^^ New features ^^
So, whilst LITERALLY EVERYONE I KNOW is playing Fallout 4, I've started work on the next part of the dev cycle. This worked well in Early Access, so I'm going to continue it for the foreseeable future.
I use 3 main branches; Bleeding Edge, Beta, and Mainline.
- In the Steam client, right click on the game in the games list, and select “properties.”
- Select the “betas” tab.
- Select the appropriate branch. If you can't see any, restart Steam and curse Gaben quietly.
- Close the properties dialog.
- Click “play” to launch the game.
There should be no circumstances under which you need to start a new world - if this is the case, I will be absolutely clear that this has to happen. It hasn't yet. #planahead
Then progression will generally look like this:
Bleeding Edge Updated.
This is often an UNTESTED build, and is usually a snapshot after a feature has been completed, or when there's something I suspect might need some testing.
Absolutely ALWAYS back up your world before running a new Bleeding Edge build.
Once it's been in Bleeding Edge and no-one has screamed at me for breaking things too much (I've got about a 90% success rate so far...), then it'll get moved
Beta Updated
Beta should be considered 'reasonably safe'. At least one other person before you will have run it on an existing world and not had it destroy it.
Again, I absolutely recommend you make backups of your world.
The iteration is roughly 1 Bleeding Edge patch a day, and 1 Beta patch a week. After around 3 weeks of this cycle, the code tends to get locked down, new features stop going in, a little tidy-up and polish happens, annoying bugs get fixed, then we move into....
Mainline Updated
This is what you get if you aren't opted into any steampipe betas. It's old and busted and quite frankly always rubbish compared to the cutting-edge builds. I'll be aiming to update this approximately once a month.
Why should you opt into the steampipe branches?
Once a feature has done the rounds through testing, the community and arrived in mainline, it's generally a tad late. It's done. If you want to be heavily involved in the direction of the game, please absolutely wade into the betas, tell me what's broken, what's needed, what has to change. I'll argue with you, but I generally back down once 50 or 60 people tell me I'm wrong. Ahem.
Hop along to here if you want to: see what's new in today's Bleeding Edge update:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/254200/discussions/0/496880503081600266/
Hope to see you there!