Game defect types and triggers

Assassin’s Creed Unity One is full of bugs
The game tester’s job is to identify the defects in video games. The defects are also called bugs. Testers need to make that the game functions properly, all the actions make sense and report all the bugs found in the game.

Defect Types

There are many mistakes that can occur during the testing of video games. There are different typed of bugs and errors that can occur that can have a small negative impact to the game up to stop completely the progression of it.

Type of error
Function Error	This error occurs when the player perform an action which doesn’t function properly. A common example of a jumping bug is when you need to jump with a player to progress further in the game and the jumping doesn’t work. As a result you can progress further in the game because of the bug and these bugs are called fatal bugs. These types of bugs need to be removed to make the game function properly and can be found at any stage of the game.
Assignment bugs	These bugs are caused when values are missing or are incorrectly setted by the program. This causes crashes in the game and as a result the game doesn’t work properly. Furthermore, this bug can be the values for music or sounds effects which are needed to be replaced because they are not coded right. This type of bug can be found everywhere in the game, from the starting menu to the post game (credits). For example many times the music in menu or at the credits its wrong coded. Sometimes it starts earlier or later than it should start or the wrong piece of music has been coded in the game.
Checking	When an action in a video game is not checked correctly because the written code to validate data is too slow or is not working at all to validate it before it is used. This error is similar to the assignment bug. An example of a checking error is when you will try to pick up one item and you will pick two. Even of this errors occurs, the game will still function and you will be able to progress further in the game.
Timing	When an action, an animation or a sound effect don’t sync correctly to the others we have a timing bug. For example, after you finish a part of a game and the sound that has to start after you finish it is played earlier or with delay; that’s a timing bug. These bugs are not very important, don’t actually affect the progression of the game and are characterised cosmetic.
Algorithm	This is an error that occurs at collision detection. Many times within games there are walls, floors which are positioned wrong and cause the player to go out of the map, which means that collision detection doesn’t work properly. Collision detection is very important because it keeps the player stuck where he is. Furthermore, when two or more figures are in the same spot and are colliding with each other at the Z coordinate (The Z coordinate is the depth coordinate which exists only at 3D). This type of error is also known as Z-Fighting. Another very common algorithm bug is the LOD Popping. I am sure that many times during a video game you have seen environments, graphics from far away decrease in quality/polygons. This happens to avoid putting much strain on the GPU. Essentially, LOD is when the quality of the graphics/environments gets better when you go closer to the figures.
Documentation	This is the bug of text, audio files and graphical assets. Any incorrect spelling, grammar, punctuation are corrected and the translations of different languages and their grammar is right. Documentation is also responsible to make sure that there are no inappropriate words and images for that type of game. As a result, they keep the game at the age category they want. These type of bug is very common in menus, settings and dialogues within a game.

Defect Trigger
Exception Trigger	An exception trigger occurs when the code of the game cannot be read by the game. After this happens the game activates the trigger causing the game to crash.
Stress Trigger	This type of trigger occurs when the game servers get a lot of stress. This mainly happens because the PC cannot meet the requirements of the game or there are many players, items and entities spawning in on a server. Furthermore, when a server due to the server/game freezes duo to it is having too much stress on it, it will slow down to the point of it, freezing to eventually crash.
Start Up Trigger	This trigger occurs when the game is at the loading stage. At this stage all the contents of the game are loading. This can either delay the loading stage of the game or to freeze it completely. As at the stress trigger error, this is caused because the PC cannot meet the requirements of the game and there too much pressure to the hardware and the CPU.
Normal Trigger	A normal trigger is caused by the hardware. If you can’t meet the game’s hardware requirements this normal trigger error will occur. It’s very easy to avoid this type of error by knowing the requirements for each game. This can be found very easily in the web by searching on the game’s website. After that you will be able to know if your PC will be able to afford this game. Additionally, the normal trigger error can occur when you are trying to play a game with low resolution that doesn’t suit to the monitors. As I referred in the previous example, it’s very easy to overcome this error, by knowing the monitor requirements of the game.
Configuration Trigger	This bug occurs when you are configuring the game’s settings and the game hasn’t been tested for the settings yet, causing errors. This can affect both graphics and sound as you can change a graphical setting resulting in textures to go missing or changing sound settings. This trigger is common with games that can be found and downloaded on the web and are not made by experienced developers. It’s very rare to find popular games with that trigger but not impossible.

Operating Regions

There are four operating regions that a video game can be during the resting process. These are the Pre-game region, the Start-up Region, the in game region and the Post-game region.

The Pre-game region is the stage before you start a game. During the use of a console the pre-game stage is the time before inserting the game disk where the console is operational but the game is not. At the PC this region is when the system or the device is already powered on before you start the game or app. During this stage players can change the settings of a game such as the quality of graphics, the sounds and the controllers.

The Start Up region is when the player activates some of the game operations until the game is ready to be played. A common example of that stage is the highlights of the game, including its features.

In game region is the stage that the player actually plays the game. You can play a game as many times as you want and most of the times you need to achieve certain things to progress at the next stage. Depending on the game, there are different options regarding the game. You can choose between missions, campaign and many other options that are provided in different types of games.

Post-game region is the last stage of video games, when the player finishes the game and wants to exit from it. There are different options for that depending on the type of game you are playing. The most common options are exit without saving and save and exit. Furthermore, the majority of games include the auto-save option which can be switched on or off very easily at the main menu. The advantage of that is that the progress is saved automatically and as a result it can’t be lost.

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Game defect types and triggers

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