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☆ NintendObs Weekly – Monday, November 24, 2014 – Sunday, November 30, 2014.
NOVEMBER 28TH, 2014
Hi, I’m Morita, a programmer.
For this blog I’d like to talk about how we automated bug checking in Bayonetta 2.
Before a game is released and actually reaches your hands, there’re a lot of little things called bugs that we have to take care of. Here’s a refresher course on some of the types of bugs there are:
Freeze Bugs
The game stops responding to controller input, the game freezes, and the player’s only available option is to manually shut down the console.
These are serious bugs, even mid-development. If you don’t take care of them quickly, production of that section of the game comes to a halt.
Collision Bugs
These bugs occur when the player falls through an invisible hole in the ground, gets pushed by an enemy into some area they’re not actually allowed to go (and shouldn’t exist), or stuck inside the walls of a building somehow, etc. If you continue to mess around once these bugs happen, the game might freeze.
When you get close to the end of development, there’s a period called bug check where you try to find and fix all the remaining bugs in the game that you can. This check usually involves the whole internal team, plus dedicated professionals outside the company as well.
There are a few different methods people use to check bugs. For example:
- Full playthrough (seeing if the whole game can be played from start to finish without freezing)
- Playing the game extended periods of time
- Trying to go back after doing something and seeing what happens
- Trying to do something different from intended design
- (Etc…)
Now, do we need every aspect of bug checks to be handled by actual people? My policy is: if a machine can do it, let’s make a machine do it. In this instance, we determine a set of actions for Bayonetta to perform, and make the console play the game over and over and over again.
— Morita
Source: Platinum Games.
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