The development of the metaverse, in conjunction with the proliferation of gaming applications, has sped up the pace at which an urgent demand for end-to-end integrated game performance testing methodologies has arisen. The video game industry is proliferating, accelerating the advent of technologies such as mobile, cloud, and augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR).
The game business is facing new challenges and expectations due to the increasing need for eye-catching graphics, animations, and rich media. Players’ gaming experience should be consistent across all aspects, including functionality, security, compliance, and seamless activities. It will ensure that players have exceptional user experiences.
What Do You Understand By The Term Game Performance Testing?
Testing for performance is a measure used to detect bottlenecks in performance-related areas. When you measure taxed things, the speed, responsiveness, and stability of a computer, network, software program, or device by the typical metrics used in performance tests. Some scaled features include the amount of CPU load, memory consumed, and frames per second (FPS).
It ensures that the produced gaming system satisfies speed, responsiveness, and stability requirements to provide a more positive experience for the user. Utilizing performance testing makes it simple to fine-tune, further plan improvements on graphics, gameplay, and connections, and optimize the game in a manner consistent with these plans.
Also Read: Performance Testing for Large-Scale Gaming Applications
Advantages Of Game Performance Testing
- You can increase the functionality and flexibility of your application by selecting the kind of tests, tools, and testing procedures that can fully connect with the processes already in place inside your organization.
- You will be able to attain greater game functionality and overall game quality if you provide thorough test coverage for the gaming app. It will result in an improvement in the game’s quality.
- You can achieve a quicker turnaround time since the testers can carry out the testing process in parallel with the production of other game components. Your game needs testing thoroughly throughout.
- The interface that is user-friendly and easy to browse an intuitive interface is built according to your target audiences’ behavior and is user-friendly and easy to navigate.
Layout For Game Performance Testing for a Game Testing Company
- Get a quick grasp on the requirement, and start recruiting people from the outside. Make a strategy that includes all the different server-side processes that need functioning. Make it a point to check the product’s quality at each successive level as the number of users you serve grows.
- Testers can opt to use an open-source performance testing tool to produce automated tests by scaling them across multiple test computers and carrying them out using automated test scripts.
- It is developing automated scripts that carry out a variety of server-side actions since this enables smooth integration with a varied number of concurrent users and permits the recording of response times inside a network.
- Performing an analysis of the test results, providing the tools, intellectual property, and best practices, and developing visual charts to draw attention to any bottlenecks. Ensuring that products meet the requirements of international regulatory bodies despite a significant rise in the amount of time needed for separate operations to respond.
- A tester must share the test results with the client and perform duties requested by the client, such as the production of test scripts, along with their observations and comments regarding the application’s fine-tuning.
- Tests conducted with analytical tools that manage users’ experiences and feedback on an application must demonstrate to the client meeting the needs. The testing procedure needs to assist the client in comprehensively addressing the scope of problems and gaining a comprehensive understanding of the amount of traffic the website can manage.
Also Read: How To Build An Effective Game Testing Strategy?
Optimizing The Methods And Strategies Of Game Performance Testing
Examining Various Cases
Testers must pay attention to how the user experiences the system’s performance.
- Lag is a primary performance indicator used to examine the program’s behavior, particularly in the main gameplay. The fluency of the game refers to as “lag.” When testing the game, pay more attention to the frames-per-second statistics, frame lag rate, and other metrics.
- Players of video games don’t want their games to experience crashes when the number of people using them gradually increases. When testing, pay close attention to how often the system crashes.
- Because of the risk of overheating, mobile phone producers may opt to either lower the frequency or lock the core, which will result in a lag in the game. The power consumption of the game, in particular the usage of GPU and the CPU, will therefore be the primary focus of the testers.
- The mobile phone battery milliampere is a vital sign of mobile phones to identify operations. If the resource is heavy, and the rate of power consumption is too high is most certainly a problem.
Testing Data And Commonly Used Tools
As a result of advancements in hardware equipment, the memory requirements for each level should become increasingly stringent. Be careful not to let memory leaks occur, as this might cause your program to become unresponsive or even crash due to the slower memory allocation. It is essential to exercise strict control over the allotted mono memory, which can only increase and never decrease. The memory made available to the player by the game’s script is mono.
You must optimize the audio resources if the audio module occupies significant space. Quality assurance testers need to locate multi-game battles, scene jumps, and open and close to determine whether a memory leak exists in the user interface.
Optimizing The Methods And Strategies
The art produced by various tools and machinery varies significantly in quality. The process of optimizing performance is not a one-and-done kind of deal. Consequently, the following is a list of optimization procedures for multiple models.
Optimization Of Memory
Memory pools help to assist in resolving the issue of excessive memory fragmentation. The object pool may be able to overcome problems caused by the frequent generation and destruction of memory. In addition, ensure that the activities of script and configuration, timely uninstallation, and split, among other things, are carried out for each resource. The logic of the game type is closely related to the packaging mode, which combines all of a hero’s resources into a single package. Last but not least, be aware of memory that loads slowly and uses excessive memory.
Optimization Of CPU
You may assess the centralized processing of a significant number of server messages by using statistics on the amount of time consumed by each module and function and the amount of time it takes to call those modules and functions. Combine different kinds of batch processing to cut down on draw calls, employing both dynamic and static batch processing. Also, consider the number of engine resources used for animation and physics.
Optimization Of GC
Utilizing technology known as object pools allows for the reuse of items such as bullets. Don’t continually allocate heap memory in functions called if you want to reduce the quantity of garbage stored in memory. In addition, you can operate the GC at non-sensitive times and make every effort to avoid doing so during crucial windows of the day.
Also Read: Detailed Mobile Game Testing Checklist
Different Kinds of Performance Evaluations
The two primary approaches to evaluating a system’s performance are load testing and stress testing. On the other hand, you can determine the game’s performance through the use of a variety of various sorts of testing methodologies. Here are a few instances that illustrate the point:
Load Testing
A QA tester can measure the system’s performance via load testing, which immediately switches the test case to a code base as the amount of work done rises. “workload” may refer to the number of concurrent users or transactions. Tests of this kind help ensure that you effectively talk with either your server or the memory. Before a program or system is made available to the public, its developers must identify the maximum number of users it can support.
In addition, it can help offer in-depth insights into the capability of the hardware to load test-specific functionalities and the number of resources required for the games. It has the potential to provide meaningful information about the game’s capability to check predicted response times and discover bottlenecks. The testing load might involve anything from the most fundamental server upload and download functions to a database connection. Queries and a wide variety of inputs are sent to the game and its infrastructure so that optimization can occur.
Stress Testing
The analysis of the scalability of a workload is better through stress tests, which enable software techniques to determine the robustness of the software teams. The soak test and the spike test are two subcategories that fall under the umbrella of the stress test. Stress on the system can also result in sluggish data transfers, depletion of available memory, corrupted data, and safety concerns. A system’s resilience, availability, and error-handling capabilities undergo testing during stress testing. You can do it before or after the procedure is put into production. It is more concerned with how the system performs beyond the limits of its predicted capacity when subjected to a severe load than with determining how it should behave in typical circumstances.
A business may also conduct what is known as a stress test in advance of an anticipated significant event. This type of test includes metrics such as transaction response time, transactions per second, pages per second, and connection failure. It approximates the anticipated load using the same tools utilized in load tests.
Also Read: Difference: Load Testing vs. Performance Testing vs. Stress Testing
In a nutshell
The practice of testing games is an essential component of your organization’s overall game development process. For you to deal with scalability, it helps to guarantee that the game is enjoyable and will not crash. Testing the game’s performance is essential to ensuring a fluid gameplay experience. It assures that the player will always make progress, have a seamless experience playing the game, and have consistent performance throughout the entirety of the gaming trip.
The developers and testers must conduct exhaustive performance testing across all essential metrics and gameplay scenarios to produce unrivaled gaming performance. This testing should have an emphasis on quality, cost, and timing.