"VBA-MAKE"

This is not the original Void's Blitzarre Advance (aka CCB_Round1). It can be found here.

This is for a tentative port of it's source to EA/make as well as general cleanup.

This is very WIP.

The goals of this project are (in no particlular order):

• To provide an example of a full hack that fully uses the make/EA method instead of the older (and slower) MAKE HACK.cmd to people.
  • Even outside of the whole make/EA, eventually providing a cleaner and well-documented open source full hack is the goal (this will no doubt have to come with many bugfixes and whatnot).
• For me to test the still experimental "CHAX" make/EA setup on a larger project and improve upon it as I go and do this.
• Maybe if I'm motivated start some kind of "overhaul" of the original VBA? This will come after everything else tho (if ever).
  • If I start doing this, maybe bring some more people in so we can have this fun together :)

Oh and this also has an updated skill system :)

Engine hacks changes

I'm going to take a lot of liberties as to what I add and change, as well as in how I do so.

Trying to keep using old stuff for the sake of doing so is getting tiring and I'd rather do what I feel would be better. The skill system in this project will probably end up looking very different from the main Skill System branch; and will probably be much incompatible.

This will involve rethinking hooks, modularise everything and stuff; And porting half (and only half! see below) of the hacks to C :)

ASM vs. C

As you may know, I have been primarily hacking in C for the past almost year now (I started doing that around december 2017). So it would be logical (albeit a bit overkill) for me to port everything to C and stuff.

I'm not going to do that.

Don't get me wrong, the plan still is to review everything; but for this project in particular, since the goal is provide a complete example, I want to keep a healthy mix of both ASM and C. So even some of the new stuff I'm adding will be 100% ASM.

However, everything written in ASM will be ported to use lyn and the FE-CLib reference, will hopefully no exception.

Building

The setup required to build this is very much similar to what you need for FE-CHAX (although not all CHAX tools are used yet, but they will most likely be eventually), so tl;dr you need:

• devkitARM and the DEVKITARM env var
• some unix/msys
• python 3 in your path
• Event Assembler as Tools/EventAssembler with ColorzCore.
  • This also requires the raws and stdlib from my unofficial "experimental" stdlib fork!
• Png2Dmp, PortraitFormatter and ParseFile in Tools (you can find them in Event Assembler/Tools)
• ea-dep in Tools
• lyn in Tools
• gbagfx in Tools

I plan on eventually distributing an all in one "Tools" package to make this a bit easier but right now I'm still messing with everything all the time and updating the packing to go with it would be impractical.

File extensions conventions

Because of make rules and also consistency, I am defining rules for what extension corresponds to what file type:

File type	Extension	Can generate	Can be generated from	Notes
Event Source	.event	-	.csv+.nmm; .tmx; .o...	events generated from .o have full extension .lyn.event.
Compressed Binary	.lz	-	any	generated .lz don't lose original extension (.4bpp => 4bpp.lz).
Arbitrary Binary	.bin	-	-	-
Generated Binary	.dmp	-	.o; .tmx; .png (portrait), .fetxt	-
GBA Tile Graphics	.4bpp	-	.png	-
GBA Palette	.gbapal	-	.png	-
FE Formatted Text	.fetxt	.dmp	.txt (textprocess)	generated dmps have full extension .fetxt.dmp.
Generic Image	.png	.4bpp; .gbapal; .dmp (portrait)	-	portrait .dmps have _mug, _minimug, _frames and _palette postfixes.
ASM Source	.s	.o	-	-
Generated ASM	.asm	-	.c	for reference and debugging C only
C Source	.c	.asm, .o	-	-
Relocatable Object	.o	.lyn.event; .dmp	.s	ELF
Tiled Map	.tmx	.dmp+.event	-	.dmps have _data postfix
Table CSV Sheet	.csv	.event	-	.event generation requires corresponding .nmm
Table NMM	.nmm	.event	-	.event generation requires corresponding .csv

Note: all files don't follow those conventions yet, but this plan is that they eventually will.

Original VBA Credits

Chapters

Prologue    IT BEGINS                 Circles
Ch1         Secret Chapter            Leonarth
Ch2         The Bone Hole             Zmr
Ch3         Compile Proyect           Darr
Ch4         Monkey Business           Circles
Ch5         Winter Invasion           Alusq
Ch6         Fort of Bad               Stan
Ch7         Port of Bad               Mystic
Ch8         Yet Another Chapter       Colorz
Ch9         Tragic Backstory          Klok
Ch10        here you like Men         Ross
Ch11        Factory Gold              Wan!
Ch12        I felt Sadistic           Zmr
Ch13        Coarse, Rough, Irritating Circles
Ch14        Attack on Basement        OwainDark/Ardendark/Memesmith
Ch15        The Shark Straits         Darr
Ch16        Dead Valley               Venno
Ch17        "Slowly" Corrupting       Leonarth
Ch18        Island Clash              Kirb
Ch19        Lit chapter               Kirb
Ch20        Great rivalry             Kirb
Ch21        Doot Doot                 Colorz
Ch22        N i c e B o a t s         Kirb
Ch23        Flesh and Bone            Alusq
Ch24        River Rush                Teraspark
Ch25        Shrine of Meals           Alusq
Ch26        Darrman's Lakes           Zmr
Ch27        Convenient Lake           Kirb
Ch28        Mess.jpg                  Kirb
Ch29        Let It Be                 Grey
Ch30        End of All                Circles

Mugs

• Zmr56 for Bede, Tye, Jake
• L95 for Void, Celicia, Mark, Tatara
• Coby for Celica
• Ross for Samson
• Alusq for Tim, Tam, Saara, Banana, Mr Bones, Björn, Roshea
• Wan for Arve
• Tera for Evil Florina, Doowile
• Klok for Edge
• Monkeybard for Doot, Maeda, Kaga
• Darrman for Zigludo, Tiki
• blueeyedman24 for Gwendy
• Kirb for Edgeworth, Grit, Marf (edited from Didja Redo's version)
• Crazycolorz for Prine
• Astelaine for Not Arch

Maps

Prologue    IT BEGINS                 Circles
Ch1         Secret Chapter            Leonarth
Ch2         The Bone Hole             Zmr
Ch3         Compile Proyect           Darr
Ch4         Monkey Business           Aurawolf
Ch5         Winter Invasion           Alusq
Ch6         Fort of Bad               Stan
Ch7         Port of Bad               Mystic
Ch8         Yet Another Chapter       Colorz
Ch9         Tragic Backstory          Klok
Ch10        here you like Men         Klok
Ch11        Factory Gold              Wan!
Ch12        I felt Sadistic           Zmr
Ch13        Coarse, Rough, Irritating Circles
Ch14        Attack on Basement        OwainDark/Ardendark/Memesmith
Ch15        The Shark Straits         Bishop Seva
Ch16        Dead Valley               Venno
Ch17        "Slowly" Corrupting       Leonarth
Ch18        Island Clash              Kirb
Ch19        Lit chapter               Kirb
Ch20        Great rivalry             Kirb
Ch21        Doot Doot                 Bishop Seva
Ch22        N i c e B o a t s         Aurawolf
Ch23        Flesh and Bone            Alusq
Ch24        River Rush                Teraspark
Ch25        Shrine of Meals           Alusq
Ch26        Darrman's Lakes           Zmr
Ch27        Convenient Lake           Primefusion
Ch28        Mess.jpg                  Kirb
Ch29        Let It Be                 Grey
Ch30        End of All                Circles

Writing

• MCProductions (text)
• Darrman (formatting)

Music

• Alusq
• Ash

General Tools

• Nintenlord
• Crazycolorz
• Circles

Hax

• Leonarth
• Stan
• Teq
• Circles
• Colorz
• so many

Misc Graphics

• Circles
• Seva
• Wulfos
• Glacoe
• Paterick
• Teraspark
• Monkeybard
• Black Mage
• Alusq