This is a documentation for Board Game Arena: play board games online !
Studio
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 adaptation using the Board Game Arena platform.
It is open to any gamer with development skills :)
BGA Studio website: http://en.studio.boardgamearena.com
(original announcement on BGA forum: http://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:
- 5 reasons why you should use BGA Studio for your online board game
- The 8 steps to create a board game on Board Game Arena
- The BGA Framework at a glance
- Focus on BGA game state machine
- BGA developers guidelines
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 advise you to take a peek at one or both of these two game creation tutorials:
Then start editing files and see what happens! ;)
If you have any questions, please check out the Studio FAQ first, then if you didn't find the answer you were looking for, please post your question on the development forum.
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.
Game logic
- Main game logic: yourgamename.game.php
- Your game state machine: states.inc.php
- Game database model: dbmodel.sql
- Players actions: yourgamename.action.php
- Game material description: material.inc.php
- Game statistics: stats.inc.php
Game interface
- Game interface logic: yourgamename.js
- Game art: img directory
- Game interface stylesheet: yourgamename.css
- Game layout: view and template: yourgamename.view.php and yourgamename_yourgamename.tpl
Other components
- Translations (how to make your game translatable)
- Game options and preferences: gameoptions.inc.php
- Game replay
BGA Studio game components reference
Game components are useful tools you can use in your game adaptations.
- Deck: a PHP component to manage cards (deck, hands, picking cards, moving cards, shuffle deck, ...).
- Counter: a JS component to manage a counter that can increase/decrease (ex: player's score).
- 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.
- 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.
- Wrapper: a JS component to wrap a <div> element around his child, even if these elements are absolute positioned.
- 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).
BGA Studio user guide
This part of the documentation is a user guide for the BGA Studio online development environment.