Board Game Arena

I think BGA has done a great job to make this studio so we can build games. I'm excited to do so but I feel stuck. I tried to follow the reversi tutorial and read the documentation, but man I am just stuck. Does anyone else feel that way? For those who may have felt that before and pushed through it, what changed? I feel like if I can break through the initial wall to understand how this platform works that I will then be able to start building my game and others after that one.

Hi,

Reading this, I'm not sure why you're stuck, so I think other questions that should go with these ones are: are (were) you stuck by a precise problem, or because you don't (didn't) know what to do at first, how to begin ? (I think you're speaking about the latter, but I'm not sure.) And second question: have you already used php, databases, and/or javascript, and if you haven't, do you have a basic idea of how they work ? (server side / client side)

If you answer these questions, we may help you understand how this platform work. Have you watched "The BGA Framework at a glance" slideshare, and understood it ?

I must confess I was stuck as well at the reversi tutorial years ago. Admins explained to me it wasn't meant to be copy/pasted and run, but just to be read. There are a few errors in it. I fixed as many as possible, but I'm not sure it was enough. Make sure the project name is changed everywhere (mind the case). Also, the image urls changed a year ago in the CSS and/or JS files and it may not have been changed in the tutoriel.

fafa's questions could help us figure out what's blocking you and probably many others, like I was years ago. Then we could edit the wiki accordingly!

To me, the blocking factor over the first few games was that I was used to very documented and tested frameworks. BGA Studio sometimes works in a really weird way dictated by technical limitations and backward compatibility. That and many run time errors have incomprehensible messages. Everything will work smoothly if you think "ok I should rather write lots of code and stick to the most simple use of the framework" rather than "surely the framework handles my special case, it's not that uncommon".

On the bright side, it helped me to use experimental software : I'm now used to handle errors coming from a bugged framework. Something no one taught me at school ^^

Everyone will probably have his own approach at this, but it can't hurt to share !

I found that following the reversi tutorial was quite a good way of beginning, though as Pikiou said you'll need to do it in a very hands-on fashion : copy-paste code when applicable, but also try to fix the things that don't work out of the box, add a few functionalities when you wonder how you should do them, experiment with functions you feel curious about... This has lead me to read nearly all the doc, browse the various files available and understand how they fit together.

Now where to start with an actual game is a bit different. I like beginning with the graphical layout because it will allow me to test things easily during the remaining of the project, even if I end up re-doing completely differently later, but at least then I'll know why the old design wasn't good enough for having used it some time. I also feel like building the state machine is a good thing to do in the beginning to get a good general view, but I'm a bit of a sucker for automata.

That being said, writer's block can happen. I'm supposed to code a very great game right now, but I'm having trouble starting it too for no good reason (don't tell the admins ).

I started this page few days ago (When I stuck at unable to start the game):
http://en.doc.boardgamearena.com/Troubleshooting

You are welcome to share your troubles and how to fix them

Great initiative!

I found it more productive to start with something different from Reversi, like noughts and crosses. It forces you to think about the code you're adding instead of just copying a little too inattentively, but is similar enough that most of the instruction still applies.