DevLog: Beyoncé Quality Assurance
Quick reminder: You can follow development more closely on the Trello board.
TLDR
Update on last devlog's data storage failure
Automated playthrough testing
Re-writing future scenes
✅ Last Week's Progress
What I accomplished since the last update:
Last DevLog's Data Storage Failure
As you know from the previous DevLog, the main solid-state harddrive used for the development of EoTC had started to fail; this was evidenced by the fact that the read speeds dropped to a crawl. And as you know, I'm very diligent about backups of all data; thankfully, it wasn't needed in this case, as the data was still readable and took about 20 hours to replicate onto a duplicate solid-state drive.
The faulty drive is still within warranty and I'll proceed with an RMA soon. My favorite part about all of this was that it barely caused any downtime at all and development can proceed almost like it never happened!
I've also got a few ideas from others that there could be something faulty with my power (much appreciated!). I'll perform some sort of audit on my power, including the wall outlet, the UPS battery backup, and the PSU being used - if I find anything, I'll definitely let everyone know the findings.
Automated Playthrough Testing
I've been excited about the prospect of automating the testing of the game for a while now. Finally, the latest Ren'Py version allows it, and the whole pipeline is complete.
More in the Technical Corner
🛠️ Current Development
What I'm working on right now:
Future Story
I'm working on some story structure and rewriting some future elements. Where Part 3 is going hasn't exactly landed the way that I originally was hoping for.
I'm taking a step back, I'm thinking through how I want the story to land, and making sure that the characters and the plot beats help to achieve that. So there's going to be some rewriting (of future story elements) - nothing that you've seen already is going to be changed.
Scene Progress
With the sparse and busy calendar of mine, I've been less able to sit down and actually render. I can take my laptop with me and write, but I can't work on renders in a busy hospital clinic 😉 Hence why I've been doing more writing and thinking of Chapter 1's story; polishing.
⚙️ Technical Corner
Automated Playthrough Testing
In software development, there's a saying, "If you liked it, you shoulda put a test on it" (not unlike Beyonce's song). A "test" is simply a very tiny check, a very small piece of code, that automatically validates that something is working properly as intended. It's one of those quality assurance techniques to make sure that something in software doesn't break! Have you ever seen an AVN developer release an "emergency fix!" for something? That's exactly what this automated playthrough testing is hoping to address and prevent.
Thanks to RenPy's new test automation feature, I've created automated tests that run through each feature of the executable; user-interface, saving/loading, individual scenes, individual chapters, menus/choices, etc. to make sure that there are no breaking changes. When I make a change to the code and save it, the build server takes the code, compiles it and now will run through these automated test playthroughs of the entire game.
I've written over 200 automated tests that take roughly 8 minutes (at the current game size) - and these range from validating specific story elements (based on variables) to specific code functions.
Automated testing can be a daunting task, but if done in parallel with development, it can help maintain a healthy codebase and a higher quality standard.
A little side-note: this is different than a previous automated test workflow that I did previously, as outlined in a prior DevLog: I'm Alive Post-Surgery! (Now back to work). In that DevLog, I outlined how I had two separate workspace/repositories, one for the game code and one for assets (images/video/audio). I had previously just had simple automated checks to make sure that the videos, the images, and the audio files were all correctly created and sized appropriately for each platform. This new automated playthrough testing is literally playing the game and verifying that things work (if you have to ask if "A.i" is involved: No, it is not involved in automated playthrough testing).
💬 Community Corner
Thanks for everyone's support. I've been spending a lot of time in the clinic with my family member and I wish I had realized sooner how much they needed that kind of support.
See you in the next one! ™️
Don't forget to check out the Trello board for detailed progress updates! ❤️