Game meta-information: gameinfos.inc.php

Game File Reference

Overview

dbmodel.sql - database model
gameinfos.inc.php - meta-information
gameoptions.json - game options & user preferences
img/ - game art
Game Metadata Manager - tags and metadata media
material.inc.php - static data
misc/ - studio-only storage
modules/ - additional game code
states.inc.php - state machine
stats.json - statistics
X.action.php - player actions
X.css - interface stylesheet
Game.php - main logic
X.js - interface logic
X.view.php - dynamic game layout
X_X.tpl - static game layout

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

BGA Code Sharing - Shared resources, projects on git hub, common code, other links
BGA Studio Cookbook - Tips and instructions on using API's, libraries and frameworks
Common board game elements image resources

Game Development Process

First steps with BGA Studio
Create a game in BGA Studio: Complete Walkthrough
Tutorial reversi
Tutorial gomoku
Tutorial hearts
BGA Studio Guidelines
BGA game Lifecycle
Pre-release checklist
Post-release phase
Player Resources - add player help/rules to your game page

Guides for Common Topics

Translations - make your game translatable
Game Replay
Mobile Users
3D
Compatibility

Miscellaneous Resources

Studio FAQ
Tools and tips of BGA Studio - Tips and instructions on setting up development environment
Studio logs - Instructions for log access
Practical debugging - Tips focused on debugging
Troubleshooting - Most common "I am really stuck" situations
Studio Bugs - Reports against Studio itself (not BGA!)

Overview

From this file, you can edit the various meta-information of your game.

Once you modified the file, don't forget to click on "Reload game informations" from the Control Panel in order in can be taken into account.

Note: if you broke gameinfos and cannot load management page reload using direct URL https://studio.boardgamearena.com/admin/studio/reloadGameInfos.html?game= (with your game name at the end of url).

Most information provided in this file are self-explainable.

See sections below for specific cases.

Publisher/Designer fields

These fields should match the publisher/designer for the game. In the case of a public domain name, they should be left empty (empty string )

Beta

You are not allowed to set the "is_beta" to 0 before the game has been released on BGA and stabilized.

Time Profiles

fast/medium/slow_additional_time: please set high values here: after the game has been released, we will lower these value to match the real game duration.

Number of players

players

 'players' => array( 3, 4, 6 ),

during the first step of development of a game, it is recommended to have "1 player" configuration: much easy to start/stop a game this way, don't need to switch players.
if you change the minimum number of players from for example 1 to 2, make sure the new tables you create are not restricted from 1 to 1 player otherwise when you create a new table and this account setting is used, there will be a conflict with the new minimum number of players allowed and you will be blocked from creating the game.

But you can also unblock yourself by changing player number again, launching a game with a larger number, and then getting back to the numbers you want.

suggest_player_number / not_recommend_player_number don't specify anything here if there is no configuration that is REALLY better/worst than another one. You can check player's poll on BoardGameGeek game page if you have any doubt. Important exception: in the automatic lobby, if 'suggest_player_number' is not specified, the system will try first the lowest. So if the lowest player number is not compatible with the default options for your game (especially if there is a Solo mode that can only be played in training mode) you have to specify a suggest_player_number of your choice, so that players launching a game in the automatic lobby without checking the option don't get an error with the default configuration.

Colors

player_colors

  'player_colors' => array( "ff0000", "008000", "0000ff", "ffa500", "ffffff" ),

This array defines the default player colors, theoretically this can be bigger then maximum number of players but you have to support all of the in your game. Your setupNewGame in php is responsible for attributing these values to players. See section "Player color preferences" in Main_game_logic:_yourgamename.game.php for details.

Losers not ranked between themselves

By default, all player are ranked, but in some games, the rules say that there is only one winner and that all the other players are losers and not ranked between themselves. You can set this option to true so that for your game, there is only one winner and losers, without a full ranking of all players.

The score in this case should be 1 for the winner and 0 for the losers.

// If in the game, all losers are equal (no score to rank them or explicit in the rules that losers are not ranked between them), set this to true 
// The game end result will display "Winner" for the 1st player and "Loser" for all other players
'losers_not_ranked' => false,

Disable player rotation in case of rematch

By default, in case of a rematch players are rotated so that the first player changes. If for your game it's better to always have a random player order you can change this option.

// When doing a rematch, the player order is swapped using a "rotation" so the starting player is not the same
// If you want to disable this, set this to true (even if the comment in your game file say the opposite).
'disable_player_order_swap_on_rematch' => false,

Custom "buy this game" button

By default, the "buy this game" button is a link to an Amazon search with the name of the game.

You can replace it by a different URL / game button label with :

'custom_buy_button' => array(
   'url' => 'http://yoururl.com',
   'label' => 'Name of the website'
),

Note : button label will be "Buy on <Name of the website>"

Game Presentation

Short game presentation text that will appear on the game description page, structured as an array of paragraphs.

Each paragraph must be wrapped with totranslate() for translation and should not contain html (plain text without formatting). A good length for this text is between 100 and 150 words (about 6 to 9 lines on a standard display)

Example:

'presentation' => array(
   totranslate("This wonderful game is about geometric shapes!"),
   totranslate("It was awarded best triangle game of the year in 2005 and nominated for the Spiel des Jahres."),
   ...
),

Tie breaker description

Describe tie breaker score calculation (player_score_aux in player table).

Important: This is used in the javascript too, which is automatically generated. Using newlines in here will cause errors in the javascript, which will cause the game to not load.

Example:

'tie_breaker_description' => totranslate("Number of remaining cards in hand"),

Multiple tie breaker management

If your game has multiple tie breakers, here is what you should do.

Let's take this example: "In case of a tie, the winner is the game with the most remaining money, then number of buildings built, then number of cards in your hand".

In this example, your "score_aux" field is probably calculated like this:

10000 * (remaining_money ) + 100 * (buildings_built) + (number_of_cards)

In this case, you should add the following in gameinfos.inc.php:

 'tie_breaker_split' => array( 10000, 100 , 1 ),

It means that the first tie breaker has been multiplied by 10000, the second by 100, and the third by 1.

Using this, the result screen will be adapted to show exactly what is needed. For example:

When 2 players are tied, it will show their remaining money.
If their remaining money are equal, it will show the number of building built in addition to the remaining money.
If these two tie breaker are still the same, it will show the 3 tie breaking values.

Language dependency

If you have a game that is language dependent, you can use the option described here: Main_game_logic:_yourgamename.game.php#Language_dependent_games_API

Game page warning

If a specific warning is needed on the game page (to discuss and validate with admins) it can be displayed from the game infos. For example for Texas Hold'em:

   'gamepanel_page_warning' => totranslate("There is no real money involved on BGA: this game has the mechanism of Poker but is using points instead of real money."),

Coop Elo Mode

For cooperative games, by default players will earn as many Elo points as the score.

For games where there is no variable difficulty (such as for example Bandido) we keep that setting, but for all coop games where we have options to change the difficulty level and/or where the score reached indicates a higher level of skill and/or where the number of players has a significant impact on the difficulty, we have to set up a reference scale for Elo points (between 1300 and 2500). Players regularly winning with a specific difficulty setting will have their Elo nearing this value asymptotically over time.

For this, you have to set up the coop_elo_mode parameter.

Warning: While this can reflect player skills more precisely compared to flat ELO gain, players may abandon losing games or avoid new players to prevent ELO loss.

Here is an example using options and win/loss (score 1/0):

   'coop_elo_mode' => [
       'type' => 'points_references',
       'references' => [
           // Difficulty 1
           ['players_nbr' => 2, 'options' => [100 => 1, 101 => 0], 'elo' => [0 => 1000, 1 => 1400]],
           ['players_nbr' => 2, 'options' => [100 => 1, 101 => 1], 'elo' => [0 => 1000, 1 => 1470]],
           ['players_nbr' => 3, 'options' => [100 => 1, 101 => 0], 'elo' => [0 => 1000, 1 => 1350]],
           ['players_nbr' => 3, 'options' => [100 => 1, 101 => 1], 'elo' => [0 => 1000, 1 => 1400]],
           ['players_nbr' => 4, 'options' => [100 => 1, 101 => 0], 'elo' => [0 => 1000, 1 => 1400]],
           ['players_nbr' => 4, 'options' => [100 => 1, 101 => 1], 'elo' => [0 => 1000, 1 => 1470]],
           // Difficulty 2
           ['players_nbr' => 2, 'options' => [100 => 2, 101 => 0], 'elo' => [0 => 1000, 1 => 1540]],
           ['players_nbr' => 2, 'options' => [100 => 2, 101 => 1], 'elo' => [0 => 1000, 1 => 1690]],
           ['players_nbr' => 3, 'options' => [100 => 2, 101 => 0], 'elo' => [0 => 1000, 1 => 1450]],
           ['players_nbr' => 3, 'options' => [100 => 2, 101 => 1], 'elo' => [0 => 1000, 1 => 1540]],
           ['players_nbr' => 4, 'options' => [100 => 2, 101 => 0], 'elo' => [0 => 1000, 1 => 1540]],
           ['players_nbr' => 4, 'options' => [100 => 2, 101 => 1], 'elo' => [0 => 1000, 1 => 1690]],
           // Difficulty 3
           ['players_nbr' => 2, 'options' => [100 => 3, 101 => 0], 'elo' => [0 => 1000, 1 => 1690]],
           ['players_nbr' => 2, 'options' => [100 => 3, 101 => 1], 'elo' => [0 => 1000, 1 => 1910]],
           ['players_nbr' => 3, 'options' => [100 => 3, 101 => 0], 'elo' => [0 => 1000, 1 => 1540]],
           ['players_nbr' => 3, 'options' => [100 => 3, 101 => 1], 'elo' => [0 => 1000, 1 => 1690]],
           ['players_nbr' => 4, 'options' => [100 => 3, 101 => 0], 'elo' => [0 => 1000, 1 => 1690]],
           ['players_nbr' => 4, 'options' => [100 => 3, 101 => 1], 'elo' => [0 => 1000, 1 => 1910]],
           // Difficulty 4
           ['players_nbr' => 2, 'options' => [100 => 4, 101 => 0], 'elo' => [0 => 1000, 1 => 1830]],
           ['players_nbr' => 2, 'options' => [100 => 4, 101 => 1], 'elo' => [0 => 1000, 1 => 2120]],
           ['players_nbr' => 3, 'options' => [100 => 4, 101 => 0], 'elo' => [0 => 1000, 1 => 1640]],
           ['players_nbr' => 3, 'options' => [100 => 4, 101 => 1], 'elo' => [0 => 1000, 1 => 1830]],
           ['players_nbr' => 4, 'options' => [100 => 4, 101 => 0], 'elo' => [0 => 1000, 1 => 1830]],
           ['players_nbr' => 4, 'options' => [100 => 4, 101 => 1], 'elo' => [0 => 1000, 1 => 2120]],
           // Difficulty 5
           ['players_nbr' => 2, 'options' => [100 => 5, 101 => 0], 'elo' => [0 => 1000, 1 => 1980]],
           ['players_nbr' => 2, 'options' => [100 => 5, 101 => 1], 'elo' => [0 => 1000, 1 => 2340]],
           ['players_nbr' => 3, 'options' => [100 => 5, 101 => 0], 'elo' => [0 => 1000, 1 => 1740]],
           ['players_nbr' => 3, 'options' => [100 => 5, 101 => 1], 'elo' => [0 => 1000, 1 => 1980]],
           ['players_nbr' => 4, 'options' => [100 => 5, 101 => 0], 'elo' => [0 => 1000, 1 => 1980]],
           ['players_nbr' => 4, 'options' => [100 => 5, 101 => 1], 'elo' => [0 => 1000, 1 => 2340]],
       ],
   ],

Here is an example using different scoring values to indicate the level of difficulty mastered by the players winning the game:

   'coop_elo_mode' => array(
       'type' => 'points_references',
       'references' => array(
           array(
               'players_nbr' => 2,
               //'options' => array( ),
               'elo' => array(
                   0 => 1000,
                   1 => 1350,
                   2 => 1425,
                   3 => 1500,
                   4 => 1576,
                   5 => 1651,
                   6 => 1727,
                   7 => 1802,
                   8 => 1878,
                   9 => 1953,
                   10 => 2029,
                   11 => 2104,
                   12 => 2180
               )
           ),
           array(
               'players_nbr' => 3,
               //'options' => array( ),
               'elo' => array(
                   0 => 1000,
                   1 => 1400,
                   2 => 1470,
                   3 => 1541,
                   4 => 1612,
                   5 => 1683,
                   6 => 1754,
                   7 => 1825,
                   8 => 1895,
                   9 => 1966,
                   10 => 2018,
                   11 => 2095,
                   12 => 2250
               )
           ),
           array(
               'players_nbr' => 4,
               //'options' => array( ),
               'elo' => array(
                   0 => 1000,
                   1 => 1430,
                   2 => 1505,
                   3 => 1580,
                   4 => 1655,
                   5 => 1730,
                   6 => 1805,
                   7 => 1880,
                   8 => 1955,
                   9 => 2030,
                   10 => 2105,
                   11 => 2180,
                   12 => 2330
               )
           ),
           array(
               'players_nbr' => 5,
               // 'options' => array( ),
               'elo' => array(
                   0 => 1000,
                   1 => 1480,
                   2 => 1558,
                   3 => 1636,
                   4 => 1714,
                   5 => 1792,
                   6 => 1870,
                   7 => 1949,
                   8 => 2027,
                   9 => 2105,
                   10 => 2183,
                   11 => 2261,
                   12 => 2340
               )
           )
       )
   ),

Game meta-information: gameinfos.inc.php

Contents

Overview

Publisher/Designer fields

Beta

Time Profiles

Number of players

Colors

Losers not ranked between themselves

Disable player rotation in case of rematch

Custom "buy this game" button

Tags

Game Presentation

Tie breaker description

Multiple tie breaker management

Language dependency

Game page warning

Coop Elo Mode

Navigation menu

Game meta-information: gameinfos.inc.php

Overview

Publisher/Designer fields

Beta

Time Profiles

Number of players

Colors

Losers not ranked between themselves

Disable player rotation in case of rematch

Custom "buy this game" button

Tags

Game Presentation

Tie breaker description

Multiple tie breaker management

Language dependency

Game page warning

Coop Elo Mode

Navigation menu

Search