How I test Games

If you want a career as a Tester, this is for You

I don't test computer games, well, I do, but I'm not paid to. I will hopefully never work in a game software house, but it's not a bad way to start at all. I decided testing games was not for me after a interview at Sony in London. 

In a gray part of London in 2006 (much of London is gray looking once the heat of summer kicks in mind-you), I went to a round building, full of kids. Don't get me wrong, I've been to the Jagex (Runescape) HQ too and those kids are having the same kind of fun, but the pay. So yeah, not for the pay and the hours at all, but I do test games. I started writing games reviews over 3 years ago. and that has attracted attention from small indies who want to get positive reviews written around the time of their launches. Pushing the socials kind of stuff, so they often send out free pre-release copies. When I get a copy I write a review, but I also give defect feedback for any that are in beta, and here is gets tricky.

Games are easy to test and a good start for learning for to file defect reports.

How to write a bug report without any requirements

Well, you do have 2 requirements, the game has to be "playable" and has to make someone money eventually. 

Requirement #3 You have the game description, so when reporting an issue with the game, you want to see where the game description deviates from what your experience is. If the game is aimed at children, it has to use suitable language. Not too cutesy, because kids know when they are being spoken down to, but not too adulty, or else mum won't let her 7 year old play the game. So the smallest bugs you can raise are for things like grammar and spelling, and believe me, these are really easy to screenshot and get corrected. Easy bugs also help you get the developers attention. build relationship, ask them questions about what they hope the game will become or do. And be genuine but kind and build connection. In a real job, bugs are not just a thing you write up once and forget, they are a conversation than can go back and forth. In the industry we call it "bug tennis", where an issue goes back to you because you left out something or explained it poorly. This costs time.

What

Where/When

Why

1. Think small, but think big.

The best time to write a well supported bug for a computer game, is when the code is still very changeable. It's amazing how badly architected games code can be and how hard to change it often can be. Games are usually monolithic and not component-based at all. They are supposed to do one thing, and not have components that make any code changes easy to do in the way applications might be modified. So any suggestions that require a big change are usually far more work than you think.

Above is a screenshot of a game on the left with my suggested "accessibility" change on the right as a mocked up image, to make the text pop more. There are other issues in this screenshot, and my version on the right is not perfect, but it's a 5 minute defect. Always describe what you "expected" things to end up in your bug report. Not what you wanted to happen.

2. Smol QOL changes, bigger wins.

QOL (Quality Of Life) are one step bigger than the smaller (SMOL #slang) cosmetic bugs like fixing spelling, fixing the colour of something or the positioning of something. I see a lot of games get bad reviews not based on the enjoyability of the game, but on it's playability. For example any interaction menu like when clicking on something or responding to an event the user has to perform a repetitive mouse gesture or series of clicks. These break immersion because they waste time. Gamers call these QOL issues.

3. Classification

When writing a bug report, don't write like people do on the forums, come up with a classification system that makes sense for the product, and use the class of defect in the defect title. This will grab a developers attention when they are fishing for defects to fix in the backlog tool whatever that might be. good defect titles make you not only write a good bug report, but also mean you bug will get seen if at all in the flood of emails a developer might see.

I prefer to spend a minute and write a one liner bug title before I start writing up the bug itself. Bug titles should fit in one line in your screen. Example:

"Cosmetic: When catching a butterfly the camera briefly goes fuzzy"

Now this bug might not be a simple one to fix in the end, but it's not a critical bug like a crash or other data loss bug. Hangs, Crashes, Data loss, all of these are what we sometimes call showstoppers. which brings me to another point about bug reports.

Having a good bug title/description will also force you to write the bug report about one item and one issue only. Never lump 2 bugs into one unless they are tightly related.

4. Priority versus risk

Do not ever try to give a bug priority, that is the product owner's job. Lots of the bugs you report will never be fixed, often because the issue you found does not really impact the core mission. Or worse is a hard to reproduce defect, or just a defect that does not do much damage to the end quality. People who post on forums have a habit of making their complaint about a game or an app, the most important. They forget that 90% of people playing the game will not ever notice the thing that they do. Yes, most bugs, tend to only impact a very small number of users. The ones that impact all users are ones that tend to get fixed. Given the choice of 2 defects I might find, I'm always going to raise the one that will impact more. So the tester's job is to describe the impact or risk of a bug impacting a user, not it's priority in the work queue.

Finally: Screenshots Screenshots Screenshots

Before you hit send on your beautiful bug description make sure you have evidence, and are laying out your bug report with the 3 key elements. What, where/when and Why.

I love testing all kinds of software, and hope to improve my written communication, so expect to see more of these. Let me know in the comments are you a paid games tester, I really would love to hear from you.

Why I quit my job

I've been asked this so many times in the last few months. Nobody actually reads this blog, so I am sure I'll be asked a dozen more times, "Why did you quit ?"

Energy and focus. It's not something individuals can provide, the fuel for a team comes from elsewhere most of the time, and when things got wrong and that disappears, it's not going to go well.

 A corporate restructure when I was once working at a large IT firm had the same effect, and people just start leaving when that happens, well, that's a part of the reason. Because when energy and mission are not there, it normally means the product is not profitable and a even bigger restructure is in the wings. Not looking at cost-to-build the thing kinda grinds me at a "is this for real" level and gets worse the bigger the company. Energy doing the wrong things can also be bad, lots of wrong things were done, but for me, I was not getting the energy or optimistic vision I need.





There are 2 other contributing reasons for my leaving outside of morale and feeling driven; focus and competency.

Focus is something a development team have when they are all building the same thing and with the same goal in mind. An easy way to do this is to look at the constraints, what can we not do and what must we always do are product rules to live and die by. Stepping outside of a constraint, really is failure for the project. Typical constraints might be speed, size, market or just simply size of the device. Being focused on constraints sets up a common language around the cost of building things, engineers are really bad at looking at the cost. It also prevents the priority from shifting about randomly aka "Who moved my cheese"

Competency, this is me really. When I find I'm just not learning how to use the tools quickly enough, or getting enough of the job done, I feel unqualified. I think this is easy to do when you are trying to be all things to everyone, and not only be great at just one thing. If you are prone as I am to going down the rabbit hole, then exposing yourself to a really large system makes that rabbit hole problem so much more of a hurdle. If I'm on a learning track that is too high level or too low level and am not making visible progress, it's my prerogative to feel I am failing. Failing to play my part.
Well that's it, really, low motivation in a system where the energy is at a low already and the important thing keeps shifting around. I don't think I am able to learn as quickly as I used to do; that really knocks your confidence and miss-directs you.
Under it all, I am finding myself trying to define my place as an introvert in the workplace, for years I have made a lot of concious behaviour changes to break the introvert mould that forms around you. Ultimately this "concious behaviour" puts a stress on you in small ways you cannot imagine until you find the space to go and look at yourself properly. Next time I post, I'll be talking about a few other things I have gotten wrong over the years and more recently too. However, quitting this job was not a mistake, it was getting in the way of me being happy at all. If this is you, watch and learn from Susan Cains TED talk  : "The power of introverts" .

Job hunting on weekends again

This weekend, like so many lately I have spent a little time job hunting.
3 applications sent in SCSC, CMR and ADDER is as far I got this weekend. Would love to be able to send out loads of applications and then not suffer a mental overload when you get more than 2 emails back on one day and have to set up interviews and preparation work in a hurry.

I keep thinking there must be something I forgot to do in all this, but generally, if you are adept at it, you can get past the recruiter. Recruiters, not sure why I bother too much making links, they rarely place you, and companies are happy to deal directly. Sure, the more senior you are, the better a recruiter will work for you. That does count, an agent does grease the wheels, but not a guarantee. which is probably what I'm looking for, to have to not deal with dozens of contacts, just with one.

Last Day

Today is my last day at Citrix.
What shall I say after 7 years, lets compose ourselves, I have a severance package, and some clauses, which pretty much says, "be nice, and we will be nice".
For me , today says, "the wheel turns".
This last year has been more about people and process than about software engineering sadly, although one positive process thing was learning a lot of agile. I tried to learn some Java and Angular this year, but that's another story, and as evidenced today, was pointless.

It's been a good ride though, in the previous 6 years, I learned a new programming language, two actually if you count my rubbish Python, which really is more ropey than snake. I learned about virtualisation, that changing tools can happen many times in a year, and that testing, is not checking!

I learned to drink beer, and that more than a pint of beer does not like me the next day. I know I will meet some ex Citrites in the future, just like I have me many ex Symbianites since those doors closed 8 years ago, so do keep the connection open your end. I am really looking forward to working with software that is a bit closer to real hardware again, and more focused on delivering one thing. I suppose I never really got the hang of working in large companies, Symbian and Citrix for me feel so large and mechanical as places to work, where the daily email barrage is a relentless un-necessary distraction that communicates no true message in the end. I hope, email is a thing we fix in future. Even Slack , fixes nothing in reality. And while in that basket, nor did Skype fix anything. The lesson there, keep your head down, probably my greatest flaw.

Signing out
Z

(Starting a contract position at Displaylink in January, well chuffed.)

Headshot

A quick scaled image with background blur to update my profile pics everywhere with.

Programmer for Hire

• Cambridge, UK - experienced software engineer
• Available immediately
• For details, see my online CV

Redundancy/Jobseeker SPAM

We do have a job offer available for you in response to your initial inquiry in reference 
to the job search directory in USA, CANADA and AUSTRALIA, which we have not been 
able to process completely since we do not have a Book Keeper/Payment personnel in these region. 
 
We have decided to recruit payment employee online, hence we will be needing a representative 
to process our payments in your region. if interested please do supply the following order of requirement 
as it appear below:
 
FULL NAME 
CONTACT ADDRESS (not p.o box)
STATE
CITY
ZIP CODE
PHONE NUMBER
COUNTRY.
 
ALLEN GIOVANNI
 
ALL CORRESPONDENCE SHOULD BE KINDLY DIRECTED TO lg-uk@i12.com

Whatever will they think of next? I see people slipping into believing tricksters harvesting info all of the time. Businesses need to cough up on data protection all around the globe or else this kind of crap is going to get lots of people hurt.

... Conrad thinks Blair needs to learn how to use a 32-bit computer.

Job Wanted

Posted my VC online Web 2.0 style this evening.

It's amazing what you can do when you suddenly have time on your hands.

It is possible to fall off

Solid proof that it is possible to fall off. To be sure that's not all I have fallen off recently.

In other unrelated news, I have fallen off the social ladder by staring at unemployment. This is the first time ever for me that things are not my own choice; so how do we take it? I suppose we could talk about hope, we could talk about prayer, we could talk about humility.
Maybe all it means is time to clear out the closets, air the loft and start anew. Bad thing happen to bad people, bad thing happen to good people, even to great people. God lets sh%t happen all the time, I mean He let stuff like life and intelligence and self-awareness happen. He let random subatomic particles happen too, I don't do that stuff at all tho.
Time to get the shovel out and find work because I expect I have only got a few more weeks of real motivating work still to do. I hope it's not so, but due to the lack of respect held by some people in suits, I now shall have a chance to get to the loft.

Hey if that was glum!
My mum is coming to stay with me next month. maybe I will let her hold the camera, which I so closely guard every time we go out so as not to monopolize every photographic composition. (grin)

IBM or ISM?

What happened to ISM? Well todays rant is about an IBM product, called Clearcase.

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg1IC50214

The problem is when the client is used disconnected. That's fine you say, but the client insists on doing pop-ups from a Visual Studio plug-in. It's a over simplified diagnostic, and in-ellegant to say the least.

---------------------------
ClearCase
---------------------------
Error determining type of current view.


---------------------------
OK
---------------------------

...I am just annoyed that there is so little help to be found to help users work around this problem, because it is possible if someone just put a tiny bit of effort into the plug-in to add a checkbox into the code, it's about 10 lines of code, but unless more folk stick out their tongues....

Software and LEDs

These are the beasty linux boxes that I have to develop for for a living, neato :-)

A whole whack of them all together.
These are some of the beasties I work with, they are much friendlier than the Linux boxes!

In case you are wondering, the LCD looking bits are actually OLEDs, and the glowing buttons are really multi-colored, the illumination uses PWM'd LEDs to produce a few basic variations on red and green.

How long is a M$ minute?

Once again the Desktop clean-up wizard appears, it seems to wake up every 2 months, and then has the cheek to say that a shortcut that I last used 4 months ago, has never been used.

It seems the M$ definition of 'never' is totally off the wall, and today I am disabling the silly program. I see it has been striped from Vista, I can only guess that the OS is either showing it's age or we are forgetting that how to go about making a system easier to use for beginners, yet powerful in the hands of the advanced user is actually not do-able without a "I am a noob" switch. Am I just blind to all things PC?

/edit
If you look under your desktop properties, there is a tickbox hidden away there. just clear it to stop the wizard.

Last day at work

(image: copyright zaphodikus)

Some thoughts on my last day at work. It's a strange feeling to be 'unemployed' for a few days. I must say it is not the same as a bank-holiday at all. I have 2 boys to look after every bank-holiday, it's no party I tell you. Deja vu? not-really I only ever did this twice before, the first time was packing all my stuff into a 2L ford station-wagon and driving from Cape Town to Johannesburg. I battled a bit in Johannesburg, but at least I had a job to go to, and I must admit there are always things I would have changed. But one thing I would not, I was not glad to be rid of the old place at all. You always think to yourself, at last I am getting out of this wretched place, and away from all the work that I hate. Hey, for some of us, work is fun, challenging, learning or stretching and something I generally want to enjoy 50% of the time. The other 50% is pure hard work (normally mental effort for most of us).

(image: copyright zaphodikus)

When the fun things get less, or you see something where you can do more - that's when you need to move out of the comfort-zone. At heart I am a comfort-zone man. I like to tune my environment to suite me. I have learned lately that it really is more and more 'who you know, not what', and this pushes the work-focus onto working with people more often, and doing it better. Strangely most engineers are right-brain thinkers, not left-brainers getting all creative on you, as a right thinker, emotions in the workplace is not my forte'.

Leaving my Job in RSA at Adroit was hard (doubly because I was leaving the country too), and as always the last day still feels funny - it's not something I want to do again and again, so last Thursday was hard, luckily my login is supposed to lock me out after 4:30, so I had a hard deadline (well I assumed that even if my network account is still working, that it's a bad time to be working hard). So I was lucky to have some code to prototype and hack together and keep me busy on my last Symbian day. I would have been disappointed if I got pushed to do extra work-things in a hurry, I mean what motivation is there to build something of quality?
Bad things in my experience at Symbian were the total flood of people to deal with, the difficulty in getting help and documentation, and then the huge open office. Day 1 was overwhelming to be honest. I mean working at Adroit was not easy either, we did not have as much easy access to training - but we had a lot of code-ownership responsibility over time. Chance to grow was less, but the tools all worked without complaint - something I never experienced while working with the arm tool-chain script was a feeling of peace when hitting that compile->link->rom button. Sure, App-level development on Windows is no cakewalk either, but the support is so much more accessible.

(image: copyright zaphodikus)

I like to keep the work door open if possible, I have met lots of very clever people (I am told I'm also clever, but I'm actually lazy so it cancels out) at Symbian. It's quite scary when you have all the clever guys in one room, and Clear Com will be no different I imagine. Next posting is all about how great Amazon.com sometimes is.

Goodest job news

I will be starting at www.clearcom.com in a few weeks. I am really looking forward to contributing in a small company again. No more falling asleep waiting for the perforce server to check out a single file. Sometimes I look at the network perforce request Q, and think that it looks like a stock-indicator, will it go up, will it go down - either way, your request is going to take 8 minutes. I suppose that's where you get a minute to read that chapter about code-refactoring. It's a plot I tell you!
Jokes aside now, Symbian Ltd has been a great learning curve. I suspect everything can look like lemons when you get swamped by 1000 developers, almost as many tools and twice as many processes; but I have worked with a really neat team. I doubt that all the teams are as much fun in reality, so I will miss a few friends, but some I hope to hang onto from the Cambridge office as well. The kind of quality needed in Open Source, and how one gets there has been most interesting to me and it's no walk in the park. I believe I am now a better reviewer and able to balance the bigger picture better, well time will tell. It has been good.

UNIT testing

White box, Black box, Component test; is your UUT realy stand-alone. Is the interface stand-alone? Most likely not. Is the interface automatable? ...sometimes the input or output from software that interfaces with hardware like a fingerprint scanner might actually require that you need real fingers to get good input data because a testing-layer that allows 'fake' input to get injected was never desighned in. I think that for a test engineer, the big headaches are around, have a specified and desighned enough tests, and should not be around things like. "Is it automatable, can I get it stand-alone and in the spotlight on it's own?". Reality is that integration testing will show you which unit tests you should have created, but never thought of. I think these are the ones where I want to kick myself, because a small failure has caused project hiccups.
I imagine there is a good book on this stuff, (unit test specification that is) and how you can go about nailing the beast down to produce quality in the right places early and easily. I must say I look forward to the next Symbian component testing project (probably some blue-tooth work) ,and I have learned a lot about unit-testing in 6 months. I look forward to Bluetooth, because it is something I know little about, and the possibilities there are really wide for some fun to be had.

Frequency oh blot

So why would you want to admit your mistakes? Well plenty. In a world where everyone is perfect, you can hardly be blamed for lapsing into paranoia whenever you find there are some things you did not know. The perfect person mitigates this by saying, hey I have not been doing it for long enough. The paranoid madman just gets depressed (me).

Office life is tough sometimes and keeping up with the Joneses is probably goal number 1. Although you cannot ever be sure of your progress if the playing field is strewn with obstacles that you have never encountered before (see above philosophy).

/interrupt F1 GP!
Sometimes I just love the way the brain works, I was explaining to my neighbor James about a new feature I wanted to add to my modbus simulator program. When suddenly while doing on about it I get a brainwave.. Hey there is an easier way to create custom graphical forms, I mean you can use a browser, but everyone has browser favorites. The solution is just to let the user use any browser he wants, and hence no need for embedded a IE-activeX control into my program, just pump out the HTML. I mean having a graphical form inside your program is neato, but it is heavyweight, and for all the control you get, you have to write lots of extra code, then stress about the browser ActiveX stuff being there at all. Nobody wants to wish DLL hell onto their little program do they?

Oh, F1 you say :-) Groovy. Now I am no motor-sport fan, but this weekend is Silverstone weekend. OK enough messing about, lets do some work.