A GBA game more-or-less loosely intended as a demake of Mindustry (Changes planned largely due to technical limitations).

The quickest way to get started under Linux/macOS is to use https://nixos.org/nix/ as a dev environment. Just run nix-shell in the project directory.

Once set up, all that's needed is to run git submodule init && git submodule update && cargo make assets && cargo make run-qt to clone the Mindustry submodule, build assets, build the game and start it in mGBA. Alternatively, cargo make assets && cargo make debug-run creates a debug build and launches it in mGBA, waiting for a GDB client to attach on port 2345 (you should strongly consider using our VScode debug config, as all the annoying setup has already been done for you there). cargo make assets && cargo make test runs the tests.

NOTE: If you change the Mindustry assets/the asset generation script you have to run cargo make assets manually. The process is manual because rebuilding them takes a long time.

When developing the game, please keep in mind which subsystems use which resources (and expect exclusive access to them). Otherwise, fun debugging will ensue.

• IWRAM: Entirely used by static variables and the stack
• EWRAM: Entirely used by the global allocator (heap)
• OAM: Entirely managed by the HW sprite allocator
• Sprite palette: Entirely managed by the HW sprite allocator
• Background palette (slots 0-15): Used by the text engine
• Background palette (slots 16-255): Entirely managed by the background system
• Charblocks 0, 1: Entirely managed by the background system
• Screenblocks 8-11: Entirely managed by the background system
• Charblock 2: Entirely managed by the text engine
• Screenblock 24: Entirely managed by the text engine
• Screenblocks 25, 26: Used by instances of crate::menu::Window
• Charblock 3: Unusable, as it overlaps the screenblocks we use
• Windows: Entirely used by instances of crate::menu::Window
• Backgrounds 0, 1: Used by background
• Background 3: Used by text engine
• Background 2: Used by windows

• A useful post on resource management for GBA games
• Blog about developing an x86 OS in Rust, a lot of the posts apply to no_std dev in general
• Detailed guide to GBA programming
• Text engine which heavily inspired the design of ours
• Font we use