Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
During the early stages of development, it is very likely that testing will be accom-
plished on emulators, software that approximates the functionality of a mobile device
on a PC for testing purposes. There are several reasons to use emulators in the early
stages of development. One is that sometimes application development involves the
use of scripts that can be dangerous to run on actual devices, because they could
destroy some phone functionality or lead to a break of terms of agreement with an
operator. Another is merely that the actual devices may not be available.
On the other hand, the fact that a game works on the emulator doesn't mean that it
won't have problems when running on the actual phone, due to the fact that, as we
said, the emulator only approximates the functionality of a phone, it's not the phone
itself.
Another problem with emulators is that, since they run on PCs, they don't allow test-
ing the touch interface of the phone. Most of the times, touch commands are replic-
ated via the mouse, which means, for example, that multitouch functionality cannot
be tested at all. At some point, a game needs to be tested on the real devices it is
Prototyping
.
The following screenshot represents a screenshot from a standard software debug
report:
