Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Testing happens.
Anytime someone plays a game, it is being tested. When someone finds a problem
with the game, it makes an impression. A beta release is published for the express purpose
of being tested. Hasn't the game already been extensively tested prior to the beta release?
Why are problems still found by the Beta testers? Even after the game is released to the
general public, it's still being tested. Game companies scramble to get patches out to
fix bugs in PC and online games, but unfortunate console game publishers have to live
with the bugs that were burned onto the game cartridge or CD-ROM. Even patches can
miss stuff or create new problems that have to be fixed in yet another patch. All those
bugs escaped the game company's paid and volunteer testers.
Despite the best efforts of everyone on the game team, games get made wrong. When
games go wrong it's because of defects described by the eight ODC defect types cov-
ered in this chapter: Function, Assignment, Checking, Timing, Build/Package/Merge,
Algorithm, Documentation, and Interface.
In Memoirs of Constant, Volume III, Chapter IX, it is written “…there is much in
common between smugglers and policemen, the great art of a smuggler being to know
how to hide, and that of the detective to know how to find.�?
(www.napoleonic-literature.
com/Book_11/V3C9.html)
This chapter has shown you the ways of the smuggler in
the hope that it will make you a better game testing policeman.
1. Is game testing important?
2. Which of the defect types do you think is the hardest for testers to find?
Explain why.
3. List five situations where assignments are likely to occur in a simulation
game, such as
The SIMS
or
Zoo Tycoon
.
4. List five types of algorithms that you might find in a simulation game.
5. From the following code example from the publicly available source code for
Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory
, identify line numbers (added in paren-
theses) that might be a source of a defect for each of the ODC defect types.
