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 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:
- 5 reasons why you should use BGA Studio for your online board game (or Download as PDF)
- The 8 steps to create a board game on Board Game Arena (or Download as PDF)
- The BGA Framework at a glance (or Download as PDF)
- Focus on BGA game state machine (or Download as PDF)
- BGA developers guidelines (or Download as PDF)
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 - 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.
Game logic (Server side)
- 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 (Client side)
- 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
- Your game mobile version
Other components
- Translations (how to make your game translatable)
- Game options and preferences: gameoptions.inc.php
- Game meta-information: gameinfos.inc.php
- Game replay
- 3D
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 ValinaJS/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
- BGA game Lifecycle
- Create a game in BGA Studio: Complete Walkthrough
- Pre-release checklist - Go throught this list if you think you done development
- Post-release phase
Tools and Advice
- BGA Studio Guidelines
- Tutorials checklist
- I wish I knew this when I started - one liners on most common missed features, mistakes, etc with further doc references
- Tools and tips of BGA Studio - Tips and instructions on setting up development environment
- Practical debugging - Tips focused on debugging
- Studio logs - Instructions for log access
- Troubleshooting - Most common "I am really stuck" situations
- BGA Studio Cookbook - Tips and instructions on using API's, libraries and frameworks
- Using Vue - work-in-progress guide on using the modern framework Vue.js to create a game
- Using Typescript and Scss - How to auto-build Typescript and SCSS files to make your code cleaner
- Bots and Artificial Intelligence - How to add AI/Bots to the game
- Studio FAQ
Sharing
- Common board game elements image resources - Dice, meeples, cubes, etc
- BGA Code Sharing - Shared resources, projects on git hub, common code, other links
Other resources
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/
Software Versions
Versions currently used by BGA framework:
- Dojo Toolkit 1.15
- PHP: 7.4
- SQL: MySQL 5.7
- JS/CSS/HTML: limited by what minimization tools support Game_interface_logic:_yourgamename.js#Javascript_minimization_.28after_July_2020.29
- Font Awesome: 4.7 https://fontawesome.com/v4.7/icons/
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