Preparing a New Book
In order to create a new book
file a (32 bit) Windows utility Makebook
is provided. It is a simple text editor for
tidying up the book text file, preparing it
to be processed, and exporting it as a Game
Boy ROM image.
When you open a text file you
first see a dialog asking for codepage and
language. These questions are designed to
help make it possible to display the text
correctly when you open the file, provided
your PC has support for the language in question.If
the text looks wrong because you don't live
in the right country, don't worry. It can
look wrong here and still make a good GameBoy
Book!
If the title is contained in
the text you can use the 'Set Title Line'
function to remember the highlighted text
as a title line (two title lines if using
8 pixel high font). See example above. The
title has been highlighted and the toolbar
button will now be clicked on.
Now prepare the book text for
processing.
Typically you would edit in
two newlines wherever the Game Boy should
display a new line, and three newlines where
the Game Boy should display 2 newlines.
Add a New Chapter Mark
'~~' just before a new chapter number. For
example:
~~CHAPTER 1
In case it's not clear - the
new chapter mark is two consecutive
tilde characters.
Add a New Book Mark '~v'
just before a new book. For example:
~vThe Return of Sherlock Holmes
In case it's not clear - the
new book mark is one tilde character
followed by a letter v (either upper or lower
case).
Inserting a bitmap file into
the text is done by following the example
above which includes a bitmap wow1.bmp
at the start of the book. The bitmap must
be 160 pixels wide by 96 pixels high and must
be 2 colour only (1 bit colour). The syntax
is ~b{pathname}
That's tilde, letter b, left curly bracket,
pathname, right curly bracket.
.
When the text is prepared to
your satisfaction, you should probably save
it.
Then click on the Export button
on the toolbar. This will start a sequence
of dialogs. The first dialog requires you
to specify the Codepage, and Font File to
be used.
Select them and then click on
'Next...'.
The next dialog appears. This
allows you to specify various further parameters
for the final Game Boy cartridge.
Only a few bytes of RAM are
used, so pick the smallest option if your
cartridge has RAM, else pick 'None'. The default
cartridge type will usually be the best, unless
you know better. Until I fix the bug the Cartridge
name should be changed if it contains accented
characters, or, in other words, any character
above 7fh (any non-ASCII character).
Click on 'Finish' and the book
cartridge will be made. This process is not
particularly fast at the moment.
Blow the .gb file into a Flash
Cartridge and you can read the book at
your leisure. If your cartridge has any RAM
the position should be saved automatically
when you switch off, so it will start at the
same page next time.
Note for non-English users
If you use a language such as chinese where
many characters have a wide form, remember
to use the normal ascii version of the formatting
characters shown above. The other forms will
not work.
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