Gameboy Development | What is the best way to learn GB Studio?

[Tony Horo]

I'm trying to work into a port of a trivia game to the GBC, but my basic programming language (which is basically C and some python) make it kinda hard to do stuff when it gets more complicated than drag images into the GB studio UI.

I was wondering if there is some basic documentation or video playlist that people use or recommend using to learn to do stuff with this tool.

 

[SoThankful SoThankful]

They have an official website called gb studio central that has tutorials and recources. I think you can just mess around with it and learn along the way.

 

[Haruna_Kamijo]

Take an hour or so and just read this.

Introduction | GB Studio

GB Studio is a drag and drop game creator for making Game Boy games.

www.gbstudio.dev

It'll teach you literally 99% of everything you need to know.

Edit: Just to clarify I don't mean the introduction but all of the docs.

Afterwards reference it for whatever you are working on at the time. GB Studio is pretty simple as long as you understand it's limitations and don't try to do anything too crazy with it.

 

[ShadowBadger]

YouTube and good ole trial and error. Just pick a style of game. Like a shooter or a basic arcade style game and build a couple of levels. Then string them together. Keep it simple at first and get more complex with each project. Like with all things in life, practice, practice, practice.

 

[Tony Horo]

YouTube and good ole trial and error. Just pick a style of game. Like a shooter or a basic arcade style game and build a couple of levels. Then string them together. Keep it simple at first and get more complex with each project. Like with all things in life, practice, practice, practice.

Yeah I'm trying to use my free time to port a Trivia game to the GBC, but I can't find a feasable way to store text into the rom without relying on that default text box that every GB Studio game uses.

 

[ShadowBadger]

Yeah I'm trying to use my free time to port a Trivia game to the GBC, but I can't find a feasable way to store text into the rom without relying on that default text box that every GB Studio game uses.

I’m sure there’s a tutorial out there to get a custom text box. I believe in you. You could also get really wild and work in RGBDS which I think is much more powerful that GBStudio

 

[99nereids]

Robert Doman on youtube makes a lot of useful tutorials for gb studio! here's a couple that may help you: Visual Scripting + Menu Tutorial.
the official docs (which haruna_kamijo linked above) are good for understanding what specific events do, as well as understanding the different parts of the editor, so it's good to take a look through it every now & again when you're having trouble.
I also recommend GB Studio Central, which has a ton of different guides & resources to help you out: Resources + Tips and Guides.
Also if you're on discord there is an official server & people have been pretty helpful there.

Yeah I'm trying to use my free time to port a Trivia game to the GBC, but I can't find a feasable way to store text into the rom without relying on that default text box that every GB Studio game uses.

I would play around with the Display Dialogue command to see what you can get away with! It's pretty versatile and customizable, i've found that simply changing the font & message border does a lot for the presentation. There's also the Draw Text command which will output text to the current scene, but I can't find a whole lot of documentation out there for updating and clearing the text without it overflowing.

Lastly, as of v4.2.0 there's a built-in plugin manager for downloading external plugins that others have made! I've linked a couple below that I think might help, and you can pull these up in the editor by going to Plugins > Plugin Manager and searching for the plugin's name.
- Display Advanced Menu by Pau-tomas
- Menu Scene Type by kinostl