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I would love to write GB/GBC/GBA games using something like Ruby (or JavaScript!). Is this possible? Have any higher-level languages been used to write games fo
by prezjordan 12y ago
I would love to write GB/GBC/GBA games using something like Ruby (or JavaScript!). Is this possible? Have any higher-level languages been used to write games for these platforms?
- jiggy2011 12y agoYou would have to first port the ruby interpreter to the Zilog Z80 which could be a challenge because it is only an 8bit CPU! The GBA actually has a 32 bit ARM CPU, although a very slow one (16 Mhz) so perhaps it would be possible to build a very minimal Ruby VM for that. I wonder if it would be possible to optimize by building a JIT compiler and JITing on an emulator before installing on the cartridge?
- vegedor 12y agolibruby, if that is the core of the interpreter, weighs 2MB. That's not gonna fly, even with heavy size optimization it would be unbearably slow, even on just a subset.
- Sir_Cmpwn 12y agoYou can't :) The people who might be able to and the people who would want to do so are mutually exclusive groups.
- chillingeffect 12y agoWhich part of the process are you interested in- -executing in z80? -using the sounds? -using the graphics? -etc? if the latter three, why not write in those languages and use an API to interface to the drivers for those peripherals?
- djur 12y agomruby can be compiled to embedded bytecode in a C file [1]. It might be possible to do something with that on the GBA, but the original GB is out of the question -- even the options for C are limited. [1]: https://github.com/mruby/mruby https://github.com/mruby/mruby
- prezjordan 12y agoI'd "settle" for GBA ;) GB would be fun because it's so limiting but I am not interested in writing assembly (actually, could be a fun way to learn it...)