Quality Assurance Testing Lecture Notes

Quality Assurance Testing is one of the gateways into game companies.

QA Testing consists of undergoing a series of methods to ensure a game functions correctly to a good standard.

Such methods include:
Bug checking
Testing assets in build/checking what the game plays like
Looking at every interactive/non-interactive aspect

One should know what they’re testing for when QA Testing.

The most common method of QA Testing is Smoke Screen Testing/Smoke Alarm Testing. Smoke Screen Testing consists of performing tests of development builds. It aims at ensuring that the most vital functions of a game work correctly. This form of testing is used in order to determine whether a “build is stable enough to proceed with further testing” (Smoke Testing, n.d.).

Another method of QA Testing is Departmental Testing, which tests elements within. This is particularly useful for bigger games.

In order to accommodate Smoke Screen Testing to the scale of our project scopes, we are going to use a condensed version of Smoke Screen Testing:

Game Section – could be about the game’s hierarchy/architecture, e.g. data handling or title screen
Test Name
Test Description – declare what should be tested and the specifics
Results of Test – keep it simple and straight-forward
If there is a problem – give a little detail – sometimes a simple yes/no is given and/or details are given in a separate section
Screenshot Name – name appropriately – make it a simple, recognisable name so that at first glance, the viewer knows what it is
Name of Tester and Date

Steps

Break down the game into its:
Interactions – do they work the way they’re expected to?
Non-interactive parts

We may want to include or assign team members to be specialist leads, e.g. tech lead, art lead, etc. in order to make the process easier.

Team Task: Write down the tests the game needs to undergo – make it so that external QA testers can understand

Bibliography

Smoke Screen Testing, n.d., viewed 5 March 2020, <http://softwaretestingfundamentals.com/smoke-testing/>.