Introduction
HEL Library is an add-on C/C++ API for the Game Boy Advance development library called HAMlib. The most significant features of HEL Library include:
- Map-System supports (in theory) unlimited large maps
- Map-System supports parallax scrolling using fixed point math
- Map-System supports datalayers (collision/event-maps)
- Map-System supports dynamic tile reloading to bypass the hardware limit of only 1024 tiles to create more extended levels
- Object-System with anti screen tearing support
- Window-System with anti screen tearing support
- Effect-System with anti screen tearing support
- Object Rotation/Scaling-System with anti screen tearing support
- Debugging mechanisms such as assertion checking, debug message output and a stacktrace
- Used in several commercial projects and therefore also passed the Nintendo Lot-Check
- Detailed API documentation and sample projects
HEL Library in action
The following video demonstrates the map system of HEL 2 Library, showing dynamic tile reloading, parallax scrolling and tile animation at once. The hickups come from video capturing, it runs smoothly on real hardware.
For a complete overview of the capabilities of HEL Library, as well as licensing information, please refer to HEL Library API Documentation.
API documentation
- HEL 2 Library Documentation (recent version)
- HEL 1 Library Documentation
Why HEL Library?
If you are new to Game Boy Advance development and you want to prototype, develop a complete game or maybe only play around with Game Boy Advance programming, you can either spend a lot of time reading technical details about the Game Boy Advance hardware and come up with your own framework, or just use one that has been successfully approved over the last years.
Download
By downloading, you agree to the terms and conditions of this license.
HEL 2 Library (recent version)
- 2007-08-17 / HEL Library 2.5 ZIP (6.9MB) / RAR (3.1MB)
- 2007-06-20 / HEL Library 2.4 ZIP (6.8MB) / RAR (3.1MB)
- 2007-04-09 / HEL Library 2.3 ZIP (6.6MB) / RAR (3.0MB)
- 2007-01-28 / HEL Library 2.2 ZIP (5.8MB) / RAR (3.0MB)
- 2006-11-05 / HEL Library 2.1 ZIP (7.0MB) / RAR (2.9MB)
- 2006-08-13 / HEL Library 2.0 ZIP (6.8MB) / RAR (2.8MB)
HEL 1 Library
- 2005-10-09 / 3.8MB / HEL Library 1.7
- 2005-08-22 / 3.3MB / HEL Library 1.6
- 2005-07-08 / 2.7MB / HEL Library 1.5
- 2005-05-22 / 1.3MB / HEL Library 1.4
- 2005-02-28 / 0.9MB / HEL Library 1.3
- 2004-07-17 / 0.6MB / HEL Library 1.2
- 2004-06-29 / 0.5MB / HEL Library 1.1
- 2004-04-02 / 0.5MB / HEL Library 1.0
- 2004-02-15 / 0.5MB / HEL Library 0.9
- 2004-01-26 / 0.4MB / HEL Library 0.8
- 2003-12-06 / 0.3MB / HEL Library 0.7
- 2003-11-26 / 0.2MB / HEL Library 0.6
- 2003-11-15 / 0.2MB / HEL Library 0.5
- 2003-11-11 / 0.1MB / HEL Library 0.4
- 2003-10-27 / 0.1MB / HEL Library 0.3
- 2003-10-06 / 0.1MB / HEL Library 0.2
- 2003-09-30 / 0.1MB / HEL Library 0.1
Date format is yyyy-mm-dd, MB refers to MegaByte.
