Version formats
The development versions of Vintage Story use a few acronyms to describe the current development status.
Pre-release
Pre-release builds are the first builds of a game update to go public, and their version numbers are in the format Parent version-pre.#, such as 1.17.0-pre.1.
These builds are the earliest iterations of a major update, and as such are usually the versions where new features are first introduced and tested. They also tend to be the most unstable, generally introducing a large number of bugs and glitches due to the new changes. This release is aimed at modders and very adventorous players. These releases can break game worlds or introduce breaking changes.
The use of pre-releases for game versioning started with 1.11-pre.1.[1]
Release candidate
Release candidate builds (also known as rcs) follow pre-releases and generally focus on game stability. Their version numbers follow the format of Parent version-rc.#, such as 1.17.0-rc.5.
They tend to be released more frequently than pre-releases, as they're a series of hotfixes and patches to clean up a new version before the stable release. These releases should be fairly stable as breaking changes are kept at a minimum at this point.
The use of release candidates for game versioning started with 1.6.0-rc.1.[2]
Stable
Stable builds are the final state of a game update, and are released after the release candidates when the developers feel the version in question is in a good state. They follow the format 1.Major.Minor such as 1.17.0. The first stable versions are always prefixed by a ".0", and never presented as just "1.#".
Prior to 1.5.3, a fourth decimal was also appended to the versioning format to indicate small hotfixes or development builds.
These builds are considered to be comfortably playable and are the recommended versions to use when actively playing the game. Frequently, small hotfixes may be pushed directly to a new stable minor version instead of passing through pre and rc builds, directly adding to the third decimal in the version number.
Rapid hotfixes
Occasionally, as is the case for 1.17.0-rc.6 and 1.17.0-rc.7, the developers may rapidly push a small hotfix to deal with urgent issues within a few hours of the previous build that usually only change one thing. In this situation, the newest build fully replaces the previous one. On the wiki, the changes of both versions in situations like this are presented on the first's page.
Version chronology
During the development of a new game version, the developers typically stick to the following pattern for public builds:
Pre-releases → Release candidates → Stable → Minor updates
Example:
1.15.1-pre.1 → 1.15.1-rc.1 → 1.15.1 → 1.15.2
References
- "The Game Challenge Update (v1.11-pre.1)"– Vintagestory.at, October 17, 2019
- "The Weather and Worldmap Update (v1.6.0-rc.1)"– Vintagestory.at, August 1, 2018
