This Guide will teach you how to Open and Test changes that need approval and/or testing on your computer in your game.

It will cover setting up your game for testing pending changes so that you may easily switch to them in the future.
It DOES NOT set up your game for contributing back into it, only for testing, for Contributing see: GitHub Desktop Guide.

Once set up it will take your aproximetly 4 clicks to switch to someone's pending changes.

[EXPAND]

Switching to someone's changes AFTER setup

Once you have Github Desktop setup, repository downloaded locally and devmode.txt enabled.
You may switch to someone's changes by opening Github Desktop, going into the Current Branch menu, Pull Requests, and selecting their PR.

If you changed your Singleplayer back to normal "Beyond All Reason" then make sure to set it to "Beyond All Reason Dev" under the main menu Settings, Developer.
You do not need to restart your game, starting a new Skirmish match will load with the new/changed content, but will not update the Adv Options Skirmish Panel.
If the person requesting testing has not made a PR, ask that they make one, either a draft PR if not ready or a normal PR.

Download Github Desktop:
https://desktop.github.com/download/

  This is a user interface that will simplify the ussage of git to a few clicks.
  You do not need an account.

Open the Game launcher, and press "Open Install directory"

In the first folder that the launcher opens, \Beyond-All-Reason\data create a text file named devmode.
It should quite literally be a text file named devmode or if you have file extensions enabled and visible: devmode.txt

Then create a new folder named games
And another folder in games called BAR.sdd
Copy the filepath of this BAR.sdd folder, you will need it in Github Desktop.

[IMG NEEDED]

Back in Github Desktop Select:

---

NEW USER:
  1. "Clone a repository from the Internet..."
  2. from the right half of the window
  3. Then fill the URL Tab as follows:
    Repository URL or GitHub username and repository:
    https://github.com/beyond-all-reason/Beyond-All-Reason
    Local path:
    <Your BAR.sdd path here> <- MAKE SURE IT ENDS IN BAR.sdd

---

RETURNING:
  1. In the top left click where it says "Current repository"
  2. "Add", "Clone Repository", and then "URL"
  3. Then fill the URL Tab as follows:
    Repository URL or GitHub username and repository:
    https://github.com/beyond-all-reason/Beyond-All-Reason
    Local path:
    <Your BAR.sdd path here> <- MAKE SURE IT ENDS IN BAR.sdd

---

Next you will switch your singleplayer to use the BAR.sdd folder, to do this:

1. Open the Game
2. In the Main Menu go to Settings
3. Under Settings, the new Developer Tab.^[1]
4. Scroll to the bottom
   Set Singleplayer to: "Beyond All Reason Dev"
   

Once the above are done you will be able to play whatever branch is selected in your Singleplayer.

Your game version should now show up as BAR $VERSION Launching it now will play whatever branch you have selected in Github Desktop If your update is missing your BAR.sdd is wrong.^[2]

---

1. If you do not see Developer tab under Settings:
  Are you in the Main Menu, not in match settings
  Did you put a text file named devmode in your beyond-all-reason/data folder

2. If your skirmish shows Missing Update:
  Verify your BAR.sdd path, it should be something as follows:
  .../beyond-all-reason/data/games/BAR.sdd
  In addition in the BAR.sdd folder should be a lot of loose files.
  If There is a single beyond-all-reason folder in BAR.sdd:
   Rename the child beyond-all-reason folder of BAR.sdd to BAR.sdd and drag it out to merge
   Do not simply drag everything out in case you have Hidden Files set to Hidden.