I bought Bitty Engine from steam and am toying with it. It seems like a great tool. If that is any indication of what your plans are here I am pumped. I have used another tool for GB development and had a blast. Really looking forward to seeing where this goes!
Hi again! I'm interested in using this tool for the Game Boy Showdown 2023 Jam, so I wanted to know if you think it's feasible to make a game in Alpha 1, or if Alpha 2 would be released before the Jam's start date?
(Obviously, no rush. Quality development takes time! I understand.)
It depends on the features you would like to include in your game. The current alpha 1 version can be used to paint tiles, maps, and to write code, I think there’s no problem with really really simple games, it is yet not capable for making music, actor and scene, besides, the runtime is lacking in completeness. I’ll improve editors in alpha 2, 3, then move on to improving the runtime in alpha 4. As the version stage implies, I’d rather claim it feature-complete for generic development until all the alpha stages are complete.
It supports string partially, i.e. print "pi=%d", 22/7 and label #0 "hello", the string are constant literals, this is enough for text representation. As a constrained platform, gb is not very good at dynamic allocating, so it doesn’t support assigning string to variable, concating, etc.
Actually the runtime part is based on the GBVM project, their capability are quite similar.
Will be keeping an eye on this! I wonder if you could use a combination of GBDK and BCX. Basically (ha!) using the C compiler and libraries already available with the power of BCX to translate BASIC to C.
Haha, the work flow is compiling BASIC directly to ROM, neither C or BCX would involve in. But yea, we’ll see what power could be borrowed from C and others.
← Return to tool
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
GB BASIC Alpla 3 is available now.
looks cool. thank for creating such good software
Is there a potential for this to work on Mac at some point? Would be an insta-buy from me
Yes, I plan to introduce it to MacOS in beta 1.
I bought Bitty Engine from steam and am toying with it. It seems like a great tool. If that is any indication of what your plans are here I am pumped. I have used another tool for GB development and had a blast. Really looking forward to seeing where this goes!
Hi again! I'm interested in using this tool for the Game Boy Showdown 2023 Jam, so I wanted to know if you think it's feasible to make a game in Alpha 1, or if Alpha 2 would be released before the Jam's start date?
(Obviously, no rush. Quality development takes time! I understand.)
It depends on the features you would like to include in your game. The current alpha 1 version can be used to paint tiles, maps, and to write code, I think there’s no problem with really really simple games, it is yet not capable for making music, actor and scene, besides, the runtime is lacking in completeness. I’ll improve editors in alpha 2, 3, then move on to improving the runtime in alpha 4. As the version stage implies, I’d rather claim it feature-complete for generic development until all the alpha stages are complete.
Thanks for your interest and understanding!
Very interesting! Any plans for link cable compatability?
Yes, there’s a link cable example, which is called “30. Serial.gbb”.
Oh, awesome! I'll definitely take a look. :) Do you have a Discord server?
Ah not yet, everything is so primitive for the moment.
No problem! If you do make one, please let me know! I'm very very interested in this.
Another question: does GB BASIC support strings? :)
Of course.
It supports string partially, i.e.
print "pi=%d", 22/7andlabel #0 "hello", the string are constant literals, this is enough for text representation. As a constrained platform, gb is not very good at dynamic allocating, so it doesn’t support assigning string to variable, concating, etc.Actually the runtime part is based on the GBVM project, their capability are quite similar.
Interesting! I like this idea!
Will be keeping an eye on this! I wonder if you could use a combination of GBDK and BCX. Basically (ha!) using the C compiler and libraries already available with the power of BCX to translate BASIC to C.
Haha, the work flow is compiling BASIC directly to ROM, neither C or BCX would involve in. But yea, we’ll see what power could be borrowed from C and others.
Ooh, excited for the development of this!
Very interesting project!