Video Game

A video game is an electronic game that involves

interaction with a user interface to generate visual
feedback on a video device.
Various forms of games
y Computer games
y Console games
y Handheld games
y Mobile games
y Online games
History of Video Games
William Higinbotham made the first video game in
1958-"Tennis for Two is made by oscilloscope screen as
display and a aluminum controller is used to serve the
ball.
1970 1980 1990
2000
Present
Top 5 video games
y Grand Theft Auto IV
y Super Mario Galaxy
y Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
y Resident Evil 4
y Fallout 3
Game Consoles
y Its a modified computer system that produces a video
display signal which can be used with a display device
like a television, monitor, etc. to display a video game.
y Example
PlayStation-Sony
Xbox-Microsoft
WII-Nintendo
Game server
y A game server is a
remotely run or a
locally run server
used by game clients
to play video games
online with multiple
players. A game
server connects over
the Internet to the
video games being
played by the gamer.
Game Types
y RPG (Role playing games)
y AVG (Adventure games)
y RTS (Real-time strategy games)
y FPS (First-person shooting games)
y MMORPG Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game
y Strategy Game
y Simulation Game
y Sports
y Puzzle games
y Table games
Game Testing
y It is the process of software testing for quality control
of video games
y Methodologies are refined from time to time and
different for different types of games
Methodologies
y Functional testing
y Compatibility testing
y Localization testing
y Soak testing
y Beta testing
y Regression testing
y Load testing
y Compliance testing
y Multiplayer testing
Compliance testing
y Compliance testing exists to integrate the guidelines of first
party licensors, such as Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft, with
the actual console game.
y Strict technical requirements are published by each
respective gaming company and must be applied to every
game.
y Failure to comply with these standards during a submission
for license approval results in the game being rejected.
y Sony - Technical Requirements Checklist (TRC)
y Microsoft - Technical Certification Requirements (TCR)
y Nintendo-Lotcheck
Multiplayer testing
y Multiplayer testing may involve separate multiplayer
QA team if the game has significant multiplayer
portions. This testing is more common with PC games.
The testers ensure that all connectivity methods
(modem, LAN, Internet) are working. This allows
single player and multiplayer testing to occur in
parallel.
Game Testing processes
y A) Code Inspection: review the source code and focus on logic
structure, conformity with standards, the use of comments, and the
completeness of program documentation and/or definition.
y B) Incremental Focus Testing: test chunk or pieces of code by
feeding values/input to an isolated module, and analyze the
intermediate result from the module. Usually a run-time facility , a
debugging tool, a dummy front-end, which allows invocation of
objects by their underlying method(s).
y C) Data Analysis: examine the data in the database; or analyze which
part of the system uses or modifies any item of data. By tracing data
items through the game play, the tester can validate if data usage,
interpretation and manipulation by the modules or objects are
appropriate.
Game Testing processes (cont..)
y D) Path and Flow testing: verify if the correct sequence of objects or
components is executed for an end-to-end path.
y E) Algorithm-Specific testing: test a specific game scenario or feature
by setting (or tweaking) data variables, data values to the code, and
execute it in the run-time environment. Different from the
Incremental Focus Testing, the testing is to verify a suite of codes that
make up a specific game feature.
y F) Artificial Intelligence Analysis: generate the run statistic of the
programmable moves and plays of the AI components. The result is to
validate if all the pre-programmed moves (e.g. side grip on the
snowboard) and plays (e.g. Jackie Chans combination punch/kick in a
multi-directional action) are used. Verify if the AI logic is appropriate
and reasonable (e.g. in a basketball game, it would not be reasonable to
have the scoring 90% by dunk; and 10% by jump shot).
Testing of game component
y The menu and the menu functions,
y Art (character model, texture, terrain or world, crowd, objects, etc.),
music
y Animation (the like and feel of the movement, realism, frame rate),
y Sound and the sound effect (in conjunction with the facial animation,
e.g. lip sync, and the
y Animation sequence),
y Camera (cinematic view, zoom in and out, replay),
y Game flow and logic,
y World/level/scene,
y The player attributes,
y The action attributes,
y The condition to advance to the next level (what are the rules?)
y The event/object triggers, and
Testing of game component (cont..)
y The scoring
y Progressive levels of difficulty,
y The AI logic (for both defensive play and offensive play; player
movement and positioning),
y Statistics (pre-game and in-game like player statistics and high score),
y Title screen
y SFX (Special effect)
y Any movie clip,
y The use of multi-button actions (also called button mashing),
y The ease of use of the button functions,
y The game options (game start/menu selection, hints, game pause,
pause menu options , and
y Scrolling, i.e. cycling through the available options on the screen, etc.