Week 1:- Quality Assurance personnel are needed at developers (play testing Nintendo), publishers (bug testing, localization testing Activision), platform holders (certification testing Insomniac Games), and QA providers (bugs, cert., localization)- Test cases are used to test the features of the game- Test cases are created from the – Game Design Document (or from a build of thegame by someone in Q- A test case is a yes or no question about a game feature to which the desired answer is “yes” (case is passed)Week 2:- Game is made by multiple teams programmers, artists & animators, designers, sound, music, voice, production, QA- A test suite is a set of related test casesWeek 3:- Publishers, Developers, Platform Holders, QA Providers- Bugzilla, Five parts of a bug report- Bugs are written at the tail end of production process (after alpha, after beta)- A bug report is a statement of facts- Brief Description, Full Description= Actual Result, Expected Result, Steps to Replicate, Observation Step, Severity- Activision vs. NintendoWeek 4:- Retail: Distributors, Manufacturers’ Reps, How the $60 breaks down (publishers$45, retailers $15, manufacturers $7, packaging & shipping $4, unsold returns $7Week 5:- Concept Phase- concept doc, treatment, elevator pitch, logline (high concept)- Greenlight: the decision makersWeek 6:• *Concept ✔• Pre-production• Production• Post-production• After-market - Pre-production is all about planning - You gotta have a plan, or you're just clowning around. -Dr. Phil McGraw- Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. -John Lennon- The plan is nothing. Planning is everything. -Dwight Eisenhower- Improvise, adapt, overcome. - Gunnery Sergeant Tom 'Gunny' Highway(Clint Eastwood) in Heartbreak Ridge-- GDD, TDD (Technical Design Doc)- Staffing- external versus internal• Internal– People are working on other projects– All coming available at different times– Key programmers start at beginning of a project, stay until the veryend– Artists start fairly early, are done at Beta– Audio starts a bit later, is done at Beta– QA starts in mid-to-late Alpha, stays on until the very end• External dev teams:– Available and interested?– Experience with genre?– Track record?– Turnkey?– Cost?• Contract– Royalty?– Flat fee?- Scheduling the Golden Spike, Christmas in July- Project broken down into monthly chunks (deliveries)- When accepted by publisher, developer gets a payment- Scheduling the “Golden Spike”...- Transcontinental Railroad - May 10, 1869- Alpha: All assets & features are in: "asset-complete, feature-complete” o Assets: graphics, audioo Features: functionality (code)- From here, the project focus shifts from building to finishing...- From creating to polishing- Might still be a few workarounds or gaps, and all the assets might not be final, but the engine, UI, and other major subsystems are complete- Beta: Marks the end of Production- Game is asset-complete, feature-complete, no major bugs known to dev team- Assets all not only in but also polished- Gameplay is mostly tweaked, tuned- Game is bug-free to best of development team's knowledge and ability- Project focus shifts from polishing to bug-squashing (from developer to QA)Work Backwards from Ship DateEvents at project end cannot be shortened• Warehouse to shelf• Sunday supplements• Mfg. to warehouse (distribution)• Manufacture/assembly• Platform holder cert.• Pub. QA & Gold Master• Target Beta date- When Golden Spike is missed:Ways to reduce development time• Look for bottlenecks (e.g. lengthy approval cycles), eliminate them• Improve on-time delivery of assets (“assets” = graphics, audio)• Reduce features– Prioritize features– Cut lower-priority featuresBudgeting: Producer plans for all costs:• Development personnel• Hardware, software• License fees• Travel (developer, platform holder, IP owner, trade shows, etc.)• Overhead (space, benefits, utilities, taxes, etc.)Greenlight:• Same executive decision makers as discussed for Concept.• Does the game still look worth paying for?• Is the plan solid?• Any changes to make in the plan before proceeding?• When the plan is greenlit, pre-production is over- QA Development communications: tester writes bug, developer respondsWeek 7:- Test Case trees, another way to come us with test cases and test suitesbreaks things down or put things together into a whole: each small branch can bea test case, the entire tree, a test suiteWeek 8: - The production phase is the longest phase of a project- The goal is to make a complete & playable gameThe 3 methodologies • Waterfall• Iterative (Cerny)• Agile (Scrum)• -Waterfall: Write a thorough GDD before beginning production; work unwaveringly from it. – Scheduling is straightforward, but quality (fun) is uncertain.• Cerny process: Build a demo, fly it up the flagpole. If nobody salutes, start over based on the findings. – Likelihood of fun increases; certainty of schedule and budget decreases. • Agile: Start with GDD and TDD, then the team itself manages the process, in short sprints. – Flexibility, visibility; team cohesion, morale. • Japanese method: staff develops by consensus as the project evolves.– Game will be good, but scheduling? Don’t get me started. • Remember the words of the four wise men: McGraw, Lennon, Eisenhower, & Eastwood• Make a detailed plan (Waterfall)• Get consensus on the plan (Japanese)• As problems occur, call in your generals and modify the plan (Cerny)• Re-evaluate after each sprint (Scrum)Week 10: -Post Production: all assets have been created and integrated, those team members shift out of the project, localization occurs- marketing in full swing- sales starting to pitch product to retail- operations makes arrangements for manufacturing- qa is now central to getting game releasedWeek 11:• TFDs are useful for coming up with test cases and test suites• More often, these days, state diagrams are used rather than traditional flowcharts• In a state diagram:• Circles or boxes represent states.• Arrows represent state transitions.• Arrowheads show flow direction.• States• Persistent game behavior (not a one-time event)• As long as you don’t exit the state, the game behavior remains the same• Draw as a bubble (circle or ellipse) with a unique name inside• Test Flow Diagram• Identify which part of the game you’re going to