DIY Breakout on Gameboy Gameboy was an early handheld system, well known for popularizing Tetris (tm). We will make another well-known arcade game on it called: Breakout. To make this we will use gameboy development kit (gbdk). There is a catch, GBDK hasn’t been updated since 2000, so getting it to work could be troublesome.

Step 1 Download a linux version vmware image to install from scratch, or get a pre-installed image (post@retrotard.com)

Step 2 Download: gbdk-2.96a-i586-pc-lnux2.2.tar.gz

Step 3 Extract it gunzip gbdk-2.96a-i586-pc-lnux2.2.tar.gz tar -xvf gunzip gbdk-2.96a-i586-pc-lnux2.2.tar

Step 4 Copy the folder gbdk to /opt directory sudo cp -r gbdk /opt/.

Step 5 We need to install an gameboy emulator, unless you have a real gameboy with a programmable cartridge such as a flashcart. These might be hard to find these days however. sudo apt-get install visualboyadvance

Step 6 Go to the bin folder that you just extracted cd gdbk/bin/

Step 7 Open gedit gedit breakout.c & And type in the following code; #include <gb/gb.h> #include <gb/drawing.h> int bricks[6][10]; int main(){ int player = 72; int px = 90; int py = 90; int ax = 1; int ay = 1; int bx; int by; int bw; int bh; int key; int colors[] = {LTGREY,DKGREY,BLACK}; int i = 0; int j = 0; for(i=0;i<6;i++){ for(j=0;j<10;j++){ bricks[i][j] = 1; color(WHITE,colors[i%3],SOLID); box(j*16,i*8,(j*16)+16,(i*8)+8,M_FILL); } } while(1){ key = joypad(); if(key & J_LEFT){ color(WHITE,WHITE,SOLID); box(player,120,player+24,128,M_FILL); if(player-3 >= 0){ player-=3; } } if(key & J_RIGHT){ color(WHITE,WHITE,SOLID); box(player,120,player+24,128,M_FILL); if(player + 24 + 3 < 160){ player+=3; } } color(WHITE,LTGREY,SOLID); circle(px,py,2,M_FILL); if(px + ax > 160-2){ ax*=-1; } if(px + ax <= 2){ ax*=-1; } if(py + ay > 144-2){ ay*=-1; } if(py + ay <= 2){ ay*=-1; } for(i=0;i<6;i++){ for(j=0;j<10;j++){ bx = j*16; bw = (j*16)+16; by = i*8; bh = (i*8)+8; if(bricks[i][j] == 1){ if( (bx < px+2 + ax && px + ax < bw) && (by < py+2 + ay && py + ay < bh)){ bricks[i][j] = 0; ay*=-1; color(WHITE,WHITE,SOLID); box(bx,by,bw,bh,M_FILL); } } } } if( (player < px + ax && px + ax < player+24) && (120-2 < py + ay && py + ay < 128)){ ay*=-1; } px+=ax; py+=ay; color(BLACK,WHITE,SOLID); circle(px,py,2,M_FILL); color(BLACK,WHITE,SOLID); box(player,120,player+24,128,M_FILL); for(i=0;i<5;i++){ wait_vbl_done(); } } return 0; }

Step 8 Save and compile it sudo ./lcc breakout.c -o breakout.gb

Step 9 Try it in the emulator: vba breakout.gb Which should give the following;

Conclusion This is not the efficient way to program breakout on a gameboy, since the graphics flickers, however it is a quite fast and undetailed way to get an insight into programming the gameboy.