GB Studio v1.0.0 lets you create homebrew Game Boy games with no coding experience

gbstudio.png

The original GameBoy has quite a few years on its back, having turned 30 years old just yesterday, however it's by no means forgotten by gamers and amateur programmers alike. We've seen all kinds of interesting releases published after the console's end of life, ranging all the way from homebrew games to music production programs, yet a very peculiar piece of software has managed to take the community behind Nintendo's elderly handheld by storm: we're talking about GB Studio!

GB Studio is an open source retro adventure game creation software which lets you make your own homebrew games for the Game Boy with ease. It combines a premade engine with a visual game builder that requires no previous programming experience, which means anyone can get started and make their own games with little effort! Once done, said games can be exported either as standalone ROMs or web apps (thanks to a web-based emulator) with the click of a button.

Here are its key features, as highlighted by its official website:
  • Visual game builder with no programming knowledge required.
  • Design your graphics in any editor that can output PNG files e.g. Photoshop, Tiled, Aseprite.
  • Example project included to get started right away.
  • Make top down 2D JRPG style adventure games.
  • Build real GB Rom files which can be played in an emulator or on device using USB Carts.
  • Build a HTML5 playable game that also works on mobile and can deployed to any webserver or uploaded to Itch.io.
  • Built for macOS, Windows and Linux.
  • Supports both macOS light and dark mode.
  • Includes the full tools that were used to build Untitled GB Game, free to play on Itch.io.

The application is cross-platform and offers prebuilt binaries for both Windows (32 and 64 bits, including a Squirrel package), macOS and Linux (DEB and RPM packages) and has been developed by Chris Maltby.
You can find a link to its website as well as its GitHub repo in the sources below.

:arrow: Source
:arrow: GitHub repo
 

WAUthethird

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it only supports .mod files for music iirc
Ah, ok. I've not heard of any good .midi to .mod converters, so your best bet is to recreate the midis in a .mod editor. Midis are apparently quite messy to convert to .mod, and you'd likely not end up with very good results.

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it says adventure style jrpg? i bet that dont include turn based like Final fantasy legend 3 on gameboy.
No, it doesn't seem so. I'm hoping they'll add more game styles in the future, though.
 
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Dasfilth

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Wow, completely out of left field

I wonder if we'll see any full fledged games come out of this

Undertale was made in gamemaker after all

There's been some pretty awesome games that came about as a result of GameMaker. Mushroom Kingdom Fusion is one of my favorites.
 
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RedBlueGreen

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This is pretty cool. I'd love to see something like this for SNES and GBA as well. I mnok that'd be a lot more complicated, but a ton of fan games would be possible (without having to use something like Assembly Language).
 

YamiZee

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Whenever I see homebrew support for old consoles I just have to think to myself... why? What's the point. It's so much effort that could be better spent on current day consoles or pc. Only a very small handful care about homebrew for deprecated consoles. Why not make a retro game creator that outputs to windows instead of gameboy. I definitely think this sounds very cool, but outside of that it doesn't seem practical in the slightest.
 

Ev1l0rd

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For those (like me) who are running arch, you'll probably find use to have this program available as an AUR package:

- Stable version: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/gb-studio/

- Git (nightly) version: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/gb-studio-git/

That aside, this looks really cool! I might make something with it.

Note: There are likely unneeded dependencies in the stable version. That is because I used debtap to make the package. On a similar note, the git version only has the dependencies that I found were needed to get the package to compile. If there are any other dependencies needed for the git version, please tell me.

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Whenever I see homebrew support for old consoles I just have to think to myself... why? What's the point. It's so much effort that could be better spent on current day consoles or pc. Only a very small handful care about homebrew for deprecated consoles. Why not make a retro game creator that outputs to windows instead of gameboy. I definitely think this sounds very cool, but outside of that it doesn't seem practical in the slightest.
Well, it also builds to HTML5, so that's moot.

You can ask the same question as to why Shovel Knights composer made the entire OST on an original NES. It's to achieve a certain specific style. In this case, the desired style appears to be something similar to Links Awakening. By far the easiest way to ensure that you're not deviating is to practically code it as if it were for the original gameboy.
 

Pipistrele

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Whenever I see homebrew support for old consoles I just have to think to myself... why? What's the point. It's so much effort that could be better spent on current day consoles or pc. Only a very small handful care about homebrew for deprecated consoles. Why not make a retro game creator that outputs to windows instead of gameboy. I definitely think this sounds very cool, but outside of that it doesn't seem practical in the slightest.
1) It's pleasing aesthetically for a lot of people, due to specific quirks and limitations of the hardware that are near impossible to replicate with 100% precision on modern devices
2) It has a certain artistic value (not to mention strong novelty factor). Just look at the whole demoscene culture - people who use aforementined quirks and limitations to create some fascinating works of art
3) It's a great programming/game developing exercise, since you have to work within limitations and use very specific tools - both skills that can be very valuable in serious game development
4) It can be applied to some practical use (like above, an idea to make a GB cartridge to propose to someone :D )
5) It's just enjoyable in its own geeky DIY way - kinda like running Linux on e-Reader or playing Doom on your toaster
 
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MarkDarkness

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Honestly surprised and charmed by this project. It adds a whole different layer to how people can interact with the good old GB...
 

YamiZee

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The aesthetic part I totally get. But they could be gb looking games that run natively on other devices without having to use an emulator.
 

raxadian

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I remember using game markers programs ages who in the Windows 95 era, nothing came from it,

Probably lack of feedback, I learned way more of HTML that I ever did about making games because I had people to talk about online about making webpages.

Someone should totally make a joke GBATEMP Gameboy game for Christmas.
 

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