Monday Guest Presentation:

The Core Significance of Game Testing：

• Identify critical technical issues（Such as:game-breaking bugs)
• Design Usability of Verification Mechanisms（Can players comprehend the game’s mechanics，Will players find the mechanics confusing）
• Discover what players genuinely care about（What the team likes does not necessarily mean what players like; it can help the team identify what players genuinely enjoy）
• Enhance design confidence（can help teams avoid design direction errors，Reduce time wastage，Enhance decision certainty）

Different between QA and User testing:

Quality Assurance:

Objective: Technical stability

Responsibilities of QA:

• Find bug
• Recording the steps to reproduce
• Specify platform, version, and input method
• Counting the frequency of occurrence
• Assist with prioritisation

QA helps determine whether the game is functioning correctly.

User Testing：

Objective: Player behaviour and experience

User Testing’s Responsibilities：

• Find player confusion points
• Find player boring point
• Find mechanics misunderstood by players
• Find players’ points of excitement within the game

User Testing helps teams determine whether a game is enjoyable and whether players understand it.

Smoke Test：

The smoke test verifies that the most basic functions in a release are working properly, and if the test fails it means that the game has a serious blocking-type problem.

How to make smoke test：

• Step Description（What to test and how to test them）
• Expected Outcome（What are the normal test results）
• Actual Result（Whether the test results are consistent with the expected results, and if they are not, it’s a bug）

Bug Report：

• Short Description（brief statement of the problem）
• Reproduction Steps（Detailed list of what was done）
• Observed Outcome（What happens in the actual game. Repeat the test 5 or more times to record the frequency of occurrence）
• Expected Outcome（What was supposed to happen in the game）

User Testing Process：

1.Paper Prototype

Suitable game types：

• 2D Puzzle
• RPG
• Branching Narrative Games

Advantages：

• Simple structure
• Quick Changes
• Early validation mechanisms

2.Greybox：

• Test information flow
• Testing Interaction Logic
• pace of testing

3.External Players：

Use an open-ended questionnaire at the end of the test to allow players to explain the mechanics in their own words

4.Analysis of results：

Cauntion：

• What obvious information are players missing out on
• Players not excited after testing
• Players can’t read the information on the screen
• Players love unexpected content

5.Iterate & Repeat：

6.UI Previs：

Make 2D UI Mockup

7.UI Skinning：

Functionality of the programme

Talking with Speaker：

After the lecture, I described to the teacher roughly what our group’s game was about and explained what we were going to implement into the game and how many levels we were going to make.

Because I was initially thinking about the length of the game, I was going to make two levels of different difficulty, varying the difficulty of the levels by changing the layout of the upper field and how much content is on the shopping list. And GDD mentioned anxiety relief through mini-games, and some minor mechanics.

But after hearing my plan, my teacher thought it would be best to focus on one level in such a short period of time, and if there was still time to design more levels after completing the design. Moreover, the teacher thought that the core goal of the game was to bring the player into the mood provided by the game. So our game needs to bring the player into the mental activity of social phobia and make the player feel the psychological horror. by

So we need to focus on creating scary environments, and NPCs that pay attention to the player all the time. making the player feel the horror is the most important thing.

Progress of Work for Week 4：

I’ve been working in UE5 in preparation for the week 5 test, building a Grey box scene of a supermarket, supermarket toilet and the protagonist’s bedroom and player pick up.

These two images are the grey box of supermarket and toilet:

I developed the mechanism to jump to the next level after the player enters the door

This is the video shows the mechanic:

Player Pick up mechanic:

Group Communication Report:

I have written this week’s group discussion report, here is the link to our group’s report for this week.

Group Working Progress:

I have summarised our team’s progress this week, here is a link to the individual progress reports for each member of our team.