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BGA Studio
(for web developers)

• You are a web developer fluent in server side (PHP, SQL) and client side (HTML, Javascript) languages

So this presentation looks easy and fun to you.

• You want full access to the BGA development stack to develop complex games (but we still advise you to start with something simple for your first game!)

Check the documentation and tutorials to get started!

What is BGA Studio?


Getting started

4 slideshare presentations to get ready to use BGA Studio in 30 minutes:

Reference Documentation

This page comes from BGA wiki, and has been written by BGA players community. Feel free to edit it!


Game File Reference


Useful Components

Official

  • Deck: a PHP component to manage cards (deck, hands, picking cards, moving cards, shuffle deck, ...).
  • Draggable: a JS component to manage drag'n'drop actions.
  • Counter: a JS component to manage a counter that can increase/decrease (ex: player's score).
  • ExpandableSection: a JS component to manage a rectangular block of HTML than can be displayed/hidden.
  • Scrollmap: a JS component to manage a scrollable game area (useful when the game area can be infinite. Examples: Saboteur or Takenoko games).
  • Stock: a JS component to manage and display a set of game elements displayed at a position.
  • Zone: a JS component to manage a zone of the board where several game elements can come and leave, but should be well displayed together (See for example: token's places at Can't Stop).

Undocumented component (if somebody knows please help with docs)

  • Wrapper: a JS component to wrap a <div> element around its child, even if these elements are absolute positioned.

Unofficial


Game Development Process


Guides for Common Topics


Miscellaneous Resources

Bga studio small.jpg

Note: Please DO NOT translate Studio Documentation, so that there can be one place where you can find the latest information available.

What is Board Game Arena Studio?

Board Game Arena Studio is a platform to build online board game adaptations using the Board Game Arena platform.

It is open to any gamer with software development skills :)

BGA Studio website: https://studio.boardgamearena.com

Original announcement on BGA forum: https://forum.boardgamearena.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1973

Discover BGA Studio in 5 presentations

Why, how, what... to start discovering BGA Studio, we prepared 5 "powerpoint" presentations for you:

How to join the BGA developer team?

Please see this page: How to join BGA developer team?

Great, I'm in! ... How should I start?

If you didn't already, check the presentations at the top of this page to get the basics.

Then, you should checkout the First steps with BGA Studio to make sure that runs fine.

After that, we strongly advise you to take one of these game creation tutorials:

  • Tutorial reversi (recommended, closest to the actual BGA implementation and maintained by the BGA team) - an abstract strategy game played on an 8×8 uncheckered board for 2 players
  • Tutorial gomoku - an abstract strategy game tic-tac-toe style for 2 players
  • Tutorial hearts - a card game for 4 players

Then start editing files and see what happens! ;)

Once you're done with tutorials, you can start a real game (or join existing project)

If you have any questions, please check out the Studio FAQ or Contact BGA Studio.


To search wiki pages on studio enter this text in search bar: 

 "Category:Studio" white rabbit

That is if you want to search for white rabbit

BGA Studio documentation

BGA Studio Framework reference

This part of the documentation focuses on the development framework itself: functions and methods available to build your game.

File structure of a BGA game

Game logic (Server side)

Game interface (Client side)

Other components

BGA Studio game components reference

Game components are useful tools you can use in your game adaptations.

JS:

  • Counter: a JS component to manage a counter that can increase/decrease (ex: player's score).
  • Scrollmap: a JS component to manage a scrollable game area (useful when the game area can be infinite. Examples: Saboteur or Takenoko games).
  • Stock: a JS component to manage and display a set of game elements displayed at a position.
  • Zone: a JS component to manage a zone of the board where several game elements can come and leave, but should be well displayed together (See for example: token's places at Can't Stop).
  • Draggable: a JS component to manage drag'n'drop actions.
  • ExpandableSection: a JS component to manage a rectangular block of HTML than can be displayed/hidden.
  • Anti-Stock: Code snippets in vanilla JS/HTML5 to do what stock does (that is if you cannot beat Stock into submission)

PHP:

  • Deck: a PHP component to manage cards (deck, hands, picking cards, moving cards, shuffle deck, ...).

Reference for classes in game class hierarchy

  • Table: a PHP class that you inherit from for the game php

BGA Studio user guide

This part of the documentation is a user guide for the BGA Studio online development environment.

Lifecycle


Tools and Advice

Sharing

Software Versions

Versions currently used by BGA framework:

PHP Extensions Used

The following PHP extensions are - as of May 8th, 2022 - in use in BGA Studio and available:

date, libxml, openssl, pcre, zlib, filter, hash, Reflection, SPL, session, standard, sodium, apache2handler, mysqlnd, PDO, xml, apcu, bz2, calendar, ctype, curl, dom, mbstring, FFI, fileinfo, ftp, gd, gettext, gmp, iconv, igbinary, json, exif, msgpack, mysqli, pdo_mysql, apc, posix, readline, shmop, SimpleXML, sockets, sysvmsg, sysvsem, sysvshm, tokenizer, v8js, xmlreader, xmlwriter, xsl, zip, Phar, memcached, Zend OPcache

Other resources

Development forum

Bug tracking system FOR STUDIO issues and APIs

DISCORD chat server/room invite link https://discord.gg/YxEUacY if it does not work check this topic https://forum.boardgamearena.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=17403&hilit=discord

Developer BLOGS https://bga-devs.github.io/blog/

Contact BGA Studio

Login

Join the BGA Studio developers team

To start developing on BGA Studio and get access to development environment, you need to create an account below.

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(The exact username you are using on BGA)




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BGA processes the personal data that is needed to create an account and provide you with an access to all our online services. Read more about our privacy policy.

Moving to Alpha status

Hi, I think I'm ready to move my game to Alpha status but I don't understand the first step of the Finally move to Alpha status in the Pre-release checklist. If possible (meaning if there is not already a project with that name) copy your project to a new project matching exactly the name of the game (no prefix or suffix). I tried to create the game again but the name obviously already exists ...
Nov 17th 2024 2 comments

Does the Bounty Hunting list needs updating?

Gentle nudge to whoever maintains the bounty hunter list that it could do with a little bit of TLC I've just looked through a few of them and several are either completed already (e.g. https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=15330), or have been partially completed and it's not obvious what still needs doing/what's already done and in testing (e.g. https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=14859). And a ...
Nov 15th 2024 Comment on this

Reversi Tutorial Cannot switch to active player

Hi there, I'm new to all this, but am working my way through the Reversi tutorial. I'm up to the Implementing player action (not yet implemented though). The board loads fine and shows the possibleMoves, but is always on the White player with the "other player must take action" message. Here's where I'm stuck -- when I click the little arrow next to the other player to activate the game as that ...
Nov 13th 2024 7 comments

Studio maintenance, 2024-11-12

Hello. The studio will be unavailable starting 2024-11-12 at 9 AM for at least one hour due to scheduled maintenance. This work aims to enhance the real-time messaging system and will require a temporary shutdown of the service. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Nov 12th 2024 1 comment

Looking for a developer

Hello After having a conversation with the designer of Grumble Stone, Josh, I realized it might be an interesting idea to get my game, City of Myrkesh, on Board Game Arena He suggested I reach out to developers to see who might be interested in discussing with me, giving me a quote, etc. I will link the BBG page as well as a tutorial on how the game is played https://boardgamegeek.com/ ...
Nov 10th 2024 Comment on this

Validating specific game actions (with Arguments)

TL;DR: Is there a framework method to validate specific action arguments like 'playToken(X, Y)'' and check for valid X and or Y values? Long version: Noob question again, bear with me. I was wondering if there's a granular way to check if a move is valid or not. I'm aware that on the frontend side we have a method to check if an action is possible given the current state of the state machine ...
Nov 9th 2024 4 comments

I want to hide some informations during replay

Hi everyone! I made a puzzle game : gamme logic And there is a daily challenge. The problem is if you look at the game replay of a daily challenge puzzle from another player, you can see the puzzle of the day before playing it. Is it possible to detect the replay mode? Yoann
Nov 8th 2024 7 comments

Etiquette around fixing bugs in a premium game

I want to start fixing bugs in Love Letter. I have played the game a lot so I know it well, and have developed a game from scratch for BGA before. I have a couple of weeks of spare time to fill. Am I able to just checkout the code and start working on it or is there more to it? How do I take charge of the bugs/suggestions list to start triaging and closing the non-bugs? How does testing a ...
Nov 7th 2024 2 comments

[Looking for developper] - Star Chart + Cosmos: Empires Expansion

Hey all! We are looking for any volunteer developers who are interested in developing our new game: Star Chart https://biggerworldsgames.com/starchart/ As well as anyone who would be interested in implementing the expansion to Cosmos: Empires, which has the base game already on BGA. https://gamefound.com/en/projects/bigge ... os-empires We would offer a few perks like free copies of the games, ...
Nov 6th 2024 1 comment

Looking for a developer - Choconnect

Hi! We are looking for a BGA developer for our game Choconnect. It's a simple, fast abstract game for 2-4 players played on a 6x6 grid. If you are interested, please drop me a note on: vedran@snovidgames.com You can check the game on BGG: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/417334/choconnect
Nov 6th 2024 1 comment
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