Create a game in BGA Studio: Complete Walkthrough

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Introduction

This document is not a tutorial, but step by step instructions on how to build your own first game adaptation using BGA Studio framework.

Before you read this material, you must:

• Read the overall presentations of the BGA Studio.
• Some-what know the languages used by BGA Studio: PHP, SQL, HTML, CSS, Javascript
• Setup you development environment First Steps with BGA Studio
• Create a game using one the available tutorials. Don't bother with a new game if have not complete at least one of the tutorials.

If you stuck of have question about this tutorial post on BGA Developers forum. If you uncomfortable posting on public forum you can send message directly to developers who post answers on that forum but NOT the BGA admins.

Selecting a First Game

For you first game you must either

• Select a game from Available Licenses
• Or from Public Domain

If you be able to successfully publish your first game, you would gain trust of BGA admins and they will be happy to assist you in obtaining license for game you really want to do. You can read more about game licenses on BGA Game licences page.

Once you selected the game but before creating a new project, please takes few seconds to check that someone is not already developing this game. If it is the case, maybe you can propose to join the project?

Check the list of current projects

Even if you see few projects with name of the game they may not be active. There are a lot abandoned game projects. If its not clear by the status, post to Developers forum as ask if anybody actively working on the project, and at the same time ask admins to send you graphics for that game if they have it (yeah on the forum, there is better chance of them seeing you post on the forum then in email).

Obtaining game graphics

If you developing a game from Available Licenses games, ask the admins to send you graphics, but don't rely on that. It will likely fail. But if you posted on forum and waiting for an answer you can proceed to next step - project creation.

If you don't get original graphics you go to Scavenger Hunt

• If you developing a public domain card game you can borrow standard cards graphics from hearts project (see Tutorial hearts).
• Standard game pieces - meeples, cubes, dice can be found here https://github.com/elaskavaia/bga-sharedcode/tree/master/img
• Go to boardgamegeek.com and obtain 3D game box image, 2D box image, andif you lucky they also sometime have boards and token scans in "Game Pieces" section of Images
• If that fail google "boardgame <name>" and check Images section

Once you get the graphics one way or another you have to massage it to fit in the BGA criteria, which usually involves

• If publisher sends graphics in one token/card per file mode, you have to stitch them in sprite and scale down
• For non square tiles and game pieces you need transparency
• Usually you chop off scoring "ring" around the board of the game since scoring track not need to be visualised this way online

More details about graphics requirements can be found here Game art: img directory.

Create a project

If you have not already, you have to create a project in BGA Studio for this game. If the original game name is taken use gamenameYOURINITIALS template, i.e."heartsla". Don't worry too much about the name, if game would be good enough to be publish it will be renamed to original name.

Find and start the game in turn based mode, make sure it works.

Second, modify the text in .tpl file, reload the page in the browser and make sure your ftp sync works as expected. Note: if you have not setup FTP auto-sync yet, do it now, manually copying files is a no-starter.

Hook version control system

If its a real game I would commit the code to version control right at start. You going to find yourself in the situation when game does not even start anymore and no way of debugging it unless you have a way to revert. That is where version control becomes very handy. If you don't know what I am talking about then at least back-up your files after each of major steps. Starting now. You can also create a project on github, but make sure you don't commit original publisher graphics files.