EMULATORACTION / ADVENTUREWINDOWSLINUXMACOSANDROIDSTABLE

VisualBoyAdvance-M

Emulador de Game Boy / Game Boy Color / GBA

OriginGame Boy / Game Boy Color / GBA

TechnologyCross-platform native emulator (JIT / dynamic)

Available forWindows, Linux, macOS, Android

View official project

About the project

Continuación moderna de VisualBoyAdvance para Game Boy, Game Boy Color y Game Boy Advance, con builds para escritorio y nightlies Android.

Official project information

Author's original READMEOpen on GitHub ↗

Visual Boy Advance - M

Visual Boy Advance - M

Game Boy and Game Boy Advance Emulator

Our Discord server is here.

Windows and Mac builds are in the releases tab.

Nightly builds for Windows, macOS, Libretro and Android are at https://nightly.visualboyadvance-m.org/.

PLEASE TEST THE NIGHTLY OR MASTER WITH A FACTORY RESET BEFORE REPORTING ISSUES

Your distribution may have packages available as well, search for visualboyadvance-m or vbam.

To build from source, see below.

If you are having issues, try resetting the config file first, go to Help -> Factory Reset.

System Requirements

Windows XP+, macOS or Linux.

Older and weaker systems may not be able to run the higher level xBRZ and ScaleFX scalers.

For Windows XP install:

Building

The basic formula to build vba-m is:

git clone https://github.com/visualboyadvance-m/visualboyadvance-m
cd visualboyadvance-m

./installdeps # On Linux, macOS or MSYS2

mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -G Ninja
ninja

If ./installdeps does not work, you may need to install dependencies manually, see below for the list. ./installdeps also works on MSYS2.

For builds using automatically downloaded vcpkg packages for dependencies on macOS or Linux use:

cmake .. -DVCPKG_TARGET_TRIPLET=**<SYSTEM>** -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -G Ninja

, where SYSTEM is one of:

x64-linux,
arm64-macos,
x64-macos

. For Android set ANDROID_HOME and ANDROID_NDK_HOME and use:

arm64-android
arm-neon-android
x64-android
x86-android
riscv64-android

. On Windows, vcpkg is the default and that is handled automatically.

If you are in an MSYS2 shell, the MSYS2 package dependencies installed via ./installdeps are the default, unless you pass `-DVCPKG_TARGET_TRIPLET=<MSYS2-ENVIRONMENT> which is one of:

x64-mingw-static (for MINGW64, UCRT64 or CLANG64),
x32-mingw-static (for Windows XP builds using a MINGW32 toolchain.)

You can download a MINGW32 toolchain for XP here and extract it to C:\msys64.

A VCPKG_ROOT is automatically created as a sibling of the project directory, unless you set it to something else in your environment.

Visual Studio Code Support

Make sure the C/C++ and CMake Tools extensions are installed.

Add the following to your settings.json:

{
    "cmake.configureOnOpen": true,
    "cmake.preferredGenerators": [ "Ninja" ]
}

Dependencies

You will need the following:

C++ and C compiler and binutils,
CMake.

And the following development libraries,

all platforms, required:

zlib,
Gettext and gettext-tools,
SDL3 or SDL2,
wxWidgets,
bzip2,
xz/lzma,

optional:

FFmpeg,
OpenAL-Soft,
Lua,
FAudio,
Vulkan,

on Linux you will also need:

glibc-devel,
mesa,
GTK3,
XOrg,
Wayland,

on macOS you will need MoltenVK for Vulkan support.

CMake Options

The CMake code tries to guess reasonable defaults for options, but you can override them, for example:

cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DENABLE_LINK=NO -G Ninja

. Here is the list:

CMake Option	What it Does	Defaults
`ENABLE_SDL`	Build the SDL port	OFF - Win, ON - rest
`ENABLE_WX`	Build the wxWidgets port	ON
`ENABLE_LINK`	Enable GBA/GB linking functionality	ON
`ENABLE_LIBRETRO`	Build the libretro core	ON
`BUILD_TESTING`	Build the tests	ON
`UPSTREAM_RELEASE`	Do some release tasks, like codesigning and making zips	OFF
`TRANSLATIONS_ONLY`	Build only the translations.zip and nothing else	OFF
`ENABLE_LTO`	Compile with Link Time Optimization	ON for release build
`VCPKG_BINARY_PACKAGES`	Download/use vcpkg binary packages	ON - Win, OFF - rest
`VCPKG_TARGET_TRIPLET`	Enable vcpkg download/use of vcpkg binary packages for that triplet	ON - Win, OFF - rest
`VCPKG_SOURCE_PACKAGES`	Enable builds of vcpkg deps when binary packageas are not available	ON - Win, OFF - rest
`NO_VCPKG_UPDATES`	Do not update vcpkg ports from either binaries or source	OFF
`VBAM_STATIC`	Try to link as many libraries statically as possible	ON - Win/MSYS2 or OFF
`DISABLE_MACOS_PACKAGE_MANAGERS`	Do not use the detected brew/Nix/MacPorts on macOS	OFF
`ENABLE_SDL3`	Use SDL3 not SDL2	ON if detected
`ENABLE_GENERIC_FILE_DIALOGS`	Use generic file open/selection dialogs on macOS	OFF
`DISABLE_OPENGL`	Disable OpenGL support	OFF
`ENABLE_DEBUGGER`	Enable the debugger	ON
`ENABLE_LUA`	Enable Lua scripting support for wxWidgets port	ON
`ENABLE_ASAN`	Use `-fsanitize=address` for GCC/Clang Debug builds	OFF
`ENABLE_BZ2`	Enable bzip2 .bz2 archive support	ON
`ENABLE_LZMA`	Enable lzma .xz archive support	ON
`ENABLE_LIRC`	Enable LIRC support	OFF
`ENABLE_FFMPEG`	Enable ffmpeg A/V recording	ON
`ENABLE_ONLINEUPDATES`	Enable online update checks	ON (release builds)
`ENABLE_GBA_LOGGING`	Enable extended GBA logging	ON
`ENABLE_OPENAL`	Enable openal-soft sound output for wxWidgets	ON
`ENABLE_XAUDIO2`	Enable xaudio2 sound output for wxWidgets (Windows only)	ON
`ENABLE_FAUDIO`	Enable faudio sound output for wxWidgets	ON
`ENABLE_AAUDIO`	Enable AAudio sound output for wxWidgets (Android only)	ON - Android
`ENABLE_VULKAN`	Enable Vulkan video output	ON
`ENABLE_GLES`	Enable the OpenGL ES 2 video output (Android only)	ON - Android
`ENABLE_DIRECT3D`	Enable Direct3D 9 support (Windows only)	ON - Win
`ENABLE_DIRECT3D12`	Enable Direct3D 12 support (Windows only)	ON - Win
`ENABLE_DIRECT3D11`	Enable Direct3D 11 support (Windows only)	ON - Win
`ENABLE_WAYLAND_PROTOCOLS`	Generate Wayland protocol client glue (HDR, viewporter)	ON if detected

Note for distro packagers, we use the CMake module GNUInstallDirs to configure installation directories.

On Linux or macOS, to use a different version of wxWidgets, set wxWidgets_CONFIG_EXECUTABLE to the path to the wx-config script you want to use.

Contributing

See the Developer Manual.

View official project