This section covers the steps to have your game display beautifully in our Gameboard Experience. It willl provide you with Android meta-data keys that will allow you to customize the look and information about your app. These will mark the difference between your app looking like (A) or beautifully like (B).

Gameboard OS by default only displays Games uploaded to our marketplace. This means that if you just run your development game on Gameboard OS it will not be seen in the Gameboard Experience. So how do we let Gameboard OS display a development app then? Well, that's where our first meta-data entry comes in:

<meta-data android:name="com.lastgameboard.is_development" android:value="true" />

Note: This needs to be inside the tags of the manifest.

Sometimes a game is not meant to be played but as a developer you would like it shown in Gameboard along other games for things like demos and presentations. In order to have your game marked as not playable the placeholder tag can be used. Make is_placeholder true will allow the game to show on Gameboard but will not be executed if anyone tries to run it.

<meta-data android:name="com.lastgameboard.is_placeholder" android:value="true" />

We know more than anyone that games need to stand out and Gameboard OS gives you the power to make your game standout as much (or as little) as you want with the following meta-data.

• Thumbnail: This is the asset to display for your app in most of the Gameboard Experience. If none is specified Gameboard OS will use the standard Android icons.

<meta-data android:name="com.lastgameboard.thumbnail" android:resource="@drawable/sample_small_spuno_odyssey" />

• Banner: Banners are used when your game is highlighted they are as wide as Gameboard screen.

<meta-data android:name="com.lastgameboard.banner" android:resource="@drawable/sample_small_spuno_odyssey"/>

• Ad Banner: This banner will be used if your games is highlighted on Gameboard.

<meta-data android:name="com.lastgameboard.banner_ad" android:resource="@drawable/sample_banner_spuno"/>

• Lobby Background: The lobby background will be shown while your players join the game and the game loading is done.

<meta-data android:name="com.lastgameboard.lobby_background" android:resource="@drawable/sample_large_spuno"/>

• Screenshots: List of screenshots resources that will be used in the game details page of your game in Gameboard.

<meta-data android:name="com.lastgameboard.screenshots" android:resource="@array/my_screenshots"/>

Sample Screenshot Array (In arrays.xml)

<array name="my_screenshots">
  <item>@drawable/sample_preview_spuno_1</item>
  <item>@drawable/sample_preview_spuno_2</item>
  <item>@drawable/sample_preview_spuno_3</item>
</array>

Gameboard OS also lets developers define the information that player will look for when picking your game.

• Max Players: This is the max number of players for your game.

<meta-data android:name="com.lastgameboard.max_player_count" android:value="4"/>

• Average Play Time: This is the average amount of time a play session is expected to take. Specified in minutes.

<meta-data android:name="com.lastgameboard.average_play_time" android:value="45"/>

• Genres: List of genres your game associates with. Specified as a string-array where each element is a genre.

<meta-data android:name="com.lastgameboard.genres" android:resource="@array/my_genres"/>

Sample Genres String Array (In arrays.xml)

<string-array name="my_genres">
  <item>light strategy</item>
  <item>strategy</item>
</string-array>

• Features: List of all features your game supports. Specified as a string-array where each element is a feature. If the game requires a particular feature, that feature should also be included in the required features list, but still included within your features list.

<meta-data android:name="com.lastgameboard.features" android:resource="@array/my_features"/>

• Required Features: List of features your game requires. Specified as a string-array where each element is a feature. If no feature is included in the required features list then all features are presumed optional from the above features list. Everything in this list should also be included in the features list.

<meta-data android:name="com.lastgameboard.required_features" android:resource="@array/my_required_features"/>

Currently Supported Features/Required Features String Array (In arrays.xml)

<string-array name="my_features">
  <item>companion</item>
  <item>enhanced touch</item>
  <item>subscription</item>
  <item>in-game purchases</item>
  <item>rvne enabled</item>
  <item>board-to-board</item>
  <item>revivable</item>
  <item>mods available</item>
  <item>stream play</item>
  <item>user made content</item>
  <item>network play</item>
  <item>grid enabled</item>
</string-array>

<string-array name="my_required_features">
  <item>companion</item>
</string-array>

• Publisher: This is you. Use this to specify your publisher name. Specified as a string.

<meta-data android:name="com.lastgameboard.publisher" android:value="Last Gameboard, Inc."/>

• Board Game Geek Id: If the game is available on BGG (BoardGameGeek) this allows you to specify it's ID so Gameboard links to it.

<meta-data android:name="com.lastgameboard.bgg_id" android:value="167791"/>

• Development Stage: This is the development stage your game is currently in. It can consist of one of the following items:
  • Early
  • Alpha
  • Beta
  • New

<meta-data android:name="com.lastgameboard.development_stage" android:value="Early"/>

To facilitate the creation of the metadata used by the games in Unity we have made available the Gembaord Metadata Project available here.

Clone the project in your desired location as follows:

git clone git@gitlab.com:lastgameboard/game-meta-data-template.git

Once downloaded, open the project in Android Studio and expand the gameboard-game-info module. We will be making all our changes there.

We will be placing all the image assets for our game inside the drawables folder of the gameboard-game-info module as shown below:

Important: The names of the files need to be lower case and contain no spaces. These names will be used when specifying them by doing @drawable/<asset_name>

All other values like the game's features go in their respective files under the values folder. Texts in the strings.xml file and feature list in the arrays.xml file.

With all the files and values in their respective folders you can then proceed to add the metadata to the manifest of** gameboard-game-info**.

Important: You want to make sure you are updating the AndroidManifest.xml inside gameboard-game-info.

Note: The project already has all the metadata setup so if you wish to save time when creating the metadata just replacing the image assets with the assets for your game and the values of the items in the values.xml and string.xml file will let you get your metadata relatively quickly.

Once all the metadata for the game is specified the AAR can be built using the Gradle task publishReleasePublicationToMavenLocal.

Important: In newer versions of Android Studio the tasks are not loaded on start, so opening the Gradle panel above will display no tasks. In order to have the task show up you'll need to disable "Do not build Gradle task list during Gadle sync." under File->Settings->Experimental and restart Android Studio.

Once publishReleasePublicationToMavenLocal has completed its execution the gameboard-game-info.aar will be available inside a folder named gbLocalRepo.

Note: If you wish to save time you can then take that gbLocalRepo folder and drop it in the plugin folder in Unity as we'll cover in the next step but we recommend just using the gameboard-game-info.aar file so the game project doesn't get cluttered unnecessary files.

Unity needs to have the .AAR file built above included in the project.

1. If your project doesn't already have the folders create the following folders: ./assets/Plugins/Android/libs
2. Inside the libs folder, copy and paste the release version of the .AAR file that was compiled from Android Studio.

Important: In previous versions we recommended updating the AndroidManifest in Unity. This is no longer necessary when using the latest version of this metadata template project but if you already have an AndroidManifest.xml with Gameboard metadata inside your Unity project you'll need to remove them from Unity otherwise when adding this newly created AAR the build will fail due to conflicts in the manifest.