How to speed up development/testing

  • #1, by giuliobiderFriday, 18. August 2017, 14:06 7 years ago
    Hi guys,

    I've already ask the following question on Visionaire Discord server but I think it's usefull also make a post here.
    Let's start with an example because it's hard to explain grin

    Let's say you are developing an adventure game with 2 scenes (room1 and room2) and before entering room2 you have to do 10 actions (look, get items, combine items each other and so on) in room1.

    Now, I'm implementing and testing those actions in VS and every time I launch the game to be sure everything is working fine.

    Here the question: I've completed 9 actions and I have to implement the latest one, which is the best practices to run the game with all previous 9 actions completed in order to test only the latest one without redo all actions every time?

    Obviously I could do it with 2 scenes....but when I have 50 scenes I canno play the entire game every time.

    How could you achieve it?

    Thanks

    Giulio

    Newbie

    3 Posts


  • #2, by smac96Friday, 18. August 2017, 15:12 7 years ago
    Hi,

    Personally I have a "debug scene" where I created some "shortcuts" so I can jump directly to the scene that I need to test. Usually in the action of the "shortcut" I already set the conditions/values that needs to be changed, so I don't need to play the whole scene but only the part that I need.

    I also use a lot the "tab" button when I need to change some condition/value directly from the console.

    Newbie

    97 Posts

  • #3, by afrlmeFriday, 18. August 2017, 16:47 7 years ago
    Yeah, the developer console (toggle with TAB) is certainly one way to quickly go about changing conditions/values, change scenes & so on.

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  • #4, by mikael32225Friday, 18. August 2017, 17:01 7 years ago
    Wow, I didn't know about the console. That's going to be a real game changer when it comes to testing.

    Being new to Visionaire myself, I can only attest to that the “Run On Scene” alternative when starting the game has been really useful to me.

    Newbie

    42 Posts

  • #5, by afrlmeFriday, 18. August 2017, 17:08 7 years ago
    Wow, I didn't know about the console. That's going to be a real game changer when it comes to testing.

    Being new to Visionaire myself, I can only attest to that the “Run On Scene” alternative when starting the game has been really useful to me.
    I've not tried using that myself yet. Was added to VS5.

    The developer console is useful for other things as you can access log from it, write custom Lua scripts as needed. It also has information in the top left corner of your game when open that tells you how much system resources your game is currently using. There's also a feature for showing how setting a new destination is handled by the game engine, so you can see if you need to rework your way systems. Both the way system & system resource display overlays can be toggled on/off so you can have them on even when you close the developer console.

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  • #6, by MachtnixSaturday, 19. August 2017, 00:17 7 years ago
    https://pragprog.com/the-pragmatic-programmer/extracts/tips

    Thread Captain

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