about.html

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title: About
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    <h1>About Us</h1>
    <p class="fs-5">
      Hello! We're Chris and Jorge, a two-man team of enthusiasts with a more
      than 20 year long history of developing Nintendo Virtual Boy software. We
      are creating a versatile, open source Nintendo Virtual Boy game engine,
      development tools as well as new games for the system.
    </p>
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    <h2 class="mb-4">About VUEngine Studio</h2>
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      VUEngine Studio is a custom integrated development environment (IDE),
      tailor-made for
      <a href="https://www.virtual-boy.com">Nintendo Virtual Boy</a> game
      development with
      <a href="https://github.com/VUEngine/VUEngine-Core">VUEngine</a>, our
      versatile, object oriented Virtual Boy game engine. It is built with
      <a href="https://theia-ide.org/">Eclipse Theia</a>, a framework for
      building cloud and desktop IDEs using modern, state-of-the-art web
      technologies. At its core, Theia reuses central building blocks of
      <a href="https://code.visualstudio.com/">Visual Studio Code</a>
      and as such, VUEngine Studio looks and feels very much like VSCode and is
      able to consume VSCode extensions.
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    <p class="fs-5">A quick history</p>
    <p>
      In the early days of the VB homebrew scene, setting up a development
      environment was a challenge in itself, holding back many from even
      attempting to write any code for the Virtual Boy. People would have to
      patch and build the compiler themselves, then use some text editor to
      write C code against rudimentary, non-standardized libraries, invoke the
      compiler through the command line, throw the ROM at an inaccurate
      emulator... rinse and repeat for every testworthy code change. In the best
      case, tasks like compiling and running in an emulator were wired up to
      some custom buttons in the text editor. But still, all that was custom
      setup work.
    </p>
    <p>
      Around 2011/2012 we managed to simplify the setup process tremendously by
      packaging all the necessary tools and some sample code in a preconfigured
      bundle called
      <a href="https://www.virtual-boy.com/tools/vbde/">"VBDE" (Virtual Boy Development Environment)</a>. Finally,
      setting up a development environment was as easy as
      downloading and unzipping VBDE. Eventually, we also included VUEngine in
      the VBDE package and started shipping both together.
    </p>
    <p>
      VBDE has been a convenient tool for many years and made our lifes and
      those of many other Virtual Boy developers much easier. However, at the
      end of the day, VBDE was just a collection of mostly general purpose tools
      with some minor customizations for our cause. As such, it left a lot to be
      desired and we had long been striving for some better tools to replace
      VBDE. When Visual Studio Code emerged, it looked like we had finally found
      the right route to go down. We started implementing a custom extension
      called "VUEngine IDE" in December 2018, and shortly after, we had
      implemented all the needed tools and completely switched over from VBDE
      internally.
    </p>
    <p>
      Around the same time, we did a survey on our
      <a href="https://www.patreon.com/VUEngine">Patreon</a>, asking our backers
      what we should focus on in the following months. We were pleased to learn
      that many people were interested in learning how to create their own games
      with VUEngine, and we were eager to create a series of tutorials to
      empower them to do so! However, in order to be able to demonstrate things
      with the same tools people would eventually be using, we first needed to
      finish our work on the new IDE. But months, even years went by and we
      obviously had a bit too much work on our plates to bring our VSCode
      extension, which we renamed to "VUEngine Studio" in the meantime, to a
      releasable state.
    </p>
    <p>
      Fast forward to November 2020. VUEngine Studio (the VSCode extension
      version) was still an internal tool, shared with only a few other
      developers. And we still weren't able to deliver those tutorials we
      promised (sorry again for that!). We had poured a lot of energy into
      <a href="https://www.virtual-boy.com/homebrew/formula-v/">Formula V</a>
      that year and were taking a two months break from Virtual Boy development
      to refill the batteries... or at least that was the plan, but things took
      a U-turn after we learned about the Eclipse Theia project...
    </p>
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