Configuring Boogie

This'll be a quick guide on how to set up boogie and write its config files

Boogie doesn't take that much work to setup. All libraries are provided for compiling Boogie, and a simple ANT script handles putting it together. Working with the source code is as simple as just importing the project into Eclipse.

Boogie requires 3 things to run:

• a compiled jar aka boogie.jar
• boogie.cfg
• and a background image, specified in boogie.cfg

Everything else it can handle by itself. A sample boogie.cfg that points to the builds of StoryMode is provided to test out the app and show how things work. boogie.cfg files are nothing more than a JSON file with specific fields.

boogie.cfg specifications

If at any point in this documentation you feel lost about how to define something, be sure to reference the provided boogie.cfg in the repostiory, as that's where all this example data is coming from.

Making things pretty

Boogie doesn't allow for much appearance customization without overriding files, changing source, or recompiliing. You can, at least, change the background of the Launcher.

{
    "background" : "background.png",
}

Setting Build Repository

Defining your repository doesn't take much. Only one value is required: The root directory url. If using github, you can use the raw portion of the site to distribute your files from directly if you don't feel like using github pages.

{
    "url" : "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nhydock/Storymode/builds/",
}

For the url to work, you must have a boogie.hash file in the root directory at that url

Defining executable commands

Depending on what Operating Systems your application supports, you can define what commands to run from Boogie. Boogie currently supports launching commands from Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux/*nix operating systems

You can define commands like so (Java apps are a pretty easy example, but others maybe be more complicated)

{
    "game" : {
        "execute" : {
            "win" : "java -cp storymode.jar;storymode_assets.jar core.common.SMRunner",
            "mac" : "java -cp storymode.jar:storymode_assets.jar core.common.SMRunner",
            "nix" : "java -cp storymode.jar:storymode_assets.jar core.common.SMRunner"
        }
    },
}

Writing custom settings

Boogie's biggest feature is its settings pane, which generates command line arguments that are attached to the execution statements for each platform. The definition for all settings fields are as follows

{
    "settings" : {
        "cli_arg_name" : {
            "title" : "Name in the Settings Pane",
            "type" : "data_type",
            "options" : to_be_defined,
            "default" : some_value
        },
    },
}

There are currently 4 supported data types, with their own options and acceptable defaults

Type	UI Element	Options	Default	Example
Select	Dropdown	array	int index	Link
Boolean	Switch	none	true/false	Link
Float	Slider	[min,max,step]	float	Link
Divider	Large Label	none	none	Link