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Apply to be a volunteer by contacting the Admins at admin@battlemaster.org, or on the Discord server by right clicking one of their names and sending a private message.

Most roles do not require any qualifications, and the ones that do we've listed below. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Titan

Qualifications:

• Experience in other community leadership roles, such as a GM, Wiki administrator, or Discord/Forum Moderator.

or

• Any other demonstratable willingness to be impartial and to help improve the game's environment.

Developer

BattleMaster's code is primarily PHP, with some JavaScript. We are converting to use the Symfony framework with the Doctrine ORM. We do not expect a high commitment level; the development team only works on the parts of BattleMaster that they wish to. If you are knowledgeable upon programming, getting setup with access rights means one less barrier to fixing that frustrating bug you stumble across while playing or adding that approved feature you've always wanted.

Qualifications:

• An understanding of variables, arrays, functions, object-oriented code, HTML syntax, and PHP syntax.
• A willingness to learn new things. We'll teach Symfony/Doctrine to anyone that's willing to be taught.

But I still want to be a developer!

We love to have passionate developers. If you do not know how to program, but want to learn to in order to become a BattleMaster developer, we've collected some tutorial resources here to get you started. (Note that we haven't vetted them extensively, and would love feedback on their effectiveness). Webpages need several types of software to run, and what the Battlemaster Devs work on is spilt into catagories of front-end, back-end, database management, and the Symfony framework. At the minimum a BattleMaster developer needs to understand the basics of coding in HTML and PHP, although other resources have been linked here for further reading. We've also added a few links to the same content, so if one of the links doesn't appeal to you, try a different one. If you get stuck, several people on BattleMaster's Discord server are willing and eager to help you learn.

• HTML (front-end): The very basics, necessary for doing any work on BM's player-facing interface, and a good idea even if you prefer to focus mostly on the logic behind the scenes. HTML is the basic building block of webpages that tells your browser what text is a link, that this is a list, or that something is a picture.
  • codecademy HTML/CCS (combo course)
  • mdn web docs - HTML
• PHP (back-end): This is the programming language we use to code BattleMaster; it's similar to most C-derived languages, but with some of its own quirks. PHP is what does all of the 'thinking' of BattleMaster, from calculating who's unit wins a battle to throwing errors when adventurers try to access the command tab.
  • codecademy PHP
  • phptutorial.net



Further reading

• CSS (front-end): Goes along with the former, but less important for those with a back-end focus. CSS is for stylizing webpages, like how big font is or where a picture should be placed.
  • codecademy HTML/CCS (combo course)
  • mdn web docs - CSS
• JavaScript (front-end): The final part of the front-end triumvirate; JavaScript is what makes web pages change without reloading. Not to be confused with Java.
  • codecademy HTML/CCS (combo course)
  • mdn web docs - JavaScript
• Symfony framework: We have recently moved from an entirely home-grown structure to the Symfony framework for BattleMaster.
  • tutorialspoint - Symfony

The Symfony framework:

Here are some examples of BattleMaster's code: the old ruler's banner-editing page, and the same page after it's been fully upgraded to the Symfony framework.

ORM file

• Banner ORM mapping file - This is used in both the old code and the new code, although we will eventually move away from using ORM files in favor of annotations in the object files. It sits at /config/doctrine/Main/Banner.orm.xml.

Old Code file

• Old Banners page - This sat at /battlemaster/website/stable/Banners.php.

New Code files

• Banner model(object) file - This sits at /src/Entity/Main/Banner.php.
• Command controller file - This sits at /src/Controller/CommandController.php.
• Banner list template file - This sits at /templates/command/banners.html.twig.
• Banner creation template file - This sits at /templates/command/banner-create.html.twig.