Test releases
Try a new build on your own mebobox — or a friend's — before everybody else gets it.
Normally, uploading a new build replaces the one everybody is playing. Every mebobox holding your game picks it up the next time it looks.
Sometimes that is not what you want. You have changed something big, you would like to play it on a real console first, and you would rather not hand a half-finished build to everyone who has your code. That is what a test release is for.
Sending a build to testers
When you upload a new build, you choose where it goes:
- Live — everybody. This is the normal one.
- Test — only the consoles you name.
Pick Test, and then list the consoles that should get it. A console's name is on its My mebobox screen, and it looks like mebobox-0x684ee9803f.
Anyone playing your game the ordinary way carries on with the live build and never sees the test one. Their console does not even know it exists.
Playing a test build
A console you have named fetches the test build instead of the live one, the same way it fetches any update — enter the code, or wait for it to check.
While it is running a test build, the console says so on screen. That matters: a tester should never be left wondering whether the odd thing they just saw is in the real game.
When it is good
Press Publish on the test release and it becomes the live build for everybody. Nothing is re-checked and nothing is rebuilt — it is exactly the build your testers were playing, which is the entire point of having tested it.
The test release then ends. Your testers' consoles fetch the live build like everyone else's, and the test release badge disappears, because it would now be telling them something untrue.
If it is no good
Just do not publish it. Upload another test build over the top, or leave it. The live build has not moved the whole time, so there is nothing to undo.
Two things worth knowing
A console can only receive a test build if you have named it. Not because of a check that could be got round, but because being named is the only way a console is ever offered one. A console you have not listed cannot end up on a test build by accident, and cannot be stranded on one when you finish with it.
Naming a console is about who gets a build, not about keeping anyone out. Somebody who knew your game's code and a console name you had listed could fetch that build. It is a way of choosing your testers, not a lock — so treat a test build as something you are happy for a handful of people to see, rather than a secret.