Programming The Nintendo Game Boy Advance: The Unofficial Guide Programming The Nintendo Game Boy Advance: The Unofficial Guide I Copyright (c)2003 by Jonathan S. Harbour -- http://www.jharbour.com Programming The Nintendo Game Boy Advance: The Unofficial Guide Jonathan S. Harbour Programming The Nintendo Game Boy Advance: The Unofficial Guide II Copyright (c)2003 by Jonathan S. Harbour -- http://www.jharbour.com © 2003 by Jonathan S. Harbour. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system w ithout w ritten permission from Jonathan S. Harbour, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review . The electronic edition of this book may not be re-distributed or re-printed in any form or by any means, and may only be obtained from http://w w w .jharbour.com. Project Editor: Estelle M anticas Copy Editor: Laura G abler Technical Review er: André LaM othe Program m ing Review er: Emanuel Schleussinger Softw are Review er: Peter Schraut Nintendo, G ame Boy, G ame Boy Advance, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, M ario Bros., Zelda, and/or other Nintendo products referenced herein are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Nintendo of America Inc. in the U .S. and/or other countries. M icrosoft, W indow s, DirectX, DirectDraw , DirectM usic, DirectPlay, DirectSound, Visual C++, Xbox, and/or other M icrosoft products referenced herein are either registered trademarks or trademarks of M icrosoft Corporation in the U .S. and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective ow ners. The author has attempted throughout this book to distinguish proprietary trademarks from descriptive terms by follow ing the capitalization style used by the trademark ow ner. Information contained in this book has been obtained by the author from sources believed to be reliable. How ever, because of the possibility of human or mechanical error by our sources, the author does not guarantee the accuracy, adequacy, or completeness of any information and is not responsible for any errors or omissions or the results obtained from use of such information. Readers should be particularly aw are of the fact that the Internet is an ever-changing entity. Some facts may have changed since this book w ent to press. ISBN: 1-59200-009-6 Printed in the U nited States of America 03 04 05 06 07 BH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Programming The Nintendo Game Boy Advance: The Unofficial Guide III Copyright (c)2003 by Jonathan S. Harbour -- http://www.jharbour.com For selfless support and love, for accepting the inequity of m y preoccupation w ith gam es and fully supporting it, this book is dedicated to m y w onderful w ife, Jennifer Rebecca H arbour Programming The Nintendo Game Boy Advance: The Unofficial Guide IV Copyright (c)2003 by Jonathan S. Harbour -- http://www.jharbour.com Acknow ledgements I am thankful for the encouragement of my w ife, Jennifer, w ho has been w onderfully supportive of my w riting career. I love our life together, and our kids, Jeremiah and Kayleigh, bring me more joy than I thought possible. I also ow e a thank you to tw o pair of friends w ho have greatly encouraged me on a personal level: Justin and Kim G allow ay, and M ilford “W ade” and Lindsay Eutsey. I thank G od for the blessing of your friendship. I am grateful for a supportive family: my parents, Ed & Vicki; my sister, Joy; my niece, April; in- law s, Dave & Barb Yoder; David; Steve, Andrea, and Stephen; Jason, Autumn, and Tater; and Barbara Jean. O n another level, I thank the Lord for giving me the drive to do this sort of w ork, w hich is both enjoyable and insanely difficult at the same time. I am thankful for having learned many life lessons from Focus O n The Family and Dr. James Dobson, as w ell as from the extraordinary Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. This w as perhaps the most enjoyable book I have w ritten, not solely due to the content (w hich is utterly compelling!), but also due to tw o events that took place w hile this book w as being w ritten. The first experience w as during the G ame Developer's Conference 2003, w here I met several editors from Premier Press face-to-face for the first time. After the G ame Developer's Choice Aw ards, presented by the International G ame Developer's Association (IG DA), Premier Press held a private dinner at a nice restaurant in dow ntow n San Jose, w hich w as a fun meet-and-greet w ith André LaM othe, Heather Hurley, M itzi Koontz, Heather Talbot, Todd Jensen, as w ell as other fellow authors. Thanks to all of you for doing such a great job w ith this series; I have enjoyed w orking w ith all of you. The second experience that made this book memorable w as a celebration a few days later on the launch of DarkBASIC w ith fellow author Joshua Smith, our families, and my tw o favorite freelancers, Cathleen Snyer and Estelle M anticas. Thank you for doing such great w ork, it's been a great pleasure w orking w ith you. I w ould like to thank one of the greatest game designers of all time, John Romero, for not only being such a great encouragement and role model for aspiring game developers, but also for agreeing to w rite the forew ord. As Jacopo says, "I'm your man!" Thanks to my good friend, Joshua R. Smith, for loaning me the Flash Advance Linker. G reets go out to tw o guys w ho w ere invaluable w hile w riting this book, for they provided up-to-the-minute updates to the development tools. Emanuel Schleussinger, for the excellent G BA SDK used in this book, called H AM , and to Peter Schraut for the excellent IDE Programming The Nintendo Game Boy Advance: The Unofficial Guide V Copyright (c)2003 by Jonathan S. Harbour -- http://www.jharbour.com alled Visual H AM . These tools saved me literally hundreds of hours of w ork. Not only did they provide superior development tools to me and the G BA community at no charge, these tw o w ere invaluable as proofreaders of the manuscript. Thank you both for getting me out of many dead ends and helping resolve coding problems along the w ay. This book reflects your efforts. A book of any size and on any subject involves much w ork even after a manuscript is done. It takes a w hile just to read through a programming book once, so you can imagine how much is involved in reading through it several times, making changes and notes along the w ay, refining, correcting, perfecting. I am indebted to the hard w ork of the editors, artists, layout specialists w ho do such a fine job. Really, as far as total hours go, the author's w ork is only perhaps 40% (or less) of the total time spent on getting a book into print. Thank you especially to Laura G abler for copy editing the manuscript, to André LaM othe for his technical expertise, and to Estelle M anticas for managing the project. Programming The Nintendo Game Boy Advance: The Unofficial Guide VI Copyright (c)2003 by Jonathan S. Harbour -- http://www.jharbour.com About The Author Jonathan S. Harbour has been programming games for 15 years, first w ith M icrosoft G W - BASIC and Turbo Pascal, then on to Turbo C, Borland C++, W atcom C++, and 80386 assembler. After finally bridging the gap to W indow s programming, he has spent time w ith Borland Delphi, Visual Basic, Visual C++, and more recently, Visual Studio .NET. Jonathan graduated from DeVry Institute of Technology in 1997 w ith a B.S. degree in Computer Information Systems, and has since w orked for cellular, aerospace, pharmaceutical, education, medical research, healthcare, and game companies. In his spare time, Jonathan enjoys spending time w ith his family, reading fiction, playing console video games, w atching movies, and w orking on his classic M ustangs. Programming The Nintendo Game Boy Advance: The Unofficial Guide VII Copyright (c)2003 by Jonathan S. Harbour -- http://www.jharbour.com Contents Forew ord Introduction Part I The Zen of G etting Started Chapter 1 W elcome To The Console W orld Video G ames! G etting into the Nintendo Thing Console Contemplation Definition of a Video G ame A Brief History of Nintendo Shigeru M iyamoto Home Consoles The 16-Bit Era Success and Failure A Detailed Comparison W hat Happened to the Atari Jaguar? The Importance of G oals U se Your Imagination Programming The Nintendo Game Boy Advance: The Unofficial Guide VIII Copyright (c)2003 by Jonathan S. Harbour -- http://www.jharbour.com 0uild a Franchise G enre- and Character-Based Franchises Strike a Balance: Level Count vs. Difficulty Surprise the Critics Summary Chapter Q uiz Chapter 2 G ame Boy Architecture In A Nutshell G ame Boy Handheld Systems G ame Boy, 1989 G ame Boy Pocket, 1996 G ame Boy Color, 1998 G ame Boy Advance, 2001 G ame Boy Advance SP, 2003 Direct Hardw are Access M emory Architecture Internal W orking RAM External W orking RAM Cartridge M emory G ame RO M G ame Save M emory Programming The Nintendo Game Boy Advance: The Unofficial Guide IX Copyright (c)2003 by Jonathan S.