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    Production Methodologies, Techniques and Guidelines for Modern Computer Game Testing
    Production Methodologies, Techniques and Guidelines for Modern Computer Game Testing
    Production Methodologies, Techniques and Guidelines for Modern Computer Game Testing
    Ebook88 pages56 minutes

    Production Methodologies, Techniques and Guidelines for Modern Computer Game Testing

    By Ashley Morgan

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    About this ebook

    As development methods in the video games industry have evolved and improved the process, a key phase in the lifecycle of a game’s creation has suffered. With video games becoming more mainstream and pushing the boundaries of technology and creativity more care must be placed on making sure that the end product is of high quality and is not faulty. This is where game testing comes in.
    This short book looks at several different techniques and processes that can be applied to the testing phase of a video game’s production to make it the process more productive and find more troublesome bugs that can ruin a game when released.
    Created in conjunction with the dissertation “An Investigation into Production Methods with Quality Assurance and Game Testing” by Ashley Morgan for Staffordshire University.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAshley Morgan
    Release dateMay 14, 2012
    ISBN9781471698989
    Production Methodologies, Techniques and Guidelines for Modern Computer Game Testing

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    • 4/5
      Barring a few syntax issues, this is both an informative and easy read. Hopefully, Morgan's testing ideas will be taken seriously by studios in the future.

    Book preview

    Production Methodologies, Techniques and Guidelines for Modern Computer Game Testing - Ashley Morgan

    Chapter 1 - Testing Techniques

    This chapter focuses on the different techniques that can be applied to games testing, gauging how useful they are and how they can be implemented.

    Black Box Testing

    Definition

    Black box Testing is and continues to be the most popular method of testing games in the games industry due to its simplicity and the fact that many testers use it without realizing. The process involves testers using a build of a game for testing without any knowledge of the inner structure of that build, no code is show at all, instead testers see what players would see if they were playing the game. This method may seem basic and a bit pointless to talk about as most testers use it by default, but some testers still choose not to use it and the process does have some very big advantages.

    Benefits

    This method of testing works so well for a handful of reasons, firstly getting testers to only see the game and nothing else makes them think and behaviour like a player would which aids in the bug finding process as testers can easily get into the mindset of the end user.

    Secondly as this method only focuses on the inputs and outputs of the tested game, testers will not get distracted by any processes and can instead focus mainly on the outcomes. They also get to see and understand how different inputs influence the game’s outputs and can report back if these are not as predicted.

    Due to the easy nature of black box testing it can essentially be done by anyone at any place they choose. As long as they have the correct build of the game, record what they do and what happens because of it then this method of testing can be conducted.

    Finally this method of testing is incredibly easy to do; all it involves is using a build of a game that needs testing, a tester and some guidelines on what they need to do. The tester doesn’t need any training or knowledge of programming and only needs to record what outputs occur when they have tried an input.

    Implementation

    As explained above the process of black box testing is very easy. It begins with sending testers a build of the game that needs to be tested; this build must be playable and show none of the internal workings of the game. Any debug information that is displayed on screen needs to be hidden as the tester needs to see as much of the game as possible, anything that is on screen that won’t be there come release can easily distract a tester or cause them to base testing around it when it may not be relevant or be displaying incorrect data.

    With the correct build in the hands of testers they will either need guidelines or checklists to test against (see: Test Cases) or employ an ad-hoc approach of testing (see: Ad-hoc Testing), they need to be aware of what inputs to do and the expected outcomes from that input. They also need to record what happens in detail as well as any other unexpected behaviour that results from any input they do, these reports then need to be logged and sorted. If the output was expected then there is no bug, if the output was unexpected then it is put down as a bug and passed along to the designers and programmers to fix.

    White Box Testing

    Definition

    White Box Testing is the total opposite of Black Box testing, instead of looking at just the inputs and outputs of a game the tester instead has access to and looks at the internal structure of the code. This process requires some knowledge of programming and can take longer than usual as paths in the code need to be followed and examined, however it is extremely important and can really help with the overall testing effort.

    Benefits

    As this method of testing looks into the very heart of the game it gives an extremely large coverage of testing, anything and everything can be checked to see if it is working as it should be, this is rarely achieved with black box as it relies on inputs from the user. Also as all of the code is being checked over and tested bugs that couldn’t be found using other methods can be found and usually fixed right there and then.

    White box testing is also the only form of testing that can fully check features such as moding tools, middleware, hardware drivers and other code-dependant parts of a game. As these features are rarely accessed by the player they can’t be tested by conventional means, however they can still contain problematic bugs and defects

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