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Events
NAVGTR Corp. will be sponsoring an upcoming video game event in the Baltimore area. Attendees will be
eligible to apply for a NAViGaTR apprenticeship as a video game tester or indie developer. Successful applicants will
receive awards voting privileges. Sign up for more information.
Testing applicants will be supplied with one or more sample products and then asked to demonstrate some of the following
testing skills:
Test with video cards, operating systems, other hardware.
Distill the product elements into a report; submit test case proposal based on this analysis.
Develop task sheets.
Schedule and execute test case proposal.
Relay instructions from client to testing team.
List and prioritize bugs.
Attempt to tweak bugs.
Suggest improvements for quality of experience based on overview of control and game design.
Indie developer applicants will be supplied with a basic design document and/or sample assets and asked to demonstrate
some of the following technical skills:
Create 2-D objects using layered graphics.
Enable animation by manipulating layers and writing simple code relating to mouse interactivity.
Develop additional code to handle basic collision detection of moving objects.
Using Song Properties
- Applicants will divide into teams with each team working on a different song property (i.e. folk song, children's song,
national song, and/or other songs in the public domain) for adaptation into:
- a Flash interactive component (part of a mini-game)
- music video
- artist web site/product branding
- Modern songs may be used in accordance with fair use doctrine of copyright law.
- Why songs?
- Songs are mini-stories. Stories can be expressed in all forms of arts, media, and communications.
Humpty Dumpty
- Assets
- Flash: tower, wall, cannon, eggs
- Illustrator: egg splats, horses, King's men, crown, cannon, one-eye
- Song Background/History
- Components of this property may be modified or adapted according to applicant comfort level.
- Interaction: Clear ground troops (King's men) before they reach and launch their egg catapaults. Clear x number of troops
to get the Magic Rewind power in case the humpty dumpty cannon is taken out by the enemy troops.
Jack and Jill
- Assets
- Flash: hill, well, rocks, logs, water, bubbles, miniscus, pail, see-saw
- Illustrator: Jack, Jill
- Imported Live Action Video: bed, Jack, brown paper, mom, whip, Jill
- Song Background/History
- Components of this property may be modified or adapted according to applicant comfort level.
- Interaction: Take pail of water up hill to well. Lower pail into well. Repeatedly press action button to accelerate. If
speed is high, pail breaks through miniscus and fills with water. If too slow, pail floats on top of water and does not fill.
Raise pail and return home.
- Forced event - Jack trips on rock and tumbles down hill. A scene panel pops up with (student-made) video based on the
lyrics that refer to "bed, brown paper, mom, whip."
- Then player is free to use see-saw.
Three Blind Mice
- Assets
- Flash: floor, walls, arrow panels
- Illustrator: mice, wife, tails, knife
- Song Background/History
- Components of this property may be modified or adapted according to applicant comfort level.
- Interaction: Simulate the Chu Chu Rocket boards below. Instead of guiding the mice to a portal, guide them into the path
of the farmer's wife (who moves and controls like the mice but much much slower). Add ability to hit light switch.
Control Design
- player control schemes
- intuitive assignment of actions to buttons
- simple design and limited actions
- complex design and player expression (i.e. fighting games)
- controllers
- D-pad and buttons
- touchscreen
- keyboards (PC)
- headsets
- motion tracking/sensing
- camera technology (Eye Toy color detection)
- user interface (UI)
Game Design
Below are some game design concepts and common activities or tenets associated with them.
Rules
- Learning/Education - often the rules in video games are learned through play, but rules for other games can be simple
(as in value of poker cards) or complex (learning the odds in poker)
Victory conditions
- Shooting - how many enemies to defeat
- Collecting - required number of gems/stones/coins/scrolls
- Escaping - way to advance to next level
Game logic
Inductive machine learning methods extract rules and patterns out of massive data sets. Deductive reasoning applies general
principles to reach specific conclusions, whereas inductive reasoning examines specific information, perhaps many pieces of
specific information, to impute a general principle.
- Shooting - Do enemies duck after they shoot? Do they run or shoot if you get close?
- Escaping - Is the enemy hard to catch?
- Finding - Can enemies follow your footsteps? How else can they find you?
- Hiding - enemies can tell where shots are coming from; try to corner you
Artificial intelligence (design)
Machine learning involves programming that reacts to history of player action, not simply the last action (i.e. rock/paper/scissors
against the computer).
- Learning/Education - recognizing patterns (inductive) versus figuring out how mechanical things work (deductive) or predicting
that your opponent will get hurt by the same object that hurt you (deductive).
Enemy saturation
- Shooting - firing strategy determined by number of enemies; few enemies means you have time to aim accurately, while many
enemies means you shoot those closest to you or that are able to do most harm
- Racing - other cars on the road
- Hiding - the breakthrough 1998 game "Metal Gear Solid" popularized stealth game play over gunplay, hiding from enemies
in boxes, watching guard troop rotation patterns
- Role Playing - map screens are loaded with invisible triggers for enemy confrontations when player walks across the map
Power-ups and acquired items/inventory
- Racing - speed boosts, missiles, banana peels
- Trading - basic component of a multi-player experience
- Finding - looking in common places (treasure chests, pots, cabinets) for items
- Solving puzzles - items are an often a reward for your effort
- Stunts - item or power-up can provide ability to do next stunt
- Role Playing - healing potions/items accumulated for battles in case magic power runs out
- Rescuing - token of appreciation often given for saving someone, or the saved person or animal's power can be called into
use by your party/team
Puzzles
- Collecting - gathering clues or mechanical pieces to a puzzle
- Connecting - figuring out which item would affect or interact with another
Rewards versus risks/penalties
- Building - Risk of building high in Tetris and hoping for the 4-tetrad long skinny piece (payoff).
- Trading - Doing your homework on item/armor/weapon/magic attributes before trading
- Stunts - Performing difficult skateboard moves or wiping out
Obstacles and gating
- Racing - detours, hidden passages, shortcuts
- Escaping - traps; fleeing from a rolling boulder
- Solving puzzles - sometimes required to advance to a specific locked area
Checkpoints and other aids
For example, when you die, you restart from checkpoint rather than beginning of level.
- Racing - capture the flag to set a checkpoint
- Finding - in sprawling areas, sometimes just finding the checkpoint is a challenge; though obstacles and gating should
increase the odds that you'll stumble on a checkpoint without necessarily putting the checkpoint in an obvious place
- Rescuing - sometimes the simple act of saving a character (even if you never knew the character needed saving) provides
an emotional payoff (story beat) that makes for a good checkpoint
Player acknowledgement (i.e. NPC's referencing accomplishments)
NPC stands for non-player character (meaning that the character's action or dialogue and your interactions with it are
scripted by the computer at all times; whereas a player character can alternate between being controlled by the player or
scripted by the game)
- Commanding - NPC asks you to do something
- Stunts - NPC praises you for unusual action
- Role Playing - since these games are so expansive, NPC's often exist to re-iterate the current objective/quest
Immersion (i.e. responsive living world, NPC's)
- Shooting - bodies stay on the floor instead of disappearing; serve as landmarks in mazes
- Building - landscape and towns show physical changes
- Hiding - animal/children NPC's remember your first interaction with them
Emotions
Categories of testing
- Compliance (a.k.a. pre-certification)
- i.e. ensuring compliance to Xbox rules
- Functionality/Bugs
- Localization
- Compatibility
- this type of testing is only for PC's
- testing with video cards, operating systems, other hardware
- Network Testing
- Game Balancing
- challenge
- quality of experience
- item/power-up balance
- Focus Groups
- conducted by marketing dept.
In-Demand Qualities of Testers
- observant
- rigorous work ethic
- experience in compliance testing
- experience in test case creation and planning
- using and expanding templates
- developing 50-100 pages of checklists
Testing Procedure
- Project Manager
- creates, plans day-to-day test plans
- responsible for client interactions; advising and reporting
- Lead Tester
- relays instructions from client to testing team
- monitors team progress
- Testers
- find and report bugs
- last about 1-2 years before leaving industry or advancing in career
Testing Roles
- Outsource Testing Company
- test games (not same as playing games for fun)
- find and report bugs to publisher
- Publisher
- decides whether reported bug is worth fixing
- sends relevant bugs to developer
- Developer
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