Good Practice in Version Control: Live vs Test / Bug Fixes vs Updates

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#1

I’m wondering how folks with established games handle public live games versus a private version with in-progress updates?

Do most tend to have a test version with that you keep private, that will eventually be published over the live place? How are smaller bug fixes handled then?

My issue is that I have a public version of a game, and them am working on major updates that I need to test on live servers (albeit kept private via permissions). Relatively often though as I design, I’m running into bug fixes that are needed immediately. I’m having to implement these twice, on both my live and test versions.

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#2

Maybe use a test place (and you can have it friends-only if you want)

#3

I currently edit my most popular game in the “live” or “production” version, however I’m switching to 1 version for “production” and a different one for testing or development. I’m making this switch for two main reasons:

  1. It’s too easy to accidentally publish in the public version when you don’t intend to. Alt + P is a simple input that could accidentally publish, and the “Publish to Roblox” button is so close to other commonly used buttons that its also another accident waiting to happen.

  2. Reverting to the previous versions in the public version is easier / faster. If the public version only has the finished versions (and not the tons of versions made from simple place saves), then the list of versions is easier to navigate and significantly smaller. This is especially useful when you find a game-breaking bug and have to rollback versions really quickly.

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#4

Thank you for the reply. Your model makes good sense to me, but will result in two published versions of your game. One is live with players, and the other is live for your own testing (maybe a few others).

Let’s assume you find a complex bug that you don’t want to wait to fix, but you’re also not ready to publish the in-progress updates in your test version. Will you fix your bug twice?

#5

Yeah I’d fix the bug twice. With small bugs it’s at most an annoyance, but with something massive I could see it being a problem if you’ve already made significant changes.

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