- Test
- If it didn't compile, add some keywords
- Goto 1
This is what test driven development usually is in games. It's not that bad, we do (or should) prefer iteration and experimentation over any form of design. Yes, I know that unit tests are very useful for refactoring, and thus simplify some sorts of iteration, but still, it's not enough.
This doesn't mean that automated testing is not important, quite the contrary, you should have plenty of scripts to automate the game and gather statistics. But unit tests are good only for some shared libraries, I don't think they will be ever successful in this field.
I'm going to leave for Italy, dunno if I'll have time to post other articles, there's stuff from Siggraph that is worth posting, I have a nice code optimization tutorial to post, the "normals without normals" technique plus a few other code snippets. Probably those things have to wait until mid-September, when I'll be back from holidays...
This doesn't mean that automated testing is not important, quite the contrary, you should have plenty of scripts to automate the game and gather statistics. But unit tests are good only for some shared libraries, I don't think they will be ever successful in this field.
I'm going to leave for Italy, dunno if I'll have time to post other articles, there's stuff from Siggraph that is worth posting, I have a nice code optimization tutorial to post, the "normals without normals" technique plus a few other code snippets. Probably those things have to wait until mid-September, when I'll be back from holidays...
2 comments:
hey, it's been now quite some time since mid september. Is every thing alright?
It is, the blog lost its momentum after the holidays, but I have 4-5 articles I'm preparing, should be out soon
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