What are different aspects of Game Testing?

Today’s world is fantasized with games. Children and youth both are addicted to games. With the cutting edge technology, gaming technology has reached new heights. Now games have become so exciting with their real world technologies. With the growing demand for games, there always a tough competition between the games developing companies. They struggle with technology to deliver the best quality games. So like software programs and applications, games also have to be tested for quality and performance.

Therefore, game testing is considered to be an important part of game development.

OBJECTIVE OF GAME TESTING
1. Game testing can thought of as a kind of software testing which aims at testing the quality of the games.
2. The main objective of game testing is to find all the errors and bugs in the gaming software and preparing their documentation.
3. Games require very high technology and thus call for the need of analytic competence.
4. It is developed using computer expertise and endurance.
5. There are some critical evaluation skills on which it is based.

WHY GAME TESTING BECAME NECESSARY?

1. In the era of early video games, all the development and testing process was carried out by the developer of the game only since the games were small and primitive technology was used.
2. But, today the games are becoming very lengthy and complex due to the advent of high technologies.
3. So, there is a need for qualitative and quantitative assessment of the games which can be achieved by game testing.
4. Today’s game companies have separate expert game testers.
5. The main aim of game testers is to find note any problems that they discover in the documentations and reports.
6. They should have the skills to finish the games at the most difficult level. Game testing is carried out on the program before releasing its alpha version.

HOW GAME TESTING IS PERFORMED?
A critical component of a game is quality even though there are no standard methodologies to judge the video quality.

1. Different testers and developers have their own methodologies.
2. There is a separate quality assurance staff in game companies to judge the quality of the game.
3. Starting is commenced as soon as the first code of the game is written and it continues till the whole program is completed.
4. The progress of the game is monitored by the QA staff.
5. When the whole program is completed, a test plan is written and test cases are prepared and the testing is carried out accordingly.
6. This is done before alpha stage.
7. As the beta stage approaches, one of the aspects of the game is daily testing according to the plan.
8. List of the features is prepared which are to be included and which are to be excluded.
9. Beta stage testing includes contribution from volunteer testers.
10.The game is played and tested.
11.The discovered glitches are noted down.
12.The game play should be creative since then only most of the bugs will be discovered.
13.There is a time period before the deadline which is termed as crunch time.
14.In this period the features that were added later are tested.
15.The bugs discovered are ranked according to the severity they can cause:

- Critical bugs/ A bugs: that can cause the game to crash.
- Essential problems/ B bugs: bugs that require attention even though the game runs well.
- Obscure problems/ C bugs: these bugs are small but require to be corrected.

The following people are involved in testing of a game:
- Game producer
The person sets the deadlines for testing based upon quality assurance and marketing.
- Lead tester
The person manages list of bugs and most responsible for the quality of game.
- Testers
The person checks the working of the game.
- Software development engineer in test
The person builds automated frame works and test cases.

What are different concepts of Pair wise testing?

We all know that we can't test everything. This is particularly appropriate for testing multiple combinations of input parameters. To test all the possible combinations for these parameters would require millions of tests.

- Pair wise testing or all pairs testing is an effective and systematic way to reduce the number of tests.

- The process of integrating this testing technique into test practices can prove to be a boon in saving time and efforts.

- Pair wise testing is also known as all pairs testing.

- Pair wise testing is nothing but a combined form of software testing methodologies or techniques.

- In a typical pair wise testing, all the pairs of input parameters, which are basically software algorithms, are tested in various possible unique combinations.

If the test vectors are chosen carefully, this process can be carried out much faster instead of performing an exhaustive search of all combinations of all the involved parameters and by parallelizing the tests of input parameter pairs.

The number of tests is typically given by the following formula:
O(nm)
Where n is the number of possibilities of first input parameter with most choices and m is the number of possibilities for the second input parameter with the most choices.

Reason of pair wise testing
- The pair wise testing is based on a certain reason.
- Even a simplest or primitive bug or error can cause havocs to the program.
- The petty errors are caused unknowingly by an input parameter.
- Other bugs and errors are a result of interaction between the various pairs of parameters.
- All these kind of bugs and errors can be arrested with the help of pair wise testing.
- Bugs and errors involving the interactions between three or more parameters are progressively less common in occurrence, but at the same time they are progressively more expensive to be found out by carrying out the exhaustive testing, which has its limit as the exhaustive testing of all possible inputs.

Many testers and software developers consider the pairs wise testing of a software system or subsystem or an application as a reasonable and efficient cost-benefit compromise between higher-order testing methods or techniques that can be combined and used, and less exhaustive methods or techniques which fail to exercise all the possible pairs of input parameters.

Since it is not possible for any testing technique or methodology to find out all the bugs and errors, pairs wise testing is typically used together with other testing methods and software quality assurance techniques and methodologies such as:

- Unit testing
- Symbolic execution
- Code review and
- Fuzz testing

Advantages of Pair Wise testing
- The best advantage of pair wise testing is that pair wise test cases give over 90 percent of coverage.

- In a research the pair wise testing was compared with the random input testing and it was found that pair wise testing provided better coverage.

- The block coverage obtained by pair wise testing has always been found to be comparable with the block coverage achieved by the exhaustive testing by testing all the possible factor combinations.

- Pair wise testing is actually based up on the fact that most faults are caused by interactions mostly between two factors.

- Pair wise generated test suites are quite effective in covering all the possible combinations of two parameters and therefore are much smaller than exhaustive test suites and still very effective in discovering defects.

Necessary condition for pair wise testing: - For each pair of input parameters, all the combinations of valid values of these two parameters should be covered.

- To test a small number of input parameters can result in a combinatorial explosion of a large number of possible permutations.

- Pair wise testing is to reduce the combinations to a more small and manageable size and provide effective fault detection.

Overview of Regression Testing and its objectives.

Regression testing is an important part of the software development life cycle. regression means going back. If any kind of modification is done in software, testing needs to be done to ensure that it works as specified and that it has not negatively impacted any functionality that it offered previously.
Common methods of regression testing include re-running previously run tests and checking whether previously fixed faults have re-emerged.

The objectives of regression testing are :
- To identify uncovered and unexpected defects.
- To ensure that changes or additions in the code are safe & are not liable to break the existing functionality of the application.
- To ensure and track the quality of its output.
- The changes to the software application have not introduced any new bugs.

Regression testing is necessary when there is a change made to an existing tested software. Each change implies more regression testing needs to be done to ensure that the system meets the project goals.
Regression testing can become cost effective if the test cases are automated the test cases may be executed using scripts after each change is introduced in the system. Also, teams do not execute all the test cases during the regression testing. They test only what they decide is relevant.

In short, regression testing means rerunning tests of things that used to work to make sure that a change didn't break something else. The set of tests used is called the Regression Test Set. It's enormously helpful when you change an application, change the environment, and during integration of pieces.
Regression testing is a simple concept, but it needs to be done just right to work in the real world.