Game developer tip 5: Using proper versioning

If you haven’t put much thought into how you assign the application versioning for your game, it is definitely an important detail you should keep in mind. Correct versioning makes it easier for you to maintain the development of your game, and makes it easier for users to keep track of what version they are running. This is the fifth in a series of tips that supplement the XperiaTM game developer recommendations. This tip expands on Packaging recommendations – PK6 in the list of game developer recommendations: For the final version of a game, the version value should be “1.0.0″ or higher and the current APK version should be higher than for any of the game’s previous releases.
Read more about this important recommendation after the jump.
Background
As you are readying a build for your game, it’s important to keep application versioning in mind, as part of the upgrade and maintenance strategy for your application. Users will want specific information about the application version that is installed on their devices, as well as the upgrade versions that will be available for installations.
This is also important if your application is tied to other applications, such as a published suite of applications, since other applications may need to query your application for its version, to determine compatibility. Finally, publishing services through which you will publish your application may also need to query your application to also determine compatibility and upgrade/downgrade relationships.
Special considerations
You can set the version in the application’s Android Manifest manifest file. The version should be updated in the Android Manifest file with every new APK update. The game and APK version should be appropriate to the release.
More information about Versioning your application can be found on the Android Developers website at http://developer.android.com/guide/publishing/versioning.html.
Example
Here’s an example manifest that shows the
android:versionCode
and
android:versionName
attributes in the

element.

package="com.example.package.name"
android:versionCode="2"
android:versionName="1.1">

...


In this example, note that
android:versionCode
value indicates that the current .apk contains the second release of the application code, which corresponds to a minor follow-on release, as shown by the
android:versionName
string.
The Android framework provides an API to let applications query the system for version information about your application. To obtain version information, applications use the getPackageInfo(java.lang.String, int) method of PackageManager.
About the Game developer tips
The XperiaTM game developer recommendations offers guidance in developing games for XperiaTM devices such as XperiaTM PLAY. The tips in this series provide additional information about some of the significant recommendations in that document. Each tip provides the following information:
Background. This is a fuller description of the recommendation. It answers the questions “why should I follow this recommendation?” and “when or where should I follow this recommendation?”.
Special considerations. This describes any special considerations, such as device-specific considerations or application type-specific considerations that pertain to the recommendation.
Examples. This shows screen captures or code snippets that further illustrate or explain the recommendation.