Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Word Games
It's useful to be wary of advice you get from outside the test team. Well-meaning people
will suggest shortcuts so the game development can make better progress, but you
won't remove bugs from the game by simply not finding them. Don't trust what these
people are telling you. At the same time, don't cross the boundary from being dis-
trustful to turning hostile. The whole team is working to deliver the best game it can,
even when it doesn't seem that way to a tester.
A general form of statements to watch out for is “X happened, so (only/don't) do Y.�?
Here are some examples:
■
“Only a few lines of code have changed, so don't inspect any other lines.�?
■
“The new audio subsystem works the same as the old one, so you only need to
run your old tests.�?
■
“We added foreign language strings for the dialogs, so just check a few of them
in one of the languages and the rest should be okay too.�?
And some variants:
“We only made small changes so don't worry about testing <insert feature
name here>.�?
■
“You can just run one or two tests on this and let me know if it works.�?
■
“We've gotta get this out today so just ….�?
■
Tip
You'll be surprised how many bugs you will find by behaving opposite from the advice you get from
other people about what should and should not be tested.
Don't equate a “trust no one�? attitude with a “don't do anything you're asked to do�?
attitude. If a test lead or the project manager needs you to meet goals for certain kinds
of testing to be done, be sure you fulfill your obligation to them before going off and
working on the stuff you don't trust. The difference is between being a hero (“I fin-
ished the tests you wanted, and also managed to start looking at the tournament mode
and found some problems there. We should do more testing on that next time
around�?) or a zero (“I didn't have time to do the tests you wanted because I was getting
some new tests to work for the tournament mode�?).
Note
In Chapter 4, “The Game Team,�? you learn something about what the other people on the game
project are doing, and how your testing affects their work and impacts the progress of the game.
