How to be a good tester?

Warrior · Post by **Warrior** » Wed Jul 04, 2001 3:16 pm

Originally posted by Don:
...it has to be done with something called tact, which I have yet to locate any of. Hopefully when I do I'll get some!

Let us know if you find any, Don, it will be a great relief to many. (And a cold day in hell!

)

Wild Bill · Post by **Wild Bill** » Wed Jul 04, 2001 3:44 pm

Yes, Sapper. Telling what I want to hear is not telling me what I need to know

.

But telling me in a constructive way is a pill I can swallow...well, might choke a little

.

As the Book says, "The wounds of a friend are better than the kiss of an enemy."

Wild Bill

Wild Bill · Post by **Wild Bill** » Wed Jul 04, 2001 3:45 pm

Interesting approach, Mad Italian.

My problem with that is sometimes I can't figure out what the heck I am supposed to do to win

But not reading the text will definitely lead to some surprises.

Your method of analysis sounds good to me.

The Kunel

Don Doom · Post by **Don Doom** » Wed Jul 04, 2001 3:45 pm

Watch it warrior or I will send you back to ft stalin

don

skukko · Post by **skukko** » Wed Jul 04, 2001 6:13 pm

Finally I have time to look at here and what do I found: "How to become a good Tester ?"-topic

At the beginning its enough that you can play it and find some obvious errors, the ones that you find while playing. This covers technical issues as well tactics of the AI (designers side). When graduated in this you'll need to have a designer living inside you to get to next phase of a testers endless run. When you graduated first class you have already enough info of how scenarios are done. Unless you have found designer who don't give you feedback. I personally try to give feedback of reports and scenarios as well from enhancements that I'll going to do and ask cold opinion from tester of them.

Suddenly along the route you'll note that you ain't plain grunt whos testing but you want to design your own stuff. Then you'll enjoy company of other designers that have run out of testers. Its a loop

I personally do as mr172 and don't read txts before I have started and decided how I'll going to play scenario. Usually afetr the game is ended I'll read txt-file and by that I know did it work as described and designed. Now its time for editor.

At the editor I do look over AI Forces 1:Mixture; is it suitable for its mission. (I do give a bone to balanced scenarios

as they are usually (balanced) meant to be played with one tactic and result is that rest of the tactics don't work as designed.)

2:Stances of the troops and reaction times. This because too many good scenarios have been tested many times because designer have forgot to check these two times before saving game. Even the best designers leave these sometimes unchecked.

3:Objectives. Does they fit in overall madness of designers wants and needs. Usually they are left to 0.0 or that old 222.222. (Ok, leaving objects open is nice way to add some suprise -elements to AIs behavior but not when they are left as is by accident.)

4:I create two hexes long 'secondary road' or what road is used at the map. This removes all roads that look like roads but are nothing. Bad guy ?

5:I look after map-errors. These can be design problems ( map has one small, rough, high hill in the middle of the open area and all roads are drawn over it

)or then accidentally created (multibuildings and collapsing hexes) :rolleyes:

And now I do same with the side that is designed for human player.

Maybe I will be designer some day and enjoy to do tricky scenarios for testers...

mosh

Wild Bill · Post by **Wild Bill** » Wed Jul 04, 2001 8:35 pm

Jump in the water, Mosh! It ain't that bad! I'm sure you'll do some top-notch battles!

Wild Bill

Don · Post by **Don** » Thu Jul 05, 2001 1:00 am

Things I look at while testing:

First, I play the scenario!

I look for obvious mis-matches in experience or moral, how the game plays and how the map looks and plays.

Second, I open it up in the editor. Here I look to see that all Player 2's units are "P2". I look to see how many reinforcements were slated to appear, and remember how many actually appeared. Sometime the reaction turns are not set correctly. I'll also look at the map and see what I can see.

Third, I open it up in WAWED, where I get a good look at all of the experience and moral numbers. Sometimes these are out of whack because the designer just used default numbers, so there is a huge spread with "50's" fighting next to "90's" when the intent was that they all be of similar numbers.

Fourth, make a good, detailed report commenting separately on the map, the overall gameplay, and then go into any detailed "issues" I found (or think I found

). Also include the score or scores from testing, and comments on the text file - sometimes they are not clear or contain spelling and grammer errors.

If you have inexperienced testers, it is best to give them an outline of the kind of results you expect - otherwise you may not get the results you want.

Let us know if you find any, Don, it will be a great relief to many. (And a cold day in hell! )

Actually I was thinking of you when I wrote that!

No, we've both "erred" and said things in the heat of a test that we regretted, and a valuable lesson it was! :rolleyes: Too bad email doesn't have a "tact" button to change questionable text in oh-so diplomatic phrases! "Man, this scenario sucks!" would become "You know, I really liked this, but here is what I would do...". Ahem.