This is something that I've thought about as a possibility for years now, but I'm not sure exactly what a "Gameboy Advance Format" means. Solely music? Homebrew GBA roms?

This page

says that .gsf is the file format that contains assembly code for GBA sound.

There is a tracker called "BoyScout" from 2001 that is essentially a GBA tracker, but from what I can tell, it's only for the four Gameboy channels.

There's also this page

which seems to go into detail about GBA programming. I've seen a few of these around; I am n00b at programming though, so I can't say if this is a good resource or not.

I've messed around with Sappy

as well, which is a program that (I believe) some real GBA dev teams used to convert MIDI data into a format the GBA can read. I've injected .mids into Pokemon ROMs this way before. In fact I'm sure that's what the majority of people use it for now.

And just for fun, I created the hypothetical icons

for this format too.

Thoughts? I know there's some people on here who have a lot more experience with this than I do, so if you have anything to add, please do!

Well, a new format seems interesting :)

It's an interesting beast from a technical perspective -- compared to a lot of the formats here (and not counting the legacy Gameboy channels) it really is just two DACs and whatever software channel mixing / softsynth you can coax out of the ARM CPU. There's probably lots of potential there for stuff you don't see in games -- for chiptune you can dedicate the whole CPU to mix and synth tasks, so you could potentially do quite a bit.

Coding stuff for that has some real demoscene appeal, but most folks aren't writing their own tools so I don't really see it taking off without a good tracker.

when i learned one thing about botb, then it is: give us a limited format, probably one without good tools- and you will get mindblowing entries nonetheless. it might not be that accessable at first, but someone will try (even if its just for a free gold (am i talking about me? not sure))
and at some point, someone here will try to make the most crazy shit ever with it, because thats how this community works lol
and the more popular the format is, the more likely it is for someone here to write a very good converter or tool
i think as long as the submission file format and rules about whats allowed and whats not are declared, people will find a way.. for everything xD

In light of christmas' entry I am bumping this thread for more discussion! Will post more about other info I know later

this isn't a half bad idea, the gba is often seen as an underused device for making chiptunes. atvl, i don't see many people sending out gba tracks as i see with gb tracks. maybe that's because there isn't much of a strong tracker/sequencer community attached to the format like there is with gb, nes, sgen, and aym? i do have to say, though, the tools are there to make music with it (furious and nanoloop 2 mainly) so it might grow with this format? we'll have to see, but nonetheless i'm for the idea

what a coincidence! i was looking into gba stuff just last week. i downloaded boyscout wayyy back (for me lmao), and it is just the regular gameboy channels. :// ive been getting nostalgic since that was baby's first system so itd be cool to learn how to make music with the sample channels

edit: oh yeah i used sappy too but my brain was too tiny to figure it out lol

pokin around and found this abandoned thing

too. looks like the guy intended to expand the legacy channels with two more for fm

and sampler.

what birdrun summarized is very cool and exciting to think about. imagining a tracker with options to choose a synthesis or sampling environment, or perhaps mixing drivers where possible. hmmm