Hello, I will show you how to create a great changelog for your games.
First of all, versions...
Versions are like a number that shows which version state is the game.
For example, 1.3.2
1 -> Game Number (If it were 2, the transition from 1 and 2 has to be like creating a new game)
3 -> Update version (When changed, it means that some stuff have been added, removed and bugs are fixed)
2 -> Patch version (When changed, normally bugs are fixed and small things are modified)
Then other meanings:
Alpha: The game is not complete but can be played, it can have a big number of bugs and it's very unstable
Beta: The game probably is finished but not necessary, in this stage, the game should be smoothed, a lot of bugs have to be fixed, and the game has to be finished if not yet.
Release: The game is finished and can be played, still can be updated for upgrades
Snapshot: It's a mini-version/update for a normal update. For example, to pass from 1.2 to 1.3, there are some snapshots to show to people what you are doing for 1.3. Snapshots have different version name.
RC (Release Candidate): Before an update gets released and snapshots ends, some last snapshots called RC or Release candidates are show up to people, any of this snapshots can be the final update, but if you don't want to have risk of a very bugged update, you update to a release candidate, which people should give you info about errors etc, before the update gets released.
Now, about changelogs. In each update and patch version, you should create a changelog to get info in the future about the version when something is created.
This is how I normally do changelogs:
Order of changes:
- Important info
- Added
- Changed/Modified
- Fixed (Bugfix #(Bug ID))
- Removed
- Extra notes
Hope this helps you! Thank you