The Home screen
The Home screen is where you start a "live" game, preview upcoming games, and view completed games. Hover over a game card and select Open Game. Click Enroll to proceed to the game lobby.
The Game lobby
This is the staging area where players join team members (if playing on a team) and get organized before starting a game session. Information about the session and enrollment appears here: e.g., "Enrollment closes in 2101d 17h."
- A yellow light indicates a player is registered to play but hasn't started a session.
- A green light indicates a player is active (i.e., has started a session).
- A red light indicates that player's session has ended.
This player is active:
Start Session: A session is when a game is started and challenges can be deployed and solved. To start your session, select Start Session and click through the confirmation messages. Sessions can't be paused or stopped after they have started.
Warning
For team players, make sure your teammates are ready to start. You can't add or remove team members after your session has started. Also note that any team member can start a session -- the continuous session timer starts when the final Confirm button is clicked.
Reset Session: Players can reset a session if their Gameboard administrator permits it. Resetting a session deletes any challenge data generated while playing, but leaves enrollment and team membership intact. When a participant wants to play again, they have to start a new session.
A note about session time and game execution time
When a session extends beyond the game's availability period, administrators can choose to prevent players from starting. If this restriction (called Allow Late Starts in the game administration settings) is applied, the session can't begin. If it is not applied, a warning appears, indicating that the session time will be shorter due to the late start.
Unenroll: A registered player who has not started a session can unenroll from the game. Re-enrolling is required to play again.
Set Game Display Name/Set Team Display Name: The game display name chosen here is used to represent an individual player or a team (based on the competition type) on the public scoreboard for a particular game. This display name is the same as your profile display name by default, but you can change the name of your player/team for a specific game if you choose. Like your profile display name, your game or team display name is subject to approval.
Setting a new team display name here also renames the captain player's display name. Make sure this is what you intend before changing the team display name.
Organizing a team
If the game is a team game, you organize your team in the game lobby. Under Set Team Display Name, enter a team name for the scoreboard. If you're the team captain, generate an invitation for your teammates. Copy the invitation code and distribute it to your teammates. Team members redeem your invitation code here too.
Warning
Team captains: generating a new invitation code invalidates previous invitation codes.
Starting a challenge
After your session is started, select Continue to Gameboard. To start a challenge, select a hot spot on the Gameboard. Select Start Challenge and click through the confirmation messages.
Administrators may set a limit on the number of challenges a player can have deployed at once, known as the Gamespace Limit. When the gamespace limit has been met, and a player tries to launch an additional challenge, the following message is displayed:
Unable to deploy resources for this challenge because you've reached the gamespace limit for the game. Complete or destroy the resources of other challenges to work on this one.
Destroy/Deploy: To destroy a challenge to open another select the Destroy button under Gamespace Resources in the challenge instructions. If you wish to return to the challenge later, select the Deploy button under Gamespace Resources. Destroying the challenge resets the challenge to its original state. Any partial credit earned remains, but changes made to VMs are undone. The challenge timer continues to accumulate after you destroy the challenge.
Location of the Destroy button in context:
Getting support in-game
Players can get to the in-game support feature from the launched challenge screen below the challenge questions and the Support link in the top navigation.
From either of these locations, select Create Ticket. If you create a ticket from the challenge screen, then the Support Code, challenge information, Game Id, Player Id, Team Id are automatically generated. If you create a ticket from the Support link, then this information can be added later.
For a full treatment of Gameboard's Support feature, please see the Using the Integrated Support Feature section of the docs.