3.9 KiB

Raw Blame History

Getting Started

Assembling pokecrystal.gbc requires a certain Pokemon Crystal rom:

Pokemon - Crystal Version (UE) (V1.0) [C][!].gbc
md5: 9f2922b235a5eeb78d65594e82ef5dde

Save it as baserom.gbc in the repository.

Feel free to ask us on nucleus.kafuka.org #skeetendo if something goes wrong.

Windows

If you're on Windows and can't install Linux, Cygwin is a great alternative.

Installing Cygwin

Cygwin provides a virtual Linux environment on Windows systems. Just get setup.exe.

http://cygwin.com/install.html

During the install:

Keep the defaults.
Most mirrors are molasses. Use http://mirrors.kernel.org.
From the package selection, pick:
wget
make
git
python
python-setuptools
unzip

Using Cygwin

Launch the Cygwin terminal. Maybe you know your way around the Linux terminal ( bash ). If not, a crash course:

# list files in current directory
ls

# show current directory
pwd

# change directory
cd /away/we/go

Getting up and running

We need three things to assemble the source into a rom.

rgbds
a pokecrystal repository
a base rom

We use rgbds to spit out a Game Boy rom from source.

cd /usr/local/bin
wget http://iimarck.us/etc/rgbds-20130811.zip
unzip -j rgbds-20130811.zip
rm rgbds-20130811.zip

The pokecrystal repository contains the source files used to create the rom.

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/kanzure/pokecrystal
cd pokecrystal

# install python requirements
easy_install pip
pip install -r requirements.txt

Not everything is included in the source yet. Missing patches are copied from a base rom (not included).

Pokemon - Crystal Version (UE) (V1.0) [C][!].gbc
md5: 9f2922b235a5eeb78d65594e82ef5dde

Name it baserom.gbc.

Now you should be able to build pokecrystal.gbc for the first time. This assembles a new rom from the source code.

make

This ought to take between 3 and 15 seconds, depending on your computer.

If the last line is cmp baserom.gbc pokecrystal.gbc, the build was successful!

Your first build processes every source file at once. After that, only modified source files have to be processed again, so compiling again should be a few seconds faster.

Linux

sudo apt-get install make gcc bison git python python-setuptools 
sudo easy_install pip

# install rgbds
git clone git://github.com/bentley/rgbds.git
cd rgbds
make
sudo make install

cd ..

# download pokecrystal
git clone git://github.com/kanzure/pokecrystal.git
cd pokecrystal
pip install -r requirements.txt

Put your base rom in the pokecrystal repository. Name it baserom.gbc.

To compile the rom from source:

make

That will take between 3 and 15 seconds, depending on your computer. If you see cmp baserom.gbc pokecrystal.gbc as the last line, the build was successful! Rejoice!

Now what?

pokecrystal.asm is a good starting point. The structure of the source is laid out here.

Other make targets that may come in handy:
make clean deletes any preprocessed source files (.tx), rgbds object files and pokecrystal.gbc.
make pngs decompresses any lz files in gfx/ and then exports any graphics files to png.
make lzs does the reverse. This is already part of the build process, so modified pngs will automatically be converted to 2bpp and lz-compressed without any additional work.
Can't find something? Anyone can add to the source. There's lots to be uncovered.
Do your own thing! The asm source is hack-friendly, and the supplementary scripts in extras/ can be used for other projects.

We'll be happy to answer any questions on nucleus.kafuka.org #skeetendo.

3.9 KiB Raw Blame History