Task 1g

Games Tester
Thomas Gaynor

Date of Test
19/06/2017

Versions
Gameboy
Pokémon Red

Defect Description
A legendary Pokémon “Mew” will appear randomly when certain actions are performed.

Severity
Trivial

Steps to Reproduce
1. Defeat all trainers on nugget bridge
2. Catch an abra and keep it on you with teleport
3. Stand just outside of sight of the Jr. Trainer character and then etch your way upto him
4. When he sees you press start and use teleport
5. Go to route 25
6. Fight the mountain man and no one else
7. Fight a certain youngster from far away
8. Walk back to route 24
9. Start menu appears and click B
10. Battle will start with level 7 mew

Actual Behaviour
Battle would activate with the legendary mew at level 7.

Expected Behaviour
Nothing special should happen while walking up the bridge.

Evidence
Video below

Workaround
The game will still work as long as the glitch isn’t exploited and will still carry on afterwards.

Task 1f (c)

Below is a test suite table that i created while testing the game Pokemon Red. I was testing the cerulean city level because i know there are multiple bugs in the part of the game.

Task 1f (b)

The excel table that is shown below is my attempt of a combinatorial table which shows different actions being used together. I tested the game Pokemon.

Task 1f (a)

The image below shows you an Excel document showing how a lot of controls and commands for Pokemon games work.

Task 1e

Smoke Testing is a set of tests with the aim to make sure that all the most important functions work and that there are no class A bugs in it so that the game can go through all the other types of testing. It is believed to be called smoke testing because originally it was used to see if whatever they were testing would start to smoke. Smoke testing takes place before the game is created in the preparation phase.

White Box Testing includes looking at code and tests each part of it to make sure it works. The tester who is doing the white box testing needs to know a lot about different coding languages. The tester needs to know what the code will do so that they can correct it. White Box Testing occurs during the Alpha Phase.

Black Box Testing is where a tester will test how the game while playing the game. A black box tester doesn’t know what’s happening with the code or what’s going wrong but they view the game how an actual player would see the game which is necessary to test the game. These bugs are usually sound, graphics or grammar. This process takes place during the beta phase.

Clean Room Testing is when you test how players play the game such as seeing how the player levels up and what level the enemies should be, you check these things using trial and error and see how the player plays the game and what would make it the most optimal for the game. For other games like shooters you use a heat map to see where the players go during the game and see how they play. Clean Room Testing occurs during the Beta Phase in beta is where you get most of the feedback whether it be closed or open beta.

Play Testing is the biggest test section and is where games are tested for all kinds of glitches and flaws. These flaws can be graphical, clipping, sound, control, levelling and difficulty flaws. Play testing occurs in Alpha/Beta/Gold Phases because that is where the game is played.

Ad hoc testing is testing performed without planning and documentation, the tests are meant to be used only once. Ad hoc testing is the least formal test method because it is only used when something happens that isn’t in the normal and is only used when needed. Ad Hoc Testing can be used whenever something out of the ordinary happens so it can be used at the alpha, beta and gold phases because this is where changes can happen.

Task 1d

1. Preparation is the testing phase done before production and before alpha tests. The tests done in preparation are very detailed, each tester will be in charge of testing something different such as one person would test controls and another would test the menu.

2. When doing an alpha test in the alpha phase the game needs to be checked to see if it is following the brief and if the client is agreeing with how the game looks. The tests that happen usually are just defects because most of the assets would have been implemented at this point.

3. The Beta Phase is the phase that takes place after the alpha phase and is just more testing so there isn’t any more assets being implemented since alpha. There are two parts of the beta phase, closed and open beta, open beta is where the game is playable by anyone whereas closed beta is where the developer sends out invitation/accept help from the public to find bugs. This is almost like free QA tester.

4. The Gold Test Phase happens after the beta test, by this point most of the bugs have been fixed and is at the point where it can be released. Within the gold phase the QA testers must go through the game one last time and try and find any bugs left especially grade A bugs (Ones that stop people from completing the game), if any grade A bugs are left then the game may be delayed to allow for improvements.

5. Certification is where the game is checked by the platform manufacturers such as Sony to see whether the software meets the requirements. The certification phase checks certain things such as the age rating so games like Persona 5 which has swearing doesn’t get released with an age rating of 3.

6. Regression test is where you make sure the game works with different software and making sure the game is compatible with all the updates that the console has went through. This phase is basically you checking if you have made any more bugs while making other updates to the game.

Task 1c

Configuration Trigger
The configuration triggers are caused during the pre-game. Things that could cause this is the console/machine am I running on, the version of the operating system, the version of the game and is there any patches needed, screen resolution and external devices connected.

Start-up Trigger
The start-up trigger usually happens when there are settings that your computer is too modest to handle such as when values are being set, graphics being loaded, music being loaded, GPU being used or when data being loaded/written to the disk when its full. An example of this is when the start-up bar does not work or when your data is corrupted.

Exception Trigger
An exception trigger is when something happens and your computer doesn’t know what is happening or how to handle it, examples of this is when a download is being slow or the “Blue screen of death” which appears when your computer isn’t sure of the error.

Stress Trigger
A stress trigger is what happens when your computer comes under stress because there is too much going on such as when you get a message about your computer taking up to much RAM examples of this is when Photoshop rendering too much which takes up memory.

Normal Trigger
A Normal are just Minor triggers that can occur, these aren’t such a big deal and the game can be carried on. This includes things like pixels on the screen.

Restart Trigger
A restart trigger is when the game needs to restart such as when the software gets updated or when the data gets corrupted. Examples could be when downloads being completed in the background and the system needs to update to finish.