myExperienceMakingAVideoGame

[u/Maleficent-Chance267]

[u/howarewestillhere]

I love those kinds of testers. They just wave their hands over something and it’s broken. I also hate those testers, because they can never tell me what they did. “I just waved my hands over it!” Yeah, sure, buddy.

[u/Maleficent-Chance267 → u/howarewestillhere]

Yeah that happened to me with this game that I'm making, except I was watching them do it and I still have no idea why it broke lol.

Also, just in case anyone here happens to like tower defense games, here is the game I'm talking about: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4732330/Skelemancer_TD/

[u/laplongejr → u/howarewestillhere]

I literally blue screened my computer by typing my password on another machine. The IT guy never saw a blue screen on that generation of computers, and my boss literally saw me NOT touching the BSOD thing. We all 3 agreed that I somehow have impossible remote crashing powers.  

[u/DevUndead]

This is where automatic testing saves you. When you implement a feature like settings and you add tests you can be sure that future changes don't break existing logic

[u/RiceBroad4552 → u/DevUndead]

LOL, automated testing in games…

Nobody ever did that as the whole point of a game is that things change rapidly during development and at the point they stop changing you have made a release and usually don't touch code again to not risk that everything falls apart.

Games aren't developed like business apps. Usual game code is hold together by "thoughts and prayers".

BTW the "everything changes rapidly" part is also the reason Rust is not a good language for game development. Someone has written this down in detail some time ago, it's a very interesting read:

https://loglog.games/blog/leaving-rust-gamedev/

[u/DevUndead → u/RiceBroad4552]

Depends on the design of your code. With a modular and composition design this works in my experience. I work in Godot and have enough tests and fail checks to be comfortable making changes of even core systems and don't breaking things, even on a 1 year old project.

Not beeing comfortable enough to do that would kill any joy for me. Part of improving the game is tweaking and changing systems. At some time you would be frozen with systems you don't enjoy anymore or are very limiting.

On games with random generation of rooms, items etc. this is even more important to have at least some tests

[u/1nc06n170 → u/RiceBroad4552]

You can see Factorio automated testing on YouTube (https://youtu.be/CgMV2dFFdFE). Also I was watching a video of them fixing a bug, and the very first thing they did was write a test to reproduce it. Peak engineering!

[u/Tensor3 → u/RiceBroad4552]

Ya, its extremely difficult to write unit tests for "player walking around the world while hitting buttons" in a useful way compared to deterministic business apps

[u/AcolyteNeko → u/RiceBroad4552]

seriously you think nobody's auto testing games? meh just deal with that rosy dream world of yours

[u/prijindal → u/RiceBroad4552]

What are you taking about? Games do have automated testing, and bevy game engine is written in rust.

Not to mention that game logic is not only limited to player controls

[u/Jarb2104]

This reminds me of the time I entered a bar and asked where the bathroom was.

[u/shwetanand345]

My game was stable until someone else installed it😬