This is a documentation for Board Game Arena: play board games online !
Wiki formatting
These are some tips on how to make wiki rules pages display in a readable way on the BGA site beneath a game, with some notes on elements which do not work as expected, and useful elements which don't appear to be documented anywhere. Many tags and methods of formatting are completely stripped out by the BGA website when displaying wiki ruleset, but there are some workarounds. Note also that some elements display differently depending on whether you're reading the rules at the bottom of a live game page, or on the game's "about" page.
Feel free to add additional issues and advice.
(This page was created as a result of this forum thread. A bug report to make bullets visible within the rulesets on the BGA interface has been open with no response since April 2020.)
Bullet points
The BGA rules display strips all bullet points, if the regular wiki bullet markup of asterisks is used.
A common solution seems to be to add bullet-point unicode symbols, or hyphens. This also requires lines to be separated by paragraph breaks or <br/> tags, or to be used in addition to asterisked bullet points, otherwise all the points appear on the same line.
• Draw • Play • Discard
• Draw<br/> • Play<br/> • Discard
*• Draw *• Play *• Discard
In the first two cases a blank line should be left between the start of the list and the end of the previous paragraph, otherwise the first point is merged into the previous paragraph.
Definition list
;Term: Definition wiki markup lists don't bold the terms or indent the definitions in the BGA view, making them much harder to read.
A workaround is to just manually bold each term instead, eg:
'''Pair of boats''': take another turn<br/> '''Pair of fish''': draw a card from the deck<br/> '''Shark + swimmer''': steal a random card from another player's hand
Which displays as:
Pair of boats: take another turn
Pair of fish: draw a card from the deck
Shark + swimmer: steal a random card from another player's hand
Headings
When viewed during a game: A level two heading ("==") will appear with a box around it on the BGA view, and be uppercased. A level three heading ("===") is formatted identically and is indistinguishable from a level two heading, except that it slightly overlaps the text above it. A level four heading ("====") is displayed within the box of the level three heading, and bolded.
For example, the rules to 7 Wonders have a level two heading of "End of game scoring", with four level three headings for the different scoring categories, the final of these ("Scientific structures") containing a level four heading "Sets of identical symbols":
When viewed on a game's about page: All rules are in a single box, with level two through four headings both being bold fonts in their original cases. Level two headings are slightly larger than the other two.
Relevant bug reports:
Icons
Some game rules, including Gamehelpjumpdrive and Gamehelpspacestationphoenix, use keywords such as [METAL] and [PLANET].
When a player reads these rules during a BGA game, these tags get converted into icons. When the player reads the rules on the game panel page or the wiki, they remain as text.
This feature seems to be undocumented, and has been confirmed as a custom option that a developer can choose to create for a game.
Images
Attempting to specify an image size in image markup (eg. [[File:Marrakech example.jpg|300px]]) will work in the wiki view, but will cause the image to appear blank in the BGA view (as it tries to display a resized image which does not exist in the directory it's referencing).
A solution is to display images at the default size (meaning that they must also be uploaded at the size you want them to appear), eg:
[[File:Marrakech example.jpg]]
It's also possible to add rollover text if desired:
[[File:Marrakech example.jpg|Example move]]
Also, external links will also work within BGA if you want the image to link to a URL:
[[File:Versions.png|link=https://lumberjacks-studio.com/en/project/trek-12_en/]]
Infoboxes
These are only used by a few game pages, but Template:InfoBox, Template:InfoBoxes and Template:InfoBoxes3 allow game information to be displayed in one, two or three coloured boxes, in a way that also works in the BGA view. They look like this:
Click through to the templates above for usage instructions.
In-article links
Linking to a section within a rules page (eg. [[#endgame|the Endgame phase]]) will work within the rules on a live game, but not on the gamepanel page (eg. https://boardgamearena.com/gamepanel?game=hanabi#Black_Powder). If the user clicks on such a link on a gamepanel page, the page will simply reload without taking them to that section.
Numbered lists
Like bullet points, a numbered list in wiki markup (with a "#" before each line) doesn't display correctly: all of the numbers are stripped out.
Workarounds are to write out the numbers by hand, with either paragraph breaks or <br/> tags between them:
1. Draw 2. Play 3. Discard
1. Draw<br/> 2. Play<br/> 3. Discard
Game pieces
Generic game pieces including:
- Chess pieces
- Go stones
- Reversi tokens
- Draughts
- Dice
Dice
Six-sided dice can be displayed using a template, eg. {{whiteDie|=6}}.
See GameHelpDudo for examples.
Dice are available in four colours: whiteDie, yellowDie, orangeDie and blackDie:
Game boards
There are a few customisable game boards available:
Playing cards
Template:Card can be used to display playing card icons.
| Type | {{club}}
|
{{spade}}
|
{{heart}}
|
{{diamond}}
|
{{cardBack}}
|
{{card|=A}}
|
{{club|=A}}
|
{{club|=A|colour=green}}
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Result | ♣ | ♠ | ♥ | ♦ | 🟔 | ♣ | ♣ |
Template:Cardholder can display suitless cards (designed for GameHelpHanabi) in a "holder", with "clue" notes. See the linked template for further documentation.
Tables
Table borders are stripped by the BGA display. They can be added back by adding a fixed width border= to the image markup, eg:
{| class="wikitable" style="width:auto;text-align:center;" border="2"
|-
!0-90
|⭐
|-
!91-110
|⭐⭐
|-
!111-125
|⭐⭐⭐
|}
will display as:
| 0-90 | ⭐ |
|---|---|
| 91-110 | ⭐⭐ |
| 111-125 | ⭐⭐⭐ |
Tables default to 100% width on the BGA view: if you want to override that, you can do so by adding something like style="width:10%" after the border="2".
style="width:auto;text-align:center;":
width:auto;fits column width to the contentstext-align:center;centres the contents
Option grids
Where a game has multiple interdependent options, it can be useful to have a visual option grid.
Not for the faint-hearted, but with a lot of inline css, it is possible to create a nice aesthetic and intuitive grid that is responsive to screen size. For example for GameHelpPente:
<div style="display:flex;flex-flow:row wrap;max-width:max-content;border:0.1rem solid #aaa;"> <div style="box-shadow:inset 0 0 0 0.1rem #f0f;background:#fef;padding:0.5rem;width:max-content;">Training mode only</div> <div style="box-shadow:inset 0 0 0 0.1rem #0f0;background:#efe;padding:0.5rem;width:max-content;">Default</div> <div style="box-shadow:inset 0 0 0 0.1rem #ddd;background:#fff;padding:0.5rem;width:max-content;">Other</div> </div> <div style="display:grid;max-width:50rem;border:0.1rem solid #aaa;"> <div style="grid-area: 1 / 1 / 3 / 2;box-shadow:inset 0 0 0 0.1rem #ddd;background:#fff;padding:0.5rem;font-weight:bold;"># of players</div> <div style="grid-area: 1 / 2 / 3 / 3;box-shadow:inset 0 0 0 0.1rem #ddd;background:#fff;padding:0.5rem;font-weight:bold;text-align:center;font-size:1.2rem;">2</div> <div style="grid-area: 1 / 5 / 3 / 6;box-shadow:inset 0 0 0 0.1rem #ddd;background:#fff;padding:0.5rem;font-weight:bold;text-align:center;font-size:1.2rem;">3</div> <div style="grid-area: 1 / 3 / 2 / 5;box-shadow:inset 0 0 0 0.1rem #ddd;background:#fff;padding:0.5rem;font-weight:bold;text-align:center;font-size:1.2rem;">4</div> <div style="grid-area: 2 / 4 / 3 / 5;box-shadow:inset 0 0 0 0.1rem #0f0;background:#efe;padding:0.5rem;font-weight:bold;text-align:center;">Free-for-all</div> <div style="grid-area: 2 / 3 / 3 / 4;box-shadow:inset 0 0 0 0.1rem #ddd;background:#fff;padding:0.5rem;font-weight:bold;text-align:center;">Team</div> <div style="grid-area: 3 / 1 / 4 / 2;box-shadow:inset 0 0 0 0.1rem #0f0;background:#efe;padding:0.5rem;font-weight:bold;">All options win</div> <div style="grid-area: 3 / 2 / 4 / 4;box-shadow:inset 0 0 0 0.1rem #ddd;background:#fff;padding:0.5rem;">Align exactly <b>5</b> stones in a row</div> <div style="grid-area: 3 / 4 / 4 / 6;box-shadow:inset 0 0 0 0.1rem #ddd;background:#fff;padding:0.5rem;">Align exactly <b>4</b> stones in a row</div> <div style="grid-area: 4 / 1 / 5 / 2;box-shadow:inset 0 0 0 0.1rem #0f0;background:#efe;padding:0.5rem;font-weight:bold;">Overline win</div> <div style="grid-area: 4 / 2 / 5 / 4;box-shadow:inset 0 0 0 0.1rem #ddd;background:#fff;padding:0.5rem;">May align more than <b>5</b> stones in a row</div> <div style="grid-area: 4 / 4 / 5 / 6;box-shadow:inset 0 0 0 0.1rem #ddd;background:#fff;padding:0.5rem;">May align more than <b>4</b> stones in a row</div> <div style="grid-area: 5 / 1 / 6 / 2;box-shadow:inset 0 0 0 0.1rem #0f0;background:#efe;padding:0.5rem;font-weight:bold;">Capture win</div> <div style="grid-area: 5 / 2 / 6 / 4;box-shadow:inset 0 0 0 0.1rem #ddd;background:#fff;padding:0.5rem;">Make <b>5</b> captures</div> <div style="grid-area: 5 / 4 / 6 / 6;box-shadow:inset 0 0 0 0.1rem #ddd;background:#fff;padding:0.5rem;">Make <b>4</b> captures</div> <div style="grid-area: 6 / 1 / 7 / 2;box-shadow:inset 0 0 0 0.1rem #ddd;background:#fff;padding:0.5rem;font-weight:bold;">Capture three</div> <div style="grid-area: 6 / 2 / 7 / 6;box-shadow:inset 0 0 0 0.1rem #ddd;background:#fff;padding:0.5rem;">May capture two <b>or three</b> stones (Keryo Pente)</div> <div style="grid-area: 7 / 1 / 10 / 2;box-shadow:inset 0 0 0 0.1rem #0f0;background:#efe;padding:0.5rem;font-weight:bold;">Self-capture</div> <div style="grid-area: 7 / 2 / 8 / 6;box-shadow:inset 0 0 0 0.1rem #0f0;background:#efe;padding:0.5rem;">No effect: a stone may be placed in a capture position</div> <div style="grid-area: 8 / 2 / 9 / 6;box-shadow:inset 0 0 0 0.1rem #ddd;background:#fff;padding:0.5rem;">Self-capture: results in <b>self-capture!</b> (Poof Pente)</div> <div style="grid-area: 9 / 2 / 10 / 6;box-shadow:inset 0 0 0 0.1rem #ddd;background:#fff;padding:0.5rem;">Forbidden: a stone may <b>not</b> be placed in a capture position</b></div> <div style="grid-area:10 / 1 / 12 / 2;box-shadow:inset 0 0 0 0.1rem #ddd;background:#fff;padding:0.5rem;font-weight:bold;">Overtime capture</div> <div style="grid-area:10 / 2 / 11 / 6;box-shadow:inset 0 0 0 0.1rem #ddd;background:#fff;padding:0.5rem;">Break the line: may capture to break a winning line (Boat Pente)</div> <div style="grid-area:11 / 2 / 12 / 6;box-shadow:inset 0 0 0 0.1rem #ddd;background:#fff;padding:0.5rem;">Capture the line: may capture an entire winning line</div> <div style="grid-area:12 / 1 / 14 / 2;box-shadow:inset 0 0 0 0.1rem #0f0;background:#efe;padding:0.5rem;font-weight:bold;">Mixed capture</div> <div style="grid-area:12 / 3 / 13 / 6;box-shadow:inset 0 0 0 0.1rem #0f0;background:#efe;padding:0.5rem;">Enabled: May capture stones of mixed colour</div> <div style="grid-area:13 / 2 / 14 / 6;box-shadow:inset 0 0 0 0.1rem #ddd;background:#fff;padding:0.5rem;">Disabled: Captures of one colour only</div> </div>