Pre-release checklist

Studio Framework Navigation

File structure of a BGA 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
• Some usual board game elements image ressources

BGA Studio game components reference

• 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).
• 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)

• 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.
• Wrapper: a JS component to wrap a <div> element around its child, even if these elements are absolute positioned.

BGA Studio user guide

• BGA game Lifecycle
• First steps with BGA Studio
• Tutorial reversi
• Tutorial gomoku
• Tutorial hearts
• Create a game in BGA Studio: Complete Walkthrough
• 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
• BGA Studio Cookbook - Tips and instructions on using API's, libraries and frameworks
• BGA Studio Guidelines
• Troubleshooting - Most common "I am really stuck" situations
• Studio FAQ
• Pre-release checklist - Go throught this list if you think you done development
• Post-release phase
• BGA Code Sharing - Shared resources, projects on git hub, common code, other links

If you think your game is ready to be reviewed by by BGA admins and/or Publisher please consult this checklist first

• Metadata and graphics
  • Game_meta-information: gameinfos.inc.php has correct and up to date information about the game
  • Game box graphics is 3D version of the game box (if available) and publisher icon is correct (see Game art: img directory). Space around the box has to be transparent, not white.
  • You have added a game_banner.jpg and some game_displayX.jpg images to make the game page pretty (NB: on the studio, you have to create a build for these images to appear on the studio game page)
  • There is no images in img directory which are not needed anymore
  • Multiple images (i.e. cards) are compressed in "Sprite" (see Game art: img directory)
  • Each image should not exceed 4M
  • Total size should not exceed 10M, image compression should be used otherwise
• Server side
  • When giving their turn to a player, you give them some extra time with the giveExtraTime() function
  • Game progression is implemented (getGameProgression() in php)
  • Zombie turn is implemented (zombieTurn() in php). Note: it can only be tested if you explicitly click on the quit button to create a zombie. If you are expelled it does not generated a Zombie.
  • You have defined and implemented some meaningful statistics for your game (i.e. total points, point from source A, B, C...)
  • Game has meaningful notification messages (but don't overkill it, more user logs will slow down the loading)
  • You implemented tiebreaking (using aux score field) and updated tiebreaker description in meta-data
• Special testing
  • Game is tested with spectator (non player observer): watch you own game with a different account, which is not in the game, and check that it works (and that no secret information is visible). For example, you start a game with express start and your dev0, dev1, dev2 accounts are playing. Then you connect with your dev4 account in a private browser window, and you go to the game.
  • Game is tested with in-game replay from last move feature (by clicking on notification log items)
  • Game works in Chrome and Firefox browsers at least. Also very recommended to test in IE 11 and Edge.
  • Game works on mobile device (if you don't have mobile device to test at least test in Chrome with smaller screen, they have a mode for that)
  • Test your game in realtime mode. Usually people will run out of time if you use default times unless you add call giveExtraTime($active_player_id) before each turn
  • Test your game in 3D mode (if it makes sense; 3D mode can also be disabled through the 'enable_3d' parameter for gameinfos.inc.php, but if it "mostly works", it can be nice to keep it activated even if 2D is more appropriate for the game, just because it's fun to look at)
• Cleanup
  • Remove all extra console.log from your js code
  • Remove all unnecessary debug logging from your php code
  • Copyright headers in all source files have your name
• User Interface
  • Review BGA UI design Guidelines BGA_Studio_Guidelines
  • Check all your english message for proper use of punctuation, capitalization, usage of present tense in notification (not past) and gender nuturality. See Translations for English rules.
  • If the elements in your game zone don't occupy all the available horizontal space, they should be centered.
  • If your game elements become blurry or pixellated when using the browser zoom, you may want to consider higher resolution images with background-size
  • Non-self explanatory graphic elements should have tooltips
  • If graphic elements appear in notification log they should have titles (i.e. title attribute of div) so can be read in non rendered form (i.e. as text only)
  • Strings in your source code are ready for translation. See Translations. You can generate dummy translations for checking that everything is ready for translation from your "Manage game" page.
  • A prefix for example a trigram for your game that you append to all the css classes to avoid namespace conflicts, i.e. vla_selected vs selected
  • If you are looking for advice on design and some 3rd party testing you can post a message on the developers forum, and ask other developers, there are a lot of people who will gladly do it.
• Finally move to Alpha status
  • If possible (meaning if there is not already a project with that name) copy your project to a new project matching exactly the name of the game (no prefix or suffix). If not possible move on to the next steps, admin will have to retrieve the other project and overwrite it.
  • Create a build for your game from the "manage game" page (using the Build a new release version section) and check the log to make sure that everything builds fine (after a successful build, you should see a new version in "Versions available for production").
  • Send an e-mail to studio@boardgamearena.com asking to move the project forward for review. You cannot deploy yourself from the "manage game" page until a first deploy has been done by the admins. Please note that everything must be OK on the licensing side for a project to be moved to production.
  • When admins publish (push to alpha) they will send an email to the developer with all relevant information about the next steps.