Feature: 'Book Excerpt: The Game Production Handbook: Making Builds'

In today's main Gamasutra feature, an excerpt from new book The Game Production Handbook provides a guide to making builds, emphasizing the importance of having a process in place for creating game builds on a regular basis so that features and assets can be checked in-game. In this extract, the purpose of build notes is discussed: "Build notes should accompany any build that is submitted to QA or sent to someone outside the team. Build notes describe pertinent information about the build, such as what is working, what isn't working, and what bugs have been addressed since the last build. Depending on who the audience is, the build notes will be different. All the build notes must provide basic details on the date the build was made and the version number of the build so they can be matched to the correct build. As development progresses, not everyone will receive every build, so noting the date and version number will allow people to see how long it has been since they last saw a working build." You can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject, including specifics on how to tailor build notes to different departments (no registration required, please feel free to link to this column from external websites).