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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.