Etch

A simple drawing game for the GameBoy Color.

Play

Easiest way to play is to download the latest emulated release Etch.exe.
Also avaible on itch.io.

GameBoy game file is playable in emulators or loaded on a GBC flash card cartridge.
To play it in emulators, download the etch.gb GameBoy game file from the latest release and load it into your emulator.
To play it on a real Game Boy, download the etch.gb GameBoy game file from the latest release and copy it onto a GBC flash card cartridge like an EZ-Flash Jr.

Recommended emulators

• BGB (Windows only)
• Googulator (Online only, requires google account)
• RetroArch
• VisualBoyAdvanced

Recommended GameBoy flash card cartridges

• EZ-Flash Jr

Build

Refer the the GameBoy Builder guide for in-depth details on building and running game boy games in both emulators and cartridges.

Setup environment

Build Etch from source using GameBoy Development Kit (GBDK).
Add GBDK's compiler (lcc) to the environment variable.
In linux set the path variable using the following command:

export PATH=PATH_TO_GBDK/bin:$PATH

In windows use following instructions:

• In Search, search for and then select: System (Control Panel)
• Click the Advanced system settings link.
• Click Environment Variables. In the section System Variables, find the PATH environment variable and select it. Click Edit. If the PATH environment variable does not exist, click New.
• In the Edit System Variable (or New System Variable) window, add the directory to the bin folder of GBDK to the list. Click OK. Close all remaining windows by clicking OK.

Make

There are three approaches to build games with GBDK; make, cmake, or directly calling the GBDK compiler.
This repository includes a MakeFile and a CMakeLists.txt file that can be used to build it whether you are using make or cmake. Note: Expects the GBDK bin directory to be in the PATH environment variable so that lcc is accessible.

MakeFile

To build on Linux use the following commands:

cd PATH_TO_REPO
make

To build on Windows MinGW is recommeded:

cd PATH_TO_REPO
mingw32-make -f MakeFile

These will build the example game in a folder named 'build'.
The '.gb' file in this build folder is the gameboy game that has just been compiled.

CMake

To build on Linux use the following commands:

cd PATH_TO_REPO
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
make

To build on Windows MinGW is recommeded:

cd PATH_TO_REPO
mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -G "MinGW Makefiles"
mingw32-make

These will build the example game in the folder named 'build'.
The '.gb' file in this build folder is the gameboy game that has just been compiled.

Compiler

To build on Linux use:

cd PATH_TO_REPO
mkdir build
cd build
lcc -Wa-l -Wl-m -Wl-j -DUSE_SFR_FOR_REG -c -o etch.gb ../src/etch.c

To build on Windows use:

cd PATH_TO_REPO
mkdir build
cd build
lcc -Wa-l -Wl-m -Wl-j -DUSE_SFR_FOR_REG -c -o etch.gb ..\src\etch.cc

This will build the app to a build folder in this repository.
The '.gb' file in this build folder is the gameboy game that has just been compiled.

Installer

Generate a runable emulator of the game on Windows using the following instructions.
This requires 7-zip to be installed which can be downloaded from here.

1. Copy the game file (etch-0.0.1.gb) to the release/Etch folder.
2. Add bgb.exe and game file in this directory to a 7-Zip archive. (Right click -> Add to archive).
3. Copy the resulting file to the release folder
4. Create exe from 7z archive and config on the command line:

copy /b 7zSD.sfx + config.txt + Etch-0.0.1-emulator.7z Etch-0.0.1-emulator.exe

For a more polished looking application you can use Resource Hacker to change the icon and meta data.