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Preparing a Game for Use

Once you've constructed a game, you should bring it to a state where it can be given to other Xconq players. I recommend copying a standard software release strategy. This means documenting how to play the game, documenting how it works internally, removing unused junk and dubious features, simplifying where possible, resolving open issues if possible, documenting them as known problems if not. This gets you to the point of having an "alpha" or "beta" version (the terms are not precise!). These can be given to other people for testing, but should be clearly identified as test versions, because your testers may pass copies along to others without you knowing about it. After some playtesting (see below), edit your game into its final form, call it 1.0 and release it to the world!

After you release your game, you may get some feedback about unanticipated problems. When you resolve these, and want to make a new release, be sure to give it a distinct version number. This will be important to deciding whether subsequent complaints are about your new release or some older one. If you always put the version number into the version property of the game-module form, then it will be displayed to players when they ask for help on the game.


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