GBA Assembly — 1. How the hardware works
Start from scratch: understand the Game Boy Advance CPU, ROM, RAM and memory map before writing your first instructions.
Read articleAlan Jahnel / Software engineering
Practical articles, experiments, and guides on software engineering, from backend systems to game development.
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Start from scratch: understand the Game Boy Advance CPU, ROM, RAM and memory map before writing your first instructions.
Read articleFollow values through ARM assembly: bits, addresses, loads, stores, comparisons and masks, with step-by-step exercises.
Read articleSet up the tools and build a complete ROM that fills the screen and lights up one pixel. Understand every step from text to hardware.
Read articleLearn how coordinates become VRAM addresses and how five-bit RGB colors form a rectangle in Mode 3.
Read articleMake a square blink in sync with the display and understand VCOUNT, VBlank, polling and the difference between a frame and a CPU instruction.
Read articleRead KEYINPUT, interpret active-low bits and make a square change color. Learn to distinguish pressing a button from holding it down.
Read articleCombine input, a position in RAM and drawing to move a square, respect screen boundaries and erase the previous image without leaving trails.
Read articleMove a square to a target and create a win condition. Understand rectangle overlap, game state and restarting with the Start button.
Read articleLearn to investigate failures and connect the hardware examples to the main Tower Defense tutorial, with a reading guide and next steps.
Read articleLook up ARM7TDMI instructions, registers, flags, conditions, addressing, the stack and directives, with examples and links to the series.
Read articleBuild a Game Boy Advance tower defense in assembly: four stages, commented code and a reproducible ROM made from three files.
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