The things we will need are:
We will use devkitARM for our compiling/assembling/linking purposes. If you're on Windows you can simply download the devkitPro updater to install the compiler/stuff automatically.
There are two very good emulators available. One is VisualBoyAdvance, the other is no$gba. no$gba has two versions for you, one is a freeware version that has zero debugging features, but if you donate $15 then you can get the ultimate GBA debugger. VisualBoyAdvance is freeware, but its debugging features are....not so good. I'll be using no$gba to debug everything...
Note that as of today (9/12/2008) no$gba shareware debugging version is not available as the author has been MIA for quite some time. I hope he turns up soon so people can again relish the benifits of his 100% ASM coded emulator.
I was lucky and got a copy of the no$gba debugger just before the author disappeared. (actually someone else bought it for me (thanks again dude!))
Another handy thing you'll probably need is a hardware reference for the GBA. "GBATEK" is a very excellent technical document written by the no$gba author. It's located here. It contains an in-depth description of all the hardware, as well as a comlete ARM7 CPU reference.
One more thing that will most certainly be useful is a couple of documents on the MOD format. "FMODDOC.TXT" is a very good document that contains an in-depth description of every MOD effect, you should refer to it if you get confused somewhere. Another is "MODFORM.TXT" which documents the MOD file structure.
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