What if Rust, on GameTank?

What?

The GameTank is a retro-inspired game console running dual 6502 processors. It has 128x128 composite out, with up to 200 colors. It's kind of like if Pico8 were real hardware -- with real hardware limitations, and neat tricks!

Why?

I like Rust, I like GameTank. What if, both?

How?

Rust compiles via LLVM. There is LLVM-MOS, which can target the 6502. Throw all that together and create some linker scripts, we should have a stew.

GameTank SDK (Rust)

This SDK produces 2MB GameTank ROMs (.gtr) to be uploaded to physical cartridges, or to be played in the emulator.

Bundled with the SDK are development tools:

Development is done in VSCode (sry), and there's a .vscode/settings.json for the linked projects for rust-analyzer.

Requirements

• Podman (or Docker, either should work, but Podman is tested and easier to set up)
• Rust*

It's technically possible to make GameTank games using Rust without installing Rust at all! But you probably won't have rust-analyzer support, which isn't very fun.

If you're on Windows or MacOS, you'll likely want to use Podman Desktop.

See Windows Setup for further details on setting up Windows.

Installation

cargo install gametank-sdk

Or download an installer from GitHub releases.

Quick Start

# Create a new project
gtrom init my-game
cd my-game

# Build the ROM (handles containers automatically)
gtrom build

# Run in emulator
gtrom run

# Flash to cartridge
gtrom flash

Editor Setup

We recommend using VS Code for development. New projects include a .vscode/settings.json for rust-analyzer.

Recommended extensions:

• rust-analyzer - Rust language support

Coming from JetBrains? Try these to feel more at home:

• IntelliJ IDEA Keybindings
• Darcula Theme

Windows Setup

If you're not already a Rust / WSL user, here are your options:

Option 1: Use Prebuilt Binaries

Download the .msi installer or PowerShell script from GitHub releases.

You'll still need:

• Podman Desktop (or Docker Desktop) for building ROMs
• Rust installed for rust-analyzer in VS Code (see Option 3 for install steps)

Option 2: WSL (Recommended for Development)

WSL gives you a Linux environment, which is generally smoother for development.

# Install WSL
wsl --install

# After restart, install Ubuntu
wsl --install Ubuntu-24.04

Then inside WSL, follow the Linux installation steps.

Option 3: Native Windows with Rust

1. Install Visual Studio Community 2022 with the "Desktop development with C++" workload
   (See: Rust Windows MSVC guide)

2. Install Rust and Podman:

   winget install Rustlang.Rustup
   winget install RedHat.Podman-Desktop
   

3. Then cargo install gametank-sdk

Advanced: Manual Container Commands

These commands are provided for reference. Normally gtrom build handles all of this automatically.

# Start a persistent container
podman run -d --name gametank -v $(pwd):/workspace:z --replace dwbrite/rust-mos:gte sleep infinity

# Enter the container shell
podman exec -it -w /workspace gametank /bin/zsh

# Inside container: assemble .asm files
find . -name "*.asm" -exec bash -c 'filename=$(basename "{}" .asm); echo "Assembling $filename..."; llvm-mc --filetype=obj -triple=mos -mcpu=mosw65c02 "{}" -o "target/asm/$filename.o"' \;

# Inside container: create static library from assembled objects
llvm-ar rcs target/asm/libasm.a target/asm/*.o && rm target/asm/*.o

# Inside container: build with cargo+mos
cargo +mos build --release -Z build-std=core --target mos-unknown-none