Homestudio developers, about your version abuse...

[Akumashe]

Hello
Ive noticed a slight problem, that really ticks off alots of users - which shouldnt be a goal atleast for most who develop anything, which is how people have no idea what a version number means, or could mean, and just slap on a number they feel seems good and impressive... with the result the users who have played more than three games in their lifes gets totally insane when they boot the product up, and its anything but what the version number advertise.
Im not an expert on version numbers myself, and I know for a fact that even professional companys dosnt use a consistant model between eachother, but theres a few things that seems to be 'self explanatory' to me, which... apperantly aint.
Ive seen recently both v1.0 and v2.0+ games being in fact, early alpha at best, so heres a few tips on what such an absurdity means and why it is absurd (though Im sure someone will think Im off the bat with parts of this).

Alpha and Beta: Early test versions of the game in near non and some playability respectively - releases to get feedback on bugs and playability.
Version numbers
1.0 - 1 means this is FINISHED release version, it probably still have bugs, but atleast in theory, this is the full game. All functions, full story, everything is in hopeful theory finished.
0.1 and other fraction numbers - this is how much of the games planned content thats completed. The first released version is at its core 0.1 or more, meaning it have 10% of its programing, content and everything ready - and if its released at this early stage, its most defenetly barebone and intended for testing. 0.2 and so on, 20% done... keep it going.
0.3.221 then? 0.3 is 30% of the planed content in the version, .221 is the release of the 0.3 milestone update... meaning theres been 221 released updates of version 0.3 to date, fixing bugs and other problems.

Im sure some want to make their own system, or use the system some company out there uses... but PLEASE... dont release version 1.0 as the first alpha test version and expect there to not be a shitstorm in the comments...
Good luck.

Edit: Afterthought... version 2.0 as some use, that would for most probably bring to mind that the game is up to its second major update since release - major content patch above and beyond what was originaly planned for the game.

 

[Sphere42]

Keep in mind quite a few games aren't "1.0" but "ALPHA 1.0" meaning "here's the first tech demo which doesn't crash on startup". This actually makes a fair amount of sense for crowd-sourced design (which let's face it many Patreon projects are): the first number tracks major feature/content milestones and the second number tracks progress/iterations/revisions. You can't give a fractional estimate towards completion because the game does not follow such a pre-planned outline.

And depending on context there are other sensible numbering schemes as well. For example you can save the first slot for core engine changes or paid expansions while content additions tick up the second number even beyond .9 and even if they include more code or provide far greater value to the general consumer base. Minecraft has been doing something similar for ages, "the big 1.0" was more of a smooth transition and I doubt we'll ever see a version 2.0.

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i.e. mainly released for bug-hunting and maybe using placeholders instead of the unfinished high-quality art assets. Nowadays that kind of "beta" is called "public release".

Especially once you reach 3 or more numbers their meaning also tends to vary. Larger projects tend to have Continuous Integration on their repositories and count the number of successful test builds. Others just count commits, or blog posts, or they just print the date when that version was created in pretty much any random format (U.S. productions created during the first third of a month are THE WORST!)

There really is no universally applicable standard unless you start sprinkling in letter codes, and if you do the ignorant whiny folks will still not bother to actually read them even though the system could truly be perfectly self-consistent.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Oh, look, it's this subject again. Is it already one month since the previous one ?

Keep in mind quite a few games aren't "1.0" but "ALPHA 1.0" meaning "here's the first tech demo which doesn't crash on startup". This actually makes a fair amount of sense for crowd-sourced design (which let's face it many Patreon projects are): the first number tracks major feature/content milestones and the second number tracks progress/iterations/revisions. You can't give a fractional estimate towards completion because the game does not follow such a pre-planned outline.

It can also be seen as a chapter numbering, depending of the game. With the main number being the chapter, and everything after the point being the advancement of this chapter. It's something use a lot lately.

 

[Joshua Tree]

Seen to many posts about it's a 1.0 and it must be a complete game, or when it reach 1.0 the game will be complete etc.
A revision number is just that. a number.

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Some creators/devs use different ways to lable their revision numbers as well.

If someone release something with a v1.0 as first release, there is a very good chance they went through a lot of revisions and changes before that, that never was released to public.

 

[Sphere42]

Seen to many posts about it's a 1.0 and it must be a complete game, or when it reach 1.0 the game will be complete etc.
A revision number is just that. a number.

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Some creators/devs use different ways to lable their revision numbers as well.

If someone release something with a v1.0 as first release, there is a very good chance they went through a lot of revisions and changes before that, that never was released to public.

A "1.0" WITHOUT special qualifiers should pretty much always be a fully playable release though. Nothing truly is bug-free and content or features can still be added but if someone calls it "1.0 release" I interpret that as them considering that version a finished product in itself. You can see this reflected in non-porn games as well, if anything "releases" with an unfinished story it usually causes a huge shitstorm and rightfully so.

 

[Joshua Tree]

A "1.0" WITHOUT special qualifiers should pretty much always be a fully playable release though. Nothing truly is bug-free and content or features can still be added but if someone calls it "1.0 release" I interpret that as them considering that version a finished product in itself. You can see this reflected in non-porn games as well, if anything "releases" with an unfinished story it usually causes a huge shitstorm and rightfully so.

It could be an alpha version as well. There is no rules saying it must be a full version. Take a game such as "Empyrion", or "7 days to die", they released on early access, no where done or coimpleted in terms of story and content. 7d going in Alpha 18, Empyron on Alpha 10.6. Version numbers means nothing, it just what the devs/creators decide to go with. You can work on something inhouse and reach version over 1.0 and still not release to the public. It's just a revision number that follow the iterations of the code/build. People that get their panties in a twist over version numbers, is on them.

 

[Sphere42]

Alpha 18, Empyron on Alpha 10.6

WITHOUT special qualifiers

What's the point of writing in BOLD ALL CAPS when people ignore it anyway...

 

[Joshua Tree]

What's the point of writing in BOLD ALL CAPS when people ignore it anyway...

Looking through my steam library, I have a hard time to find something that had release version exactly 1.0, found both over and under though, imagine that.

 

[Sphere42]

Looking through my steam library, I have a hard time to find something that had release version exactly 1.0, found both over and under though, imagine that.

Being under but not labeled explicitly as a beta/pre-release at the time surprises me a bit but that still isn't the correct negation: I am saying anything which IS labeled as "1.0" with no additional qualifiers or even explicitly called "release" SHOULD be a full game while not making any statement about any games NOT labeled "1.0". How many games release as "1.0" with no additional qualifiers like "alpha", "beta", "part", "chapter" etc. and don't get absolutely flamed to death for doing so?

I even mentioned terminology has shifted quite a bit,

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which launched 1.0 and was a buggy and imbalanced mess but still a complete game. The same applies to

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.

 

[Winterfire]

And then there's me, simply using "Release x" (or Rx for short)
Saves up a lot of headaches and confusion.

 

[Sphere42]

And then there's me, simply using "Release x" (or Rx for short)
Saves up a lot of headaches and confusion.

Both simple and unusually elaborate version numbering helps a lot actually, because then people actually have to use the correct denomination and usually don't have any preconceived notions attached to it either. I still prefer "year-month-day" notation because in addition to the implied causal ordering it makes it a lot easier to track down information or downloads.

 

[Winterfire]

Both simple and unusually elaborate version numbering helps a lot actually, because then people actually have to use the correct denomination and usually don't have any preconceived notions attached to it either. I still prefer "year-month-day" notation because in addition to the implied causal ordering it makes it a lot easier to track down information or downloads.

Yeah, Year-Month-Day is a good one... Only bad thing is the length and the confusion given by the different date formats.

I just kept it simple, cannot go wrong with "Release 5 is older than Release 6"

 

[Avaron1974]

I'll repeat what one of the amateur devs on here put one time, he numbered his updates in a way that was convenient to him as he had certain plot elements in each update and used versions to track what went where.

Not the first time i'd heard that, nor the last. Not always the same reason behind it but common enough that devs number their updates so they can keep track of things, not you.

Some others just didn't give a shit, it's a hobby to them nothing more.

That's the one I agreed with. If I ever made a game they would be numbered however I felt like numbering them at the time.

 

[desmosome]

Who the fuck cares about version numbers. Does it say completed? Does opening change log say first release? Does opening change log give the previous version numbers? It takes like 2 seconds to figure out how far along the game is.

You guys are being anal about something you don't even understand. There are many different schemes for version numbering.

 

[Domiek]

I'll repeat what one of the amateur devs on here put one time, he numbered his updates in a way that was convenient to him as he had certain plot elements in each update and used versions to track what went where.

Not the first time i'd heard that, nor the last. Not always the same reason behind it but common enough that devs number their updates so they can keep track of things, not you.

Some others just didn't give a shit, it's a hobby to them nothing more.

That's the one I agreed with. If I ever made a game they would be numbered however I felt like numbering them at the time.

Avaron1974 once again showing us that she fully understands that this a side hobby by amateurs 99% of the time.

Version number is the least of our worries when learning and tackling the large scope of indie game development. No matter what is implemented, someone will be unhappy with it.

My game has 0.x represent the overall completion in terms of percentage. Even then I've been bombarded with messages like "Last few updates were in increments of .05 and the latest one was .15, what does it mean!?"

It means that you should just play the game and decide for yourself. There is no standard among amateurs. Even if everyone followed the same system, you still won't know how much content is included from the version number alone. People like DPink can put out 2000 renders per update while others do 100. Even if render count was standardised to correlate to version number, you may have one game where half the unique renders are just slightly different facial expressions.

That's why it's best to just look at the change log and thread comments to decide if the download is worth your time.