Homebrew How should someone read the TONC documentation?

[Project68K]

I've been meaning to get into homebrew development for the GBA for a while. I've heard that the TONC docs are a very good resource to know more about the GBA. However, I am unsure of how to go through it. It seems as though a lot of people on here have read it cover-to-cover. I ask since my idea was to focus on the source code of GBA examples from devkitpro, and then whatever I didn't understand, I go over in the TONC docs. Is this a good way to read the TONC docs, or do I need to do it a different way?

 

[cirote3]

Modern tonc examples: github_com\gbadev-org\libtonc-examples

 

[moon_rabbit]

My personal recommendation.
1. https://www.coranac.com/tonc/text/

2. read several libtonc documents by Googling

3. understand how the functions work in the source code

 

[jeffythedragonslayer]

TONC itself recommends this:

Please, do not make the mistake of only reading the demo discussion: to properly understand how things work you need to read the text in full.

see intro.htm

 

[FAST6191]

Replying to an old thread I know but hey.

Do you have any background in either the GBA itself or another console?

It came quite late in the day so a lot of people would have had some idea from the likes of
https://problemkaputt.de/gbatek.htm (which was somewhat more clear cut before the DS and then DSi stuff got added, still the main reference for a reason though)
https://www.cs.rit.edu/~tjh8300/CowBite/CowBiteSpec.htm
https://web.archive.org/web/20170323002842/http://members.iinet.net.au/~freeaxs/gbacomp/
https://gb-archive.github.io/reinerziegler/GBA/gba.htm
http://www.devrs.com/gba/
devkitpro/devkitarm/libgba (and possibly older stuff like visual ham and the leaked AGB toolchains) examples.
and several other things.

Whether through homebrew, previous console dev or ROM hacks you might have understood some general concepts and just be wanting to know the main workflows and any quirks that will crop up as part of that. To that end I usually point people at the whirlwind tour of assembly chapter, the chapters on graphics and then have them go from there -- for homebrew then C coding is for the most part C coding.