Compiling helloworld example

If you have installed successfully PVSneslib, you also have snes-examples installed.

Go to snes-examples/hello_world to have the famous Hello World example.

Tips to help you with coding

In this example, all the souce code are in the src directory. It consists of only one file hello_world.c.

You can change this behavior by adding a SRC variable in the makefile.

It works if you set the SRC variable before the include of snes_rules :

SRC=./source

include ${PVSNESLIB_HOME}/devkitsnes/snes_rules)`

If you are skilled with assembly code, you can also add anoter variabe to allow the creation of .dbf files, each debug file is create during compilation process.

export PVSNESLIB_DEBUG=1

include ${PVSNESLIB_HOME}/devkitsnes/snes_rules)`

Explanation of main code

As any C program, the main function is mandatory and is the entry point automatically called on boot.

Here is the complete code of Hello World example:

#include <snes.h>

extern char tilfont, palfont;

//---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
int main(void)
{
    // Initialize SNES
    consoleInit();

    // Initialize text console with our font
    consoleSetTextVramBGAdr(0x6800);
    consoleSetTextVramAdr(0x3000);
    consoleSetTextOffset(0x0100);
    consoleInitText(0, 16 * 2, &tilfont, &palfont);

    // Init background
    bgSetGfxPtr(0, 0x2000);
    bgSetMapPtr(0, 0x6800, SC_32x32);

    // Now Put in 16 color mode and disable Bgs except current
    setMode(BG_MODE1, 0);
    bgSetDisable(1);
    bgSetDisable(2);

    // Draw a wonderful text :P
    consoleDrawText(10, 10, "Hello World !");
    consoleDrawText(6, 14, "WELCOME TO PVSNESLIB");
    consoleDrawText(3, 18, "HTTPS://WWW.PORTABLEDEV.COM");

    // Wait for nothing :P
    setScreenOn();

    while (1)
    {
        WaitForVBlank();
    }
    return 0;
}

Each main function must begin with the SNES initialization via:

    // Initialize SNES
    consoleInit();

Then, as we want to use the default font engine, we need to prepare text VRAM entries with:

    // Initialize text console with our font
    consoleSetTextVramBGAdr(0x6800);
    consoleSetTextVramAdr(0x3000);
    consoleSetTextOffset(0x0100);
    consoleInitText(0, 16 * 2, &tilfont, &palfont);

After that, we must declare where the SNES need to put the background in VRAM and we put the SNES in mode 1, which is the most popular mode for games:

    // Init background
    bgSetGfxPtr(0, 0x2000);
    bgSetMapPtr(0, 0x6800, SC_32x32);

    // Now Put in 16 color mode and disable Bgs except current
    setMode(BG_MODE1, 0);
    bgSetDisable(1);
    bgSetDisable(2);

That's all, just after, we put the text and wait for an inifite loop!

    // Draw a wonderful text :P
    consoleDrawText(10, 10, "Hello World !");
    consoleDrawText(6, 14, "WELCOME TO PVSNESLIB");
    consoleDrawText(3, 18, "HTTPS://WWW.PORTABLEDEV.COM");

    // Wait for nothing :P
    setScreenOn();

    while (1)
    {
        WaitForVBlank();
    }
    return 0;

How the graphic of the font is used in the code

The font is declare outisde the hello_world.c file, but we need to add an external declaration to allow consoleInitText to work:

extern char tilfont, palfont;

Then, in data.asm file, you declare all the assets compiled with PVSneslib tools. In our case, only the font:

.section ".rodata1" superfree

tilfont:
.incbin "pvsneslibfont.pic"

palfont:
.incbin "pvsneslibfont.pal"

.ends

You must remember that each section must be lower than 32 Kilobytes. If you want more space, just add other sections with another name than .rodata1 (like .fontdata for example)

How to compile

In a command line window, in hello_world directory, just type:

make clean

and then

make 

It will produce a large amount of line to explain what's going on (it's also here where you can see errors).

you will have a .sfc file produced name hello_world.sfc.

That's all! you're ready to do a great SNES game for our awesome console. Try to look at all examples to understand how to use joypad, other graphi modes, and so on.