GB Studio is a quick and easy to use drag and drop retro game creator for your favourite handheld video game system.

[4.2.2] - 2026-02-24

Added

• Add setting to control how many frames projectile collision checks are spread over
• Add "Is Touching Wall" as a read only engine field for platformer scenes (gives access to plat_wall_col)

Changed

• Deprecate legacy scriptBuilder plugin APIs. Usage now triggers a warning indicating the replacement function
• Increased plugin compile timeout to 10 minutes (previously 1 minute)

Fixed

• Fix issue where changing Music Tracker Keyboard Layout setting would not take effect until the project was reloaded
• Fix Music Tracker keyboard shortcuts when using non-QWERTY layouts (QWERTZ, AZERTY, Dvorak, etc.)
• Fix issue where off-screen actors would sometimes be visible on scene load
• Fix issue where scenes with unicode character names could cause resources to be deleted when saving project
• Fix issue where editing an FX Hammer file wouldn't correctly update the number of sound effects available
• Fix issue where resizing a background image could cause builds to fail until the project was reloaded

GB Studio is a quick and easy to use drag and drop retro game creator for your favourite handheld video game system.

[4.2.1] - 2026-02-13

Fixed

• Fix issue on Windows where attempting to build would show EPERM error (hopefully)
• Fix issue on Windows where Linking step would show unexpected warning message spread over multiple lines

GB Studio is a quick and easy to use drag and drop retro game creator for your favourite handheld video game system.

[4.2.0] - 2026-02-13

Added

• Add ability to define constant values, compared to variables these don't take any extra memory when used in game
• Add ability to select all scenes with Ctrl/Cmd + A from Game World view
• Add plugin manager for installing plugins from the official plugin repository, accessible from the menu at Plugins / Plugin Manager
• Add support for theme, localization and project template plugins
• Add ability to right click a scene to "Run From Here" allowing quick preview of a specific scene. Optionally can only include the selected scenes for faster build previews in large projects.
• Add events "Load Projectile Into Slot" and "Launch Projectile In Slot" to allow more advanced control over setup and launch of projectiles and changing the loaded projectiles at run time
• Add ability to hover over tiles in debugger VRAM preview to see tile memory address information @pau-tomas
• Add animation states to generated game_globals.h allowing use from engine code @Mico27
• Add ability to change collision layer opacity in World view when collision tool is selected @Q-Bert-Reynolds
• Add ability for engine plugins to define new, per scene, collision tile types in engine.json file [@Q-Bert-Reynolds]
• Add ability to show the raw collision tile values when editing collisions in world view
• Add ability to ctrl/cmd + click frames in Sprite Editor to toggle multi select or shift + click to select range
• Add right click context menu to frames in Sprite Editor allowing copy/paste/clone/delete to be performed on all selected frames
• Add ability to search and add scripts by name when adding events instead of needing to add a "Call Script" event and selecting the script manually from the dropdown each time @pau-tomas
• Add ability to quickly create "Comment" events by typing the comment text in the Add Event search field and choosing "Comment" menu item @pau-tomas
• Add text code !Wait to allow pausing dialogue until an amount of time/frames has elapsed or a selected button has been pressed
• Add setting to toggle GBC color correction. Disable color correction to closer match how colors will appear on modern hardware
• Add ability to read camera properties (tile/pixel position, deadzone and offset) within script values @pau-tomas
• Add ability to mute audio of inbuilt emulator from menu "Window / Play Window / Mute Audio"
• Add ability to override "Color Only" setting per scene in color projects, allowing "Color Only" scenes in a mixed project or monochrome compatible scenes in a "Color Only" project. Right click on a scene and select "Color Mode Override"
• Add events "Pause Logic For Scene Type" and "Resume Logic For Scene Type" allowing manual control of if the scene's update function should be running or not. You can use this when running multi-threaded scripts (such as a cutscene with multiple actors moving at once) to prevent player input while the script is running.
• Add support for characters outside of the basic multilingual plane in font mappings (such as emoji) e.g. "😊": 34
• Add support for multiple character sequences to be replaced in font mappings e.g. "EURO": 128
• Add support for font mappings to output multiple character codes for a single input e.g. "X": [72, 69, 76, 76, 79]
• Add ability to click label to the right of ROM usage bar to toggle between showing ROM usage values as byte values rather than rounding to KiB/MiB
• Generate file bank_usage.txt when exporting ROM giving a breakdown of which assets were assigned to each memory bank and how many bytes were used
• Add support for running GB Studio on Linux ARM64 (including Raspberry Pi)
• Add "globals.i" file when exporting ROM containing all variable addresses. Allows integration with emulators such as GodotBoy for handling achievements and other game/rom interactions
• Add ability to edit scene type (Platformer/TopDown etc.) global settings from Scene sidebar by clicking Cog button rather than needing to go to Settings page.
• Add option to prevent backtracking in "Camera Move To Lock On Player" event to stop scroll from following player in selected directions
• Add event "Set Camera Lock To Player", with same functionality as the move to variant but which will be called before automatic screen fade in event
• Add new sprite animation types "Horizontal" and "Horizontal + Movement" for creating sprites which can only face left or right
• Add ability for engine plugins to define constants, accessible from GBVM scripts, to reduce need for magic numbers
• Added new features to Platformer scene type based on Platformer+ plugin. Functionality like dashing, double jump, coyote time, fall through, wall jumps, knockback are now included in the inbuilt Platformer, each feature is optional and if disabled will not affect your game's performance.
• Add ability for actors in Platformer scenes to be marked as "Solid" or "Platform" allowing moving platforms. Scene plugins can opt in to this also
• Add new event "Attach Script To Platformer Event Callback" allowing scripts to be triggered by events occuring within platformer scenes
• Add support for setting per scene camera bounds, constraining the min/max scrollable area
• Add a "Set Camera Bounds" event to allow scripts to adjust min/max scroll limits at runtime
• Add ability to set Sprite Mode, allowing 8x8 tiles to be used (previously only 8x16 were supported). Sprite Mode can be set globally in Settings and overridden per scene or sprite using the sidebar dropdown. Note that all sprites within a scene must use the same mode as the scene itself. @pau-tomas
• Add ability for Engine Fields to be used anywhere that script values are supported
• Add zoom level 1600 when viewing assets
• Add "If Engine Field Compare With Value/Variable" events
• Add setting in Build Options to determine if build folder should be opened after exporting game @pau-tomas
• Add ability to reorder actors and triggers within a scene from context menus @Mico27
• Add ability for event plugins to readText and readJSON files (must be in the same folder as plugin) const api = require("plugin-api"); const data = api.readJSON("./data.json");
• Add ability to position actors in a scene using pixel coordinates rather than tiles by clicking units type next to "Position" label at top of right hand sidebar for actor @Mico27
• Add ability to change canvas origin point when editing sprites @Mico27
• Add support for SGB border overlapping the GB screen. Magenta pixels in border image will be transparent but other colors will display over the top of the game screen. @pau-tomas
• Add enhanced Adventure scene type with more configurable options
• Add ability for actors in Adventure scenes to be marked as "Solid"
• Add support for rounded corner collision tiles in Adventure scenes, allowing players to smoothly slide around corners
• Add warnings when trying to use "Set Actor Movement Speed" event on player with incompatible scene types (platformer and adventure). Includes button to automatically replace with "Engine Field Update" events @pau-tomas
• Add ability to extract palettes directly from a color image (available in the Scene sidebar when choosing "Automatic" or "Manual" palettes). This generates the palettes found in the image and auto-paints the tiles, while still allowing tile colors to be edited.
• Add ability to override UI palette when using automatic background palettes
• Add "Rate Limit" event allowing portions of scripts to be throttled by time, running at most once per interval.
• Add "Replace Palette" button to the Sprite Editor. When enabled, changing the palette of a tile updates all tiles that use the same palette
• Add "Preview as Monochrome" button to Sprite Editor
• Add ability to duplicate color palettes from right click context menu on palette editor sidebar
• Add "Scene Types" section to the Settings page for enabling or disabling specific scene types
• Add "Default Scene Type" setting used when creating new scenes
• Add ability to display a "Screen Grid" from the "View" menu which can be anchored to any corner of the scene @pau-tomas
• Add "Automatic Tile Flip" setting to optimize tilesets by reusing horizontally and vertically flipped tiles where possible. Only supported in "Color Only" scenes @Mico27
• Add support for setting global and per scene monochrome palettes for BGP (background & overlays), OBP0 and OBP1 (sprites) Q-Bert-Reynolds
• Add font indexes to game_globals.h and game_globals.i for use in custom gbvm scripts and plugins
• Add _stackPushScriptValue helper for use in plugins @Phidias618
• Add ability to lock actor direction when using "Actor Move To/Relative" events so the actor does not change direction during movement
• Add copy (Ctrl/Cmd+C), paste (Ctrl/Cmd+V), paste before (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+V), comment (Ctrl/Cmd+/) keyboard shortcuts to script event editor can be used when hovering mouse cursor over script event's title or when hoverring the "Add Event" button
• Add ability to select multiple script events using a checkbox on the right-hand side of each event title. Previously this was only possible using Shift+Click. When multiple events are selected, copy, paste, comment, and group comma...

Thanks again to everyone who tested 4.2.0-beta2! A few small issues were found (that's why we have betas!) and have been fixed in 4.2.0-beta3. A final release is closer than ever!

This time we have some bug fixes:

• Fix issue where clicking on effect row in music editor in some cases could cause application to crash
• Fix issue where Actor Move To/Relative events would cause actors to teleport during actor/actor collisions
• Fix issue where Actor Move To/Relative events would show flash of movement animation when path was blocked by another actor
• Fix issue where offscreen actors could appear onscreen while script is locked
• Fix issue where copy/pasting hex colors in the palette editor could result in colors being remapped incorrectly when color correction was enabled
• Fix issue where newly added scenes could default to using .mono.png tile images as the background image
• Fix crash when selecting a scene with a deleted background image
• Fix issue in platformer scene type where run state was using air deceleration value
• Fix jitter in shoot em up scene when moving from an horizontal direction into a vertical direction without stopping moving @Mico27

Some quality of life improvements:

• Add ability to "Remove Unused" palettes, available from a new dropdown in the top-left of the Palettes page
• Add ability to toggle between light and dark background color in sprite editor @pau-tomas
• Extracting palettes from color images now automatically generates a matching .mono.png tiles image

And game engine performance optimisations:

• Improved GBVM performance during native calls @untoxa and integer square root calculations @Phidias618
• Improved GBVM actor and projectile render performance @michel-iwaniec
• Optimized GBVM Bank 0 usage by removing unnecessary global variable initializations @Phidias618

I'm hoping this version could be the one to release officially soon (fingers crossed) and I can finally get started on the updated documentation.

The full list of changes can be found here https://github.com/chrismaltby/gb-studio/blob/develop/CHANGELOG.md#unreleased

As always if you spot any problems, please make sure to report an issue at https://github.com/chrismaltby/gb-studio/issues

Thanks,

Chris

Thanks to everyone who tested out the first 4.2.0 beta! We managed to spot and fix a few of the major issues for beta2.

Wall jumping in Platformer scenes can now be enabled without causing builds to fail, and off-screen actors will no longer randomly appear on screen :-)

There's also a few new features like keyboard shortcuts for copy pasting scripts and the ability to lock an actor's direction during "Move To/Relative" events so you can have an actor move right while continuing to face left.

Application changes since 4.2.0 beta1

• Add ability to lock actor direction when using "Actor Move To/Relative" events so the actor does not change direction during movement
• Add copy (Ctrl/Cmd+C), paste (Ctrl/Cmd+V), paste before (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+V), comment (Ctrl/Cmd+/) keyboard shortcuts to script event editor can be used when hovering mouse cursor over script event's title or when hoverring the "Add Event" button
• Add ability to select multiple script events using a checkbox on the right-hand side of each event title. Previously this was only possible using Shift+Click. When multiple events are selected, copy, paste, comment, and group commands apply to all selected events.
• Add _stackPushScriptValue helper for use in plugins @Phidias618
• Updated Italian localisation. @r3vit
• Add ability to lock player direction in Adventure scenes to only face horizontal directions @Mico27
• "Add Event" button now includes a Paste button when script events can be pasted
• Sprite Animation State select dropdowns now group states that are only used by a single sprite. States shared by multiple sprites appear ungrouped, and you can hover over them to see which sprites use them
• Fix broken values in EVENT_ENGINE_FIELD_SET carried over from 2.0.0 projects
• Fix issue where variables passed by reference in expressions within custom scripts would use incorrect values
• Fix issue where using actor properties in custom scripts would always return player properties
• Fix issue preventing storing presets for "Launch Projectile in Slot" events
• Fix issue where clicking on effect row in music editor in some cases could cause application to crash

Engine changes since 4.2.0 beta1

• Improve VM_STEP performance
• Free space in bank 0 by moving sin table to banked space and by converting cos/sin/isqrt to banked functions
• Fix wall jump typo in platformer scene type
• Fix issue where offscreen actors could flash onscreen for a few frames if manually activated
• Fix loading sprites with NULL tileset
• Optimize activate_actors_in_row and Optimize activate_actors_in_col
• Fix player to actor collision in adventure scene type
• Fix crash handler
• Fix staggering when player is moving in shmup scenes
• Spread actor screen boundary checks over multiple frames to improve performance
• Spread projectile collision checks over multiple frames
• Fix vm_actor_move_to interupt to stop actor on tile boundaries again
• Fix emotes when in 8x8 sprite mode
• Optimise actors_render performance by moving some checks to earlier in the function
• Add support for horizontal only player sprite in adventure scenes
• Add new optimised instructions for moving actors VM_ACTOR_MOVE_TO_INIT, VM_ACTOR_MOVE_TO_X, VM_ACTOR_MOVE_TO_Y, VM_ACTOR_MOVE_TO_XY, VM_ACTOR_MOVE_TO_SET_DIR_X, VM_ACTOR_MOVE_TO_SET_DIR_Y
• Optimise calls to projectile_launch when launch direction is axis aligned
• Use static variable for saving/restoring bank in scroll
• Use static variable for saving/restoring bank in projectiles
• Minor optimizations to the general banked data manipulation functions

The full list of changes can be found here https://github.com/chrismaltby/gb-studio/blob/develop/CHANGELOG.md#unreleased

As always if you spot any problems, please make sure to report an issue at https://github.com/chrismaltby/gb-studio/issues

Thanks,
Chris

Thanks for your patience, it has taken longer than I originally planned, but GB Studio 4.2.0 is finally ready for beta testing.


This release is mainly aimed at plugin authors, giving them a chance to test existing plugins, make any required updates, and maybe even submit them to the new plugin repository (more on that later!). While major changes aren’t expected before the final release, this is still a beta, so please remember to back up your projects before trying it.

There’s lots to cover in this version, too much to write here but here’s some of the highlights:

Improved scene types

The Platformer scene type now includes most features previously provided by hauntology's Platformer Plus plugin. That includes dashing, double jumps, coyote time, wall jumps, solid actors and more. All these features can be toggled on or off as needed, and disabled features have no performance impact. If your current project heavily depends on Platformer Plus, migration not be easy, it might be best to stick with older GB Studio versions until you start your next project.

The Adventure scene type now also supports solid actors as well as rounded corner collision tiles to make it easier to walk into tight spaces.

The Shoot ‘Em Up game type now includes more configurable options such as Free Movement so you’re no longer locked to one screen edge.

You can also now toggle individual scene types on or off per project. For example, if you’re making a platformer, you can set Platformer as the default for new scenes and hide other scene types so their settings and events don’t even appear.

Plugin System

There is now an inbuilt plugin manager allowing quickly finding, installing and updating from an approved list of plugins.

If you are a plugin author who wants to add your plugin to the official repository you can submit a PR to https://github.com/gb-studio-dev/gb-studio-plugins

And More

• Support for per project constant values
• Sprite editor quality of life improvements
• Linux ARM (Raspberry Pi) support
• Camera backtracking and bounds control
• Per scene 8x8px sprite tile mode support
• Extract color palettes from background images
• Rate limit event to handle things like only being able to fire X times per second
• Automatic tile flipping in Color Only scenes to reduce ROM usage.
• “Run From Here” scene preview, by right clicking on a scene. Allows only including selected scenes for faster build times.
• Per scene color mode override allowing a game to have Color Only sections
• Lots of bug fixes!

The full list of changes can be found here https://github.com/chrismaltby/gb-studio/blob/develop/CHANGELOG.md#unreleased

As always if you spot any problems, please make sure to report an issue at https://github.com/chrismaltby/gb-studio/issues

Thanks to everyone who contributed to help build this version and an especially big thanks to all the subscribers on Patreon who helped make this release possible.

Hope you all enjoy the holiday season! I’m aiming for this to be the official release early in the New Year, I just need to write the documentation now!!

Thanks,
Chris

GB Studio is a quick and easy to use drag and drop retro game creator for your favourite handheld video game system.

[4.1.3] - 2024-09-16

Changed

• Updated Spanish localisation. @doomer6699
• Improved error message that appears when project fails to open due to broken plugins

Fixed

• Fix issue where adding a new song wouldn't warn about unsaved changes in current song
• Fix issue where adding a song with an already existing name wouldn't auto select the newly created song
• Fix issue where scene connection lines could get stuck in place if custom scripts that change scenes are called multiple times from the same scene
• Fix issue where "Replace Script" confirmation alert would appear when pasting sometimes even if the custom script hadn't been modified
• Fix issue preventing building projects containing a "Play Music" event but no music
• Fix issue where dialogue script events could cause horizontal scroll bars to appear in script editor when column was not wide enough to display all tabs
• Fix issue where errors causing the build process to end early where not being display correctly in the Build Log
• Fix issue preventing build when a scene includes a common tileset that has been deleted

GB Studio is a quick and easy to use drag and drop retro game creator for your favourite handheld video game system.

[4.1.2] - 2024-09-09

Added

• Add ability to remove a single project from the recent files list by clicking "X" button that appears on hover

Changed

• Update build log so the scripts with GBVM errors will display a link to edit the script which needs fixing.
• When trying to open a project that has been deleted it will be removed from the recent projects list
• Build process now runs in a Worker thread, meaning long builds will no longer cause the UI to become unresponsive

Fixed

• Fix overflow of actor position that can occur when using "Move Relative" event near scene edges
• Fix issue causing crash when trying to preview an FX Hammer effect index that doesn't exist
• Fix issue building game when playing FX Hammer sound effect that doesn't exist (overflowed values will clamp to available range)
• Fix issue where migrate project confirmation dialog would appear behind project window on Linux
• Fix issue where "Display Dialogue" event would inconsistently pause between each dialogue in a multi dialogue sequence
• Fix issue where text scroll would not scroll first character of each line of text when using avatars

GB Studio is a quick and easy to use drag and drop retro game creator for your favourite handheld video game system.

[4.1.1] - 2024-09-04

Added

• Add desktop icons for Linux deb and rpm packages @wbrawner

Changed

• Update build log so the scripts that are too large to fit in GB memory will display a link to edit the script which needs reducing.
• Updated Spanish localisation. @doomer6699

Fixed

• Fix issue where custom script gbvm symbols would not always match the ones you defined
• Fix issue where identical custom scripts would share the same gbvm symbol
• Fix wording on sound effect context menu. Now says "Delete Sound Effect" rather than "Delete Song"
• Fix variable uses list to include variables referenced in text and expressions
• Fix label in Switch event for branch when value is "0"

Removed

• Removed "Optimise ROM For" setting as it would cause issues when changed from default value

GB Studio is a quick and easy to use drag and drop retro game creator for your favourite handheld video game system.

[4.1.0] - 2024-09-02

Added

• Add ability to create reusable actor and trigger "prefabs"
• Add ability to set reusable "preset" values on "Display Dialogue" and "Launch Projectile" events
• Add "Draw Text" event allowing drawing text directly to background or overlay (based on "Display Background Text" plugin by @pau-tomas)
• Add "Set Overlay Scanline Cutoff" event allowing you to show overlays at the top of the screen
• Add "Close Non-Modal Dialogue" event, required if using "Close When" -> "Never" option in updated "Display Dialogue" event.
• Add "Mute Channel" event allowing control over which music channels are active or muted (based on "Mute Channel" plugin by @pau-tomas)
• Add "Set Dialogue Frame" event allowing the dialogue frame image to be dynamically replaced with any 24px x 24px tileset (based on "Set Dialogue Frame" plugin by @pau-tomas)
• Tilesets asset folder added to all sample projects @pau-tomas
• Add _stackPushVariable(variable) and _isIndirectVariable(variable) helpers for use in plugins
• Add "View Script Uses" feature accessible from the script context menu, allowing you to see all places where a script has been used in your project
• Add ability to change compiler optimisation settings in Build Options section on Settings page @patrickmollohan
• Add event "Set Actor Collision Bounding Box" to modify collision shape
• Add event "Set Text Sound Effect" to set a sound effect to play as each dialogue text character is displayed
• When deleting scripts, you are now given the option to also delete all "Call Script" events that reference the script
• Add ROM usage monitor to Build Log showing how much free space is available before the next ROM size increase @pau-tomas
• Add "Print Using GB Printer" event to send either the current Background or Overlay to a connected GB Printer. Game must be run on real hardware with a printer connected for this feature to work (based on "Print Screen Background" plugin by @pau-tomas)
• Add "Set Camera Property" event for changing camera deadzone and offset values
• Add "Actor Effects" event for playing effect animations on actors (based on "Actor FX" plugin by @pau-tomas)
• Add "Thread Start" and "Stop Thread" events allowing running scripts in the background.

Changed

• Changed project file structure. The .gbsproj file will now contain very little information, instead each scene, actor, trigger, etc is individually stored in a .gbsres file in a projects/ folder allowing for better support for version control + working in teams. Migration is automatic on first save after loading a project
• Update to latest GBVM
• Optimise subpixel calculations in Actor and Camera Move events by using bitwise shifting rather than multiplication/division
• Updated Polish localisation. @ReptiIe
• Updated Japanese localisation. @tomo666
• Updated French localisation. @Pomdap
• Updated Spanish localisation. @doomer6699
• Only the inbuilt scene types that were actually used in your game are now compiled, improving build time if only some scene types were used
• Improve build cancelling: Stops spawned processes immediately rather than waiting for in progress processes to complete
• Changing the engine field in a "Store Engine Field In Variable" event no longer resets the variable
• Build time now shown in seconds when < 60s and minutes+seconds when >= 60s
• Update Scene Pop events to allow setting Fade Speed as "Instant" @pau-tomas
• "Launch Projectile" event fields organised into multiple tabs
• Update "Display Dialogue" event to include tabs with additional layout and behavior options (based on "Display Advanced Dialogue" plugin by @pau-tomas)
• Update "Set Sprite Palettes" event to allow restoring default palettes

Fixed

• Fix localisation of collision mask input field
• Fix issue where using variables used within Not, Rnd(), Abs(), etc. in scripts were not being listed as parameters
• Fix Variable Uses list to include variables used in script value calculations
• Fix tilemap generation when number of unique tiles is above limits to match behaviour in v3.x
• Fix issue where custom movement speed input would become focused unnecessarily
• Fix issue causing broken rom header when project name contained no ascii characters
• Fix issue where sound effect preview button would sometimes not cause sound effect to play
• Fix issue where using reusing a script that would launch projectiles across multiple scenes could cause the wrong projectile to be launched
• Fix issue where passing values from one script to another wouldn't correctly pass by reference
• Fix issue where using parameters from one script while calling another wouldn't register the parameter in the parent script correctly
• Fix issue where modified player flags were not being reset when changing scenes
• Fix issue where "If Actor At Position" wasn't rounding to chosen units before comparing causing condition to fail when between tiles
• Fix issue where resetting palettes back to defaults from a script used in multiple scenes may not load the correct palettes
• Fix issue where timers were not suspending when executing modal dialogues and menus
• Fix issue where using "Start Actor's 'On Update' script" could change sprite draw order