21 May 2024 Leave a comment Tech-Help
In the realm of game development, ensuring the reliability and functionality of both the game and its engine is crucial. Automated testing provides an efficient means to achieve this. This article explores practical approaches to implementing automated testing in game development, focusing on interaction between the game and the engine.
Understanding the Basics
Automated testing in games can be categorized into two main areas:
- Unit Testing: Testing individual components such as networking, object creation, and memory management.
- System Testing: Testing the interaction between the game and the engine, ensuring determinism and consistency.
Implementing Deterministic Testing
For effective automated testing, the game engine must be deterministic. This means that given the same set of inputs, the output will always be the same. Here’s a step-by-step guide to get started:
- Create a Bare-Bone Level: Start with a simple level containing a few interactive objects.
- Develop Test Scripts: Write scripts that simulate player actions, such as pathfinding and object interaction.
- Run and Validate: Regularly run these scripts to validate the consistency of the game engine’s behavior.
Case Study: Automated Testing in League of Legends
Riot Games provides an excellent example of automated testing in their popular game, League of Legends (LoL). Here’s an overview of their approach:
Setup
- Assign abilities to characters and position them on the map.
- Spawn enemy characters and creeps.
Execution
- Take snapshots of the game state at various points.
- Cast spells and activate their effects on different targets.
- Reset spells and repeat the process.
Verification
- Replay events from the snapshots and verify outcomes against expected results.
- Ensure damage calculations and spell effects are consistent.
By using this framework, Riot Games can efficiently test game balance and mechanics, ensuring their game remains stable and consistent.
Practical Tips for Automated Testing
Here are some additional tips to enhance your automated testing process:
- Record and Replay: Use tools to record player actions and replay them for testing.
- Visual Comparisons: Capture screenshots and compare them to reference images to detect rendering issues.
- Event Queues: Implement event queues to record and verify game state changes over time.
Enhancing Testing with Repeato
For developers looking to streamline their automated testing processes, Repeato offers a robust solution. Repeato is a no-code test automation tool for iOS and Android, designed to create, run, and maintain automated tests efficiently. Leveraging computer vision and AI, Repeato ensures rapid test execution and easy maintenance. Additionally, its upcoming support for explicit web testing will further enhance its capabilities, making it an ideal choice for comprehensive testing in game development.
For more detailed guidance on setting up automated tests and leveraging Repeato’s features, please visit our documentation page.
