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62 lines
2.7 KiB
Markdown
62 lines
2.7 KiB
Markdown
# Introduction
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Here's a book that'll help you program in Rust on the Game Boy Advance (GBA).
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It's a work in progress of course, but so is most of everything in Rust.
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## Style and Purpose
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I'm out to teach you how to program in Rust on the GBA, obviously. However,
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while there _is_ a [gba](https://github.com/rust-console/gba) crate, and while I
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genuinely believe it to be a good and useful crate for GBA programming, we _will
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not_ be using the `gba` crate within this book. In fact we won't be using any
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crates at all. We can call it the [Handmade Hero](https://handmadehero.org/)
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approach, if you like.
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I don't want to just teach you how to use the `gba` crate, I want to teach you
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what you'd need to know to write the crate from scratch if it wasn't there.
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Each chapter of the book will focus on a few things you'll need to know about
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GBA programming and then present a fully self-contained example that puts those
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ideas into action. Just one file per example, no dependencies, no external
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assets, no fuss. The examples will be in the text of the book within code
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blocks, but also you can find them in the [examples
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directory](https://github.com/rust-console/gba/tree/master/examples) of the repo
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if you want to get them that way.
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## Expected Knowledge
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I will try not to ask too much of the reader ahead of time, but you are expected
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to have already read [The Rust Book](https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/).
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It's very difficult to know when you've said something that someone else won't
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already know about, or if you're presenting ideas out of order. If things aren't
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clear please [file an issue](https://github.com/rust-console/gba/issues) and
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we'll try to address it.
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## Getting Help
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If you want to contact us you should join the [Rust Community
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Discord](https://discordapp.com/invite/aVESxV8) and ask in the `#gamedev`
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channel.
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* `Ketsuban` is the wizard who knows much more about how it all works
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* `Lokathor` is the fool who decided to write a crate and book for it.
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If it's _not_ a GBA specific question then you can probably ask any of the other
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folks in the server as well (there's a few hundred folks).
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## Further Reading
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If you want to read more about developing on the GBA there are some other good
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resources as well:
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* [Tonc](https://www.coranac.com/tonc/text/toc.htm), a tutorial series written
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for C, but it's what I based the ordering of this book's sections on.
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* [GBATEK](http://problemkaputt.de/gbatek.htm), a homebrew tech manual for
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GBA/NDS/DSi. We will regularly link to parts of it when talking about various
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bits of the GBA.
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* [CowBite](https://www.cs.rit.edu/~tjh8300/CowBite/CowBiteSpec.htm) is another
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tech specification that's more GBA specific. It's sometimes got more ASCII
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art diagrams and example C struct layouts than GBATEK does.
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