Technical and Testing Challenges: Using the "Protect The Square" Game
0 likes1,269 views
The document discusses the technical and testing challenges associated with the 'Protect the Square' game, encouraging players to explore and manipulate its features without requiring advanced technical knowledge. It offers a range of non-technical and technical activities aimed at improving engagement with the game, such as identifying bugs, proposing features, and experimenting with in-game mechanics and rules. Additionally, it includes a brief biography of the test consultant Alan Richardson, highlighting his interests and contributions to the field of testing.
Technical and Testing Challenges: Using the "Protect The Square" Game
- 1. Technical and Testing Challenges: Using the "Protect The Square" Game
- 2. Technical and Testing Challenges: Using the "Protect The Square" Game
- 3. Some games are not meant to be played, they are meant to be played with. This is that kind of game. What can you make it do?
- 4. Where is it? You can find the game here: —https://www.compendiumdev.co.uk/games/ buggygames/protectthesquare/ protectthesquare.html Or as part of the downloadable "Evil Tester's Compendium of Testing Apps" —https://github.com/eviltester/TestingApp
- 5. Can you cheat? Exploit bugs? Re-enable hidden features? Extend the game? All suggestions in this document can be performed within the browser. No other tools necessary.
- 6. Remember Anything that happens in your browser is yours to control, if you learn the skills to interrogate, observe, and manipulate the system you are working with.
- 7. Non Technical Starting Activities —Figure out how to play. —clue, use the mouse —Any obvious bugs? —clue the known bugs do not require any technical knowledge
- 8. Non Technical Planning Activities —Build a list of improvements —Are there any feature requests that you would make for the developer? It is a useful exercise with any system to think through 'missing' requirements. And can you make a case for their inclusion i.e. 'why' should someone care
- 9. Reconnoitre —Read the source - anything in there that provides cause for concern or piques your interest? —Using the source, what ideas do you have for manipulating the game.
- 10. Do the previous exercises before reading the following "Technical Challenges" otherwise they might influence you and you might not come up with as many ideas.
- 11. If you want to manipulate the system technically, do that before reading the following technical challenges.
- 12. Remember reading the technical challenges on the next page can spoil your enjoyment of the game.
- 13. Did I say next page? I meant the page following this one. Be sure you want to read the challenges before turning this page.
- 15. Starter Technical Challenges & cheating —Can you give yourself a high score? —Can you give yourself infinite lives? —Can you make the score display so that it shows the display in the HTML rather than on the canvas?
- 16. Technical Challenges & cheating —The developer has left some experimental levels in the game, can you enable them? —The developer has some alternative score reporting mechanisms in the game, can you enable them?
- 17. Technical Manipulation —Can you create a 'bullet time' mechanism where you can fire a lot of shots without the enemy moving or reacting? —Can you create your own levels? —Can you package your levels into a bookmarklet to make them easier to re-use or distribute? —The developer left in a mechanism where the enemies can teleport, can you add that into the enemy "AI"?
- 18. Automating —Can you add some bot behaviour for your 'player' so that they move around the screen to avoid enemies? —Can you make the player automatically shoot the enemies? —Can you do it strategically so that it shoots the nearest enemy?
- 19. Push to the limits —How much can you do, from the console to tweak the behaviour of the game and the game rules? —Can you add new behaviour rules for the enemies? —Can you change the spawning ground for the enemies to be the middle of the screen rather than the top?
- 20. Make Something New - Can you add new features? —The developer did not implement keyboard control for the player - can you add that? —Can you add a smart bomb that destroys all the enemies on screen? —Can you add a proximity bomb that destroys enemies within a certain pixel radius? —Can you add a teleport button to move the player randomly out of trouble? —What other features could you add?
- 21. Learn to "Be Evil" —www.eviltester.com —@eviltester —www.youtube.com/user/EviltesterVideos
- 22. Learn About Alan Richardson —www.compendiumdev.co.uk —uk.linkedin.com/in/eviltester
- 23. Follow —Linkedin - @eviltester —Twitter - @eviltester —Instagram - @eviltester —Facebook - @eviltester —Youtube - EvilTesterVideos —Pinterest - @eviltester —Github - @eviltester —Slideshare - @eviltester
- 24. BIO Alan is a test consultant who enjoys testing at a technical level using techniques from psychotherapy and computer science. In his spare time Alan is currently programming a multi-user text adventure game and some buggy JavaScript games in the style of the Cascade Cassette 50.
- 25. BIO Alan is the author of the books "Dear Evil Tester", "Java For Testers" and "Automating and Testing a REST API". Alan's main website is compendiumdev.co.uk and he blogs at blog.eviltester.com