonna give up just because that kind of problem maybe you're not made for programming...

Anyway, if GBDK-N is hard coded to 32Kb as you said (I don't use it so I can't say if you're right or not), try the original GBDK then. It is not as optimized and up to date, but for a Sudoku game it should be more than enough. The mbc options do work in it.

I wouldn't recommend ASM if you haven't even tried C coding before though.

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#3 2017-03-23 16:40:30

Alexander the bat
Member
Registered: 2017-03-19
Posts: 31

Re: better programming SDK other then GBDK-N?

Xephyr wrote:

If you're gonna give up just because that kind of problem maybe you're not made for programming...

Anyway, if GBDK-N is hard coded to 32Kb as you said (I don't use it so I can't say if you're right or not), try the original GBDK then. It is not as optimized and up to date, but for a Sudoku game it should be more than enough. The mbc options do work in it.

I wouldn't recommend ASM if you haven't even tried C coding before though.

Well it is and there's no Banking coding for GBDK-N without it there's no way a 256KB game can be possible - if I must use RGBDS it's my only way to build my needed games!

By the way GBDK-N is hard coded this is what I get if I attempt to go over 32KB - error: only length of 32768 bytes supported even I tried doing the 256KB in bytes!

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#4 2019-10-21 06:48:44

FLOZz
New member
From: Lyon, France
Registered: 2019-08-06
Posts: 2

Re: better programming SDK other then GBDK-N?

GBDK-n is just the name of a modernized version of GBDK libs. It use the SDCC compiler and tools under the hood.

I found that the compiler supports banking (it generates _CODE_1, _CODE_2, ... sections). But makebin, the tool that makes the final ROM, have an "artificial" limitation of 32k for GameBoy ROMs (but i seems to have all the necessary to do more, it refuse to do it). IMHO this limitation was added to avoid generating invalid ROMs: it seems the linker has issues with banking (at least bank order and size are wrong in the IHX file).

I really want to make banking working with SDCC/GBDK-n so I am searching for a solution to fix it... I will let you know if I find something smile

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#5 2019-10-22 04:18:31

dom
New member
Registered: 2019-10-10
Posts: 3

Re: better programming SDK other then GBDK-N?

It's probably not perfect since I'm not a GB developer, however earlier this month I added Gameboy support to z88dk. The libraries are a fusion of the GBDK ones and z88dk's assembler written stdlib. These libraries work with both sccz80 and sdcc compilers.

I don't have a large project to test things out, however I had banked calls working with sccz80 and the same tool chain can be used to generate multi-banked SMS projects, so in theory things should work. The makebin equivalent pads to the correct ROM size, fixes the header etc

I'm not sure that it's 100% working - I'm sure I've forgotten some things, but since we're between z88dk releases now is the appropriate time to find issues, fix and extend - any help welcome.

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#6 2019-10-23 02:45:00

Zalo
Member
From: Spain
Registered: 2016-07-26
Posts: 103
Website

Re: better programming SDK other then GBDK-N?

I have been using an updated version of SDCC to compile but still linking with the old version that comes with GBDK
That does the trick perfectly for ZGB

More info here

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#7 2019-10-23 02:53:35

Zalo
Member
From: Spain
Registered: 2016-07-26
Posts: 103
Website

Re: better programming SDK other then GBDK-N?

Also, it's been already 2 years since we posted this solution and still we haven't seen any updates on gbdk-n so I would consider it abandoned and wouldn't recommend using it

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#8 2019-10-23 09:34:37

drludos
Member
Registered: 2017-05-11
Posts: 52

Re: better programming SDK other then GBDK-N?

Zalo wrote:

I have been using an updated version of SDCC to compile but still linking with the old version that comes with GBDK
That does the trick perfectly for ZGB

More info here

I did use Zalo's solution to have an updated SDCC running with the original GBDK, and it works perfectly, even if you don't use ZGB. I'd recommend you to go this way too!


Download ROMs of my games: https://drludos.itch.io/
Support my work and get access to beta and prototypes: https://www.patreon.com/drludos

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#9 2019-11-24 08:31:11

0x7f
Member
Registered: 2019-11-24
Posts: 65

Re: better programming SDK other then GBDK-N?

Hi, I have problems to update GBDK with a newer SDCC. I have here GBDK 2.95.3 and I want to update it to SDCC 3.6.0 using Windows 7 64bit. Can somebody give a step by step introduction? Would be so nice, thanks!

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