Game Advanced v7

• status: complete
• version: 7.x
• follows from: Game Basics

Directory Structure

When you create a new game with the nodegame-generator utility, the game folder will contain the following sub-folders and files:

Basic:

• game/
• public/
• waitroom/

Advanced:

• channel/
• auth/
• requirements/
• views/
• levels/
• data/
• package.json

In this advanced guide we focus on the items in bold. The other items were covered in the Game Basics page.

channel/ folder

The files in this folder configure the technical aspects of the game channel. NodeGame supports multiple games at the same time. Each game is contained in a separate folder, and it is assigned an own channel. A channel has the same name of the game, so if your game is called myexperiment, the following address will be reserved to join the experiment:

http://localhost:8080/myexperiment/        

For further details and configuration options read the channel configuration page.

auth/ folder

This folder contains the authorization rules for the channel. The authorization is cookie-based and details and configuration are explained here.

requirements/ folder

The files in this folder specify the technical requirements for accessing the channel. Some basic features of the browser are checked, as well as the connection speed. It is possible to specify custom requirements as well. Details and configuration are explained here.

data/ folder

In this directory is where the results of the experiments are supposed to be saved. The experimenter must specify what to save.

views/ folder

Views are dynamically created HTML pages. The files in this folder are divided in two sub-folders:

• templates/
• contexts/

Templates are jade files which define the structure of the page. Contexts contain the variables used to fill in the content of the templates.

For a full guide about how to create views see the Views page.

levels/ folder

Game levels divide an experiment in independent parts, each of which can have a separate waiting room and separate synchronization rules. For example, an experiment could start with a first part where participants do not interact with each other, but they only answer some survey questions. Only in part 2, they would reach a waiting room and form groups for synchronous play. Using game levels may reduce the dropout rate in later parts where synchronous play is happening.

Read more about levels.

package.json

This file contains general information such as the name of the game, its version and the name of author. The same file is used by npm for packaging the game as a publishable module.

{
    "name": "ultimatum",
    "version": "0.1.0",
    "description": "This is an ultimaum game",
    "author": "Author Name <author@email.com>",
    "license": "MIT/X11",
    "homepage": "http://nodegame.org"
}

Card

The property card inside package.json controls how the game is visualized in the home page of nodeGame. All card settings are optional:

• name: another name instead of the game name,
• description: another text instead of the package description,
• icon: the name of the icon as found in the Materialize website
• wiki: a url to a wikipedia entry
• publication: a url to publication

Next

• Channel Configuration

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