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Game Testing: Supervisor Prof - Dr. Arby Kashak Presented by Eng - Mai Kamal

Game testing is an important part of game development to ensure quality and discover bugs. It involves systematically testing all aspects of a game, including user interfaces, graphics, animations, sound, game logic, artificial intelligence, and more. Testers must understand both functional "black box" testing that focuses on playability as well as structural "clear box" testing of underlying components. A thorough test plan is developed to cover both positive and negative testing scenarios. Game testers use debugging tools and write custom test programs to evaluate different parts of the game code and experience. Their goal is to methodically "break" the game through repetitive and meticulous testing.

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Mai K Mohamed
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1K views

Game Testing: Supervisor Prof - Dr. Arby Kashak Presented by Eng - Mai Kamal

Game testing is an important part of game development to ensure quality and discover bugs. It involves systematically testing all aspects of a game, including user interfaces, graphics, animations, sound, game logic, artificial intelligence, and more. Testers must understand both functional "black box" testing that focuses on playability as well as structural "clear box" testing of underlying components. A thorough test plan is developed to cover both positive and negative testing scenarios. Game testers use debugging tools and write custom test programs to evaluate different parts of the game code and experience. Their goal is to methodically "break" the game through repetitive and meticulous testing.

Uploaded by

Mai K Mohamed
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Game Testing

Supervisor
Prof.Dr. Arby kashak
Presented by
Eng.Mai Kamal
Why Game Testing ?
• Entertainment in general is a field of great importance to everyone (Sche
ll, 2001);
• Today, the video game industry is one of the fastest growing forms of en
tertainment .
• The video games industry costs a multibillion dollar per year . and Acc
ording to the Digital Interactive Software Association (IDSA), revenue fr
om computer and console games practically doubled from $3.2 billion in
1994 to $6.02 billion in 2000 when more than 219 million games were s
old (IDSA, 2000). Now, the gaming industry is becoming as widesprea
d and popular as computers and televisions and is also matching the sam
e levels of complexity and advanced technology.
Why Software Testing ? Cont.
Interactive entertainment software testing is a highly technical
field requiring :
• computing expertise,
• analytic competence,
• critical evaluation skills, and
• endurance.
Game Testing
• Game testing a subset of game development, is a software testi
ng process for quality control of video games. The primary fu
nction of game testing is the discovery and documentation of s
oftware defects (bugs).
• Poor testing results in a buggy game or software that gives ris
e to a long stream of repeated testing and project delays.
Game Tester
• Game tester is a member of a development team who performs
game testing.
• Testers are responsible for checking that the game works,
• Game Tester will not be playing the game for personal fun or e
njoyment but he attempts to “break” the game.
• Game Tester have to play the same part of the game over and ov
er again spending hours upon hours testing every minute detail l
aid out in the initial project.
Testing Types
1. Clear- Box testing (White-Box testing).

2. Black- Box testing .


Black- Box testing
Black Box focuses on the functional or the playability aspects of
the game. For examples:
• testing the “user interface” (e.g., the selection menus and the
use of buttons),
• the “look and feel” (e.g., the graphics and animation), and the
actual game play.
For Black Box testing, the tester must know how to play the gam
e (e.g. know the rules and the game flow).
Clear- Box testing
Clear Box is focus on the architecture and integration aspec
ts of the game software. For examples:
• the use of a database
• the interaction/integration of game components like (the r
endering engine, the AI engine, sound, and so on).
• pipelines,
For Clear Box testing, the tester must understand what codi
ng is.
Testing Strategy
1. Testing Planning and Testing Requirements:

Identify the Testing Requirements:


A requirement is an objective that must be met. The tester must under
stand most of the game requirements and translate them into functi
onal terms (e.g., what needs to be tested, what things are testable an
d what not, what are the targets and measures, etc.)
As part of the testing requirement development
process, the testers read the system documentation, gather all the visu
al and written information, analyze what and how the game compo
nents can be tested.
Testing Strategy cont.
2. Game Components:
Systematic game testing means examining every part of a game.
These parts include:
• The menu and the menu functions, Art (character model, textu
re, terrain or world, crowd, objects, etc.),
• Animation (the like and feel of the movement, realism, frame r
ate),
• Sound and the sound effect (in conjunction with the facial ani
mation, e.g. lip sync, and the animation sequence),
Game Components
• Music,
• Camera (cinematic view, zoom in and out, replay),
• Game flow and logic,
• World/level/scene,
• The player attributes,
• The action attributes,
• The condition to advance to the next level (what are the rules?)
• The use of environmental objects,
• The event/object triggers, and
• The scoring progressive levels of difficulty,
Game Components cont.
• The AI logic (for both defensive play and offensive play; playe
r movement and positioning),
• Statistics (pre-game and in-game like player statistics and hig
h score),
• Title screens,
• NIS (Non-Interactive Sequence),
• SFX (Special effect)
• Any movie clip,
• The game pad,
• The use of multi-button actions (also called button mashing),
Game Components cont.
• The ease of use of the button functions,
• The shock/vibration effect of the game pad,
• The use of digital and analog mode
• Legal text, and
• The game options (game start/menu selection, hints, ga
me pause, pause menu options, and scrolling, i.e. cycling
through the available options on the screen, etc.)
Testing Strategy cont.
3. Test Plan Development for Game testing:

There are two types of test cases:

• Positive Testing: is testing the functionality of the product.

• Negative Testing ( Stress Testing or Load Testing): is testing the durabili


ty and the level of tolerance resistance of the game.
• Negative Testing used to know how game responds , and reacts correctly.
Examples: Load a game without a MEMORY card, or pulling out the ME
MORY card during game loading.
• Running a game for more than 48 hours in order to test for me
mory allocation and management.
• Check for freeze case (a game will become non-playable after
a long-playing time ).
Software Testing Processes

1. Code Inspection: review the source code.


2. Incremental Focus Testing: test pieces of code by feedi
ng values/input to an isolated module, and analyze the inte
rmediate result from the module.
3. Data Analysis: examine the data in the database; or analy
ze which part of the system uses or modifies any item of d
ata.
4. Path and Flow testing: verify if the correct sequence of o
bjects or components is executed for an end-to-end path.
Software Testing Processes cont

5. Algorithm-Specific testing: test a specific game scenar


io or feature.
6. Artificial Intelligence Analysis: generate the run statist
ic of the programmable moves and plays of the AI comp
onents.
Game Testing Methodology

1. Debugger and Code inspection:


• A lot of time is going to be spent on debugging the game.
• Debug: is ability to step through or into parts of code and understanding w
hat is happening and how to set and change variables as well as run a funct
ion at any time during the program.

2. Test Programs :
• A very important part of the job will be for a software tester to write test pr
ograms.

3. Sound Testing : is simply listening to the sound and making sure the sta
rtup point and the length are appropriate.
Game Testing Methodology cont.

• The software Tester often requires to write a “sound test”


program to play all the individual sound files from inside
the game.

4. Memory management:
• check the current status of the memory. If there are signif
icant changes between the new day and day before, make
a note of it. Something could be wrong. If the exe size gro
ws too large then the game will take longer to load.
Game Testing Methodology cont.

5. Database and Game Statistics:


The main purpose of the database for a game is:
• Player or team statistics. It could be used solely for di
splay, or it could be used by the AI engine to simulate
the actual game play or for randomization.
• Run-time statistics. It is used by the game engine to re
member certain state, attributes or scoring of the playe
r as you move from level to level.
Game Testing Methodology cont.

6. Overlays:
• Make sure the overlays are loaded correctly.
A tester could write a program to test that the overlays are being called correctl
y, and identify if any one does not get used at all.

7. Bug Tracking Software :


• The software tester should know how to use PVCS Tracker to track and repo
rt bugs, and know the use of the standard template to create/ customize a ne
w defect database for a new project. It would be preferred if you could have
administrator rights to tracker to set up others with accounts and manage the
database (new client sign-on ID, fields and information).
!Thank you

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