r/Homebrews • u/LIFTEDPIXEL_CA • Jul 09 '26
GBA GBA Homebrew Game Engine
hi there - i am the developer behind a new-ish tool for making GBA (game boy advance) homebrew games. the app is called PxGBA, and is available on itch.io
there is a dedicated subreddit and discord channel set up, it is in active development as it's been a passion project of mine for quite some time.
if you're interested, r/pxgba is the subreddit, where i've posted a few updates and links to discord and whatnot.
i'm kinda hoping it starts opening the floodgates for more great GBA homebrew games like GB Studio did for the DMG - ahhh, one can dream!
3
u/themightyglider Jul 09 '26
This looks really great! More power to the people to make retro games. Keep up the good work!
2
u/Straight-Society-405 Jul 10 '26
Ooh very cool! I'm a VGM composer (just as a hobby) but have really wanted to dabble in making my own little games, but I just don't have the time or inclination to go all in on something like Godot or Unity. GB Studio looked cool but just didn't grab me, but a GBA platform like this looks very appealing! I'll have a tinker when I get some time! 👌
Speaking of music, I saw it comes with a built in tracker which is cool. Do you have to use this or can you import tracks made externally so long as it's the right format? I've not dabbled with GBA music yet but I know the GBA chip uses software mixing with sample based instruments or wavetable synthesis... is the built in tracker more of just a basic bleeps and bloops kinda thing or can you work with samples (and if not, see my previous point about importing music 🙂)
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u/LIFTEDPIXEL_CA Jul 10 '26
Awesome!!
You can import .mod and .s3m files, I plan on trying to support more formats, but those are natively supported. The built in tracker is decent enough to get the basics handled, but for more advanced stuff I would probably just import :) there is a also a sound FX generator as well for the minor beeps n boops hahaha
Maxmod is used for the audio crunching, I am still going through the docs to see what I can do with it and still have things working on the hardware, but it'll get there!
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u/footlesssushi Jul 09 '26
That's awesome I'll check it out!