Tools and tips of BGA Studio

Server Tools and Tips

Starting a game in one click

To start a game:

• Create a new table with your game.
• If you want to play a game with 3 players, specify that you want a maximum of 3 players at this table.
• Click on "Express Start".

Stopping a game in one click

• Click on the "quit" icon on the top right of the screen.
• Click on "Express Stop".

Switching between users

When running a game on Studio, you can use the little red arrow near each player's name to open a new tab with this player's perspective.

Access to game database and Logs

At the bottom of the game area, there is section without a title containing 3 useful links:

 Go to game database • BGA request&SQL logs • BGA unexpected exceptions logs

• "Go to game database" link is an immediate access to the PhpMyAdmin tool to view/edit the tables of the current game
• BGA request&SQL logs - link to your studio PHP log - all tables, all severities. Anything you print using debugging and tracing functions from PHP and some framework logs
• BGA unexpected exceptions logs - same log as above but only severity warning and higher

See [Practical debugging] for more info about it.

Save & restore state

Using links of this section, you can save the complete current (database) state of your game, then restore it later.

This is particularly useful when you want to develop a part of the game that is difficult to reproduce: you just have to save the situation just before, and then restore it until this part works fine.

We provide you 3 "slots": 1, 2 and 3. This way, you can save 3 different game situations.

Limits:

• the "restore" function does not work anymore when the game is over.
• a saved situation from a given table cannot be restored in another table.
• when you "restore" a situation, the current browser page is refreshed to reflect the updated game situation, but you have to refresh you other tabs/pages manually.

Input/Output debugging section

This section shows you:

• The AJAX calls made by your game interface to the game server. AJAX calls (outputs) begins with ">"
• The notifications received by your game interface. Notifications (inputs) begins with "<".

Note: if you click on some notification title, you can resend it immediately to the user interface.

Run PHP functions from the chat

On BGA Studio, you can directly run a PHP method from the table chat.

For example, if on your PHP you have this method:

  function giveMoneyToPlayer($player_id, $amount) { ... }

You can call this method directly from the chat like this:

 giveMoneyToPlayer(2564,2)

Note: this is not a real php statement, you cannot use self::, you cannot use ";" at the end and you cannot use quotes, if you need to pass a string skip the quotes, like this

 giveToActivePlayer(money,2)

Desktop/Client Tools and Tips

Edit TPL (Template) File

To edit TPL with HTML code highlightings in Gedit under Ubuntu:

find gtksourceview directory in /usr/share, depending on your version (2.0, 3.0,...).
Here it's 3.0, then type in a terminal window:

    sudo gedit /usr/share/gtksourceview-3.0/language-specs/html.lang

then find 'globs' section, and change:

    <property name="globs">*.html;*.htm;*.tpl</property>