[GD-General] Unit tests in a game engine

[Jason B. <bay...@ho...>]

I'm very curious to explore how (or whether) the XP-stoked unit test 
paradigm can work in games. Are any of you are using automated unit tests in 
your game engine? If so, do you have any suggestions to help me along? Can 
you point me at any printed or online resources about unit testing that 
would apply to real time games?

I've been making a concerted effort lately to work some small automated 
tests into our game engine code to do simple things like checking for 
alignment of related tables, checking math-related functions, etc. So far, 
it's been limited to a group of special test functions that get run when the 
game is launched, and which will assert if anything goes wrong.

But I'm at a loss as to how go about constructing unit tests for most of the 
game functions, such as menu navigation, interacting with AI, etc. It seems 
like this would require me to write some kind of module to simulate user 
input (cursor moves, button presses, etc.) and I'm not sure how I could 
possibly write something that could come close to simulating the input 
patterns of a human. Plus, I'm writing for resource-limited handheld 
consoles (currently the Nintendo GBA and DS), so I can't really use a 
separate app to poke at my game while it's running, as I might be able to do 
on a PC.

If you have any suggestions, anecdotes, or resources, I'd love to hear them.

Jason Bay
Griptonite Games