Synthwave beats, the need for speed, and roaring jet engines. A narrative Game Boy Color game about a reckless Navy pilot, his no-nonsense flight instructor, and a wingman who always has his back.
Currently in develoment and built in GB Studio 4.2 with custom scene types for aerial combat, carrier landings, mini games, and many more.
GB Studio is a great way to start making your own Gameboy Game. However, documentation on in depth functionality is sparse, so I have created this engine reference, GBVM instruction set, and plugin API documentation for fellow developers.
Also make sure to check out the GB Studio Homepage and GB Studio Central for more resources.
Coordinate system, main loop order, scene loading sequence, and game time.
Actor data structure, flags, animation system, streaming activation, and linked lists.
VRAM layout, spritesheets, backgrounds, tiles, metasprites, and shadow OAM.
Scroll system, parallax layers, camera modes, and incremental tile loading.
Variable-width fonts, text rendering, control codes, overlay window, and menus.
CGB palette system, color loading, fade interpolation, and palette manipulation.
Joypad input, edge detection macros, timer system, triggers, and projectiles.
hUGE music driver, sound effects, channel control, and mute masks.
Variable system, memory layout, GBVM heap, constants, and math utilities.
Complete instruction set reference with all ~90 opcodes and parameters.
Creating custom scene types, engine.json, engine fields, and plugin architecture.
Event plugin API, field types, compile helpers, RPN calculator, and actor opcodes.
All event commands for .gbsres files — variables, actors, text, camera, sound.
Known gotchas, timing issues, and proven solutions for GB Studio development.
Free GB Studio plugins: SmoothFade, ToneBeep, NoiseDrone, and SetTextPalette.
This reference documents the internal engine architecture, C API, GBVM instruction set, and plugin system of GB Studio 4.2.2. It is intended for developers creating custom scene type plugins, event plugins, and editing scene event scripts directly in .gbsres JSON files. The information is derived from the GB Studio engine source code (engine version 4.2.2-e1) and verified through real-world plugin development on the Afterburn project.