Standalone Game Boy (Color) Application using Gearboy

This project is a fork of Gearboy by drhelius.

The goal of this fork is to transform Gearboy into a standalone Game Boy / Game Boy Color application, embedding both the emulator and the game into a single self-contained executable.

The concept is inspired by GBCbag2 by faktor73.

Overview

This fork removes all non-essential emulator features in order to focus on a clean, minimal and distributable game executable.

The resulting build produces one single .exe file, with:

• no external DLLs
• no external ROM file
• no runtime configuration files

Key Differences from Upstream Gearboy

The following features have been removed:

• All debugging features
• Audio recording functionality
• Cheat code support
• Game RAM save/load support
• ROM loading from file (file dialog)
• Compilation profiles for all platforms except Windows

The following features have been added or modified:

• Two additional keyboard input profiles
• Embedded Game Boy / Game Boy Color ROM
• Embedded SDL library (static linking)
• Embedded game, icon and informations
• Game informations visible in the "About" dialog

Build Requirements

• Windows
• Microsoft Visual Studio (tested with Visual Studio 2022)
• Desktop development with C++ (Workload)

Configuration

All configuration is handled through the /config directory at build time.

This directory contains the following files:

• game.gb
  The Game Boy / Game Boy Color ROM that will be embedded directly into the executable.
• iconfile.ico
  The Windows application icon.
• settings.json
  Contains application and game metadata such as title, version, author, and website.
  These values are embedded into the executable at build time.

  {
  "GameTitle": "Blupi's Adventures DEMO",
  "Version": "1.2.0",
  "Author": "initmaster",
  "GameWebsite": "https://initmaster.itch.io/blupis-adventures"
  }
  
  

Advantages

• Single, standalone .exe file
• No external files required
• Easy distribution
• No installer needed
• Ideal for game jams, demos, or small commercial releases

Contributors

Thank you to all the people who have already contributed to Gearboy! (and maybe to this fork !)

License

Gearboy is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 License, see LICENSE for more information.