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Building Your Game

Play

Clicking the Play button in the top right of the Project Editor window will start a build of your game and once complete will open a new window where you can play your game. See Keyboard Shortcuts for details on how to play your game in the Play Window.

Build Terminal

Clicking the Project View Button and selecting Build & Run will take you to the Build Terminal where you can see a log of the project build. You also get to this screen by clicking the Play button while a build is taking place. This screen will show you if there's any errors in your build to help you correct them.

Build as ROM

Clicking the Export button and selecting Export ROM will build your game and create a ROM file in your project's build folder as $PROJECT_ROOT/build/rom/game.gb. You can play this ROM file in any compatible emulator such as OpenEMU or KiGB.

Build and deploy for Web

Clicking the Export button and selecting Export Web will build your game and create a HTML5 web build in the folder $PROJECT_ROOT/build/web. You can upload this folder to any web server and navigate to the index.html file to play your game in a web browser. If you use a mobile or tablet web browser the game will also include touch controls.

If you zip the build/web folder you can upload it to Itch.io as a HTML game. In this case the recommended viewport size to use is 480px x 432px.

Build for Pocket

Clicking the Export button and selecting Export Pocket will build your game as a .pocket file for use on Analogue Pocket devices.

To play your .pocket game:

  • Create a folder at the root of a MicroSD card called GB Studio.
  • Copy the .pocket file into the GB Studio folder
  • Insert the MicroSD card into your Pocket device.
  • From the Pocket menu choose Tools / GB Studio / Play Creations and select your file from the list.

Troubleshooting

On macOS if you're having trouble building or running your game you may also need to install Apple's Command Line Tools by opening Applications/Terminal.app and entering the following command.

xcode-select --install

On Windows you may need to whitelist the application in your Anti Virus software to perform a build.