entertainment threesome

According to Liu Kewei, regular game development companies have dedicated QA departments (quality_assurance), who are responsible for game testing.

The QA department is directly under the project manager and is parallel to the three major game R&D departments: planning, programming, and art.

Due to cost considerations, newly established game development teams like Holy Grail Studio often do not set up a dedicated QA department. Instead, the game planner is responsible for the testing of the game.

Anyway, planners have low salaries and abundant manpower. If they are really too busy, wouldn’t it be better to recruit more people to implement the planning?

The problem now lies in these execution plans that are launched in a hurry without professional training.

It was rare that all ten members of the planning department appeared in the conference room. Chief Xu sat silently holding his cool-looking metal water cup, with a chill in his eyes, which made everyone who faced him look at him.

The executive planners of the TV show could not help but lower their heads deeply.

The person who presided over this planning meeting was Ling Xingning, the newly appointed deputy chief planner beside him. As the party who first discovered and planned to submit the bug (which failed because he restarted the machine without authorization during the execution of the plan), Chief Xu smoothly handed over the leadership of the meeting to him.

By the way, he also took this opportunity to establish his prestige in the planning department.

The first question Ling Xingning asked was, when did this bug begin to appear?

This issue is critical because the test server has not remained unchanged since it was first set up. Every once in a while, the program department will package and upload the newly completed functional code to the test server, commonly known as "versioning."

This cycle can be as short as one or two days (commonly known as a small version), or as long as a week (commonly known as a major version). If you can figure out the specific time when the bug occurs, you can follow the clues to guess which version of the program code that caused the bug, and then find it again.

It is possible to find out which function code has a problem, which provides great convenience for the program to solve bugs.

According to the recollections of the executive planners, the first time a similar bug appeared was about two weeks ago.

Duan Shanshan looked at Cao Gong beside him with a complex expression, then looked at Xu Zhucheng opposite, and finally gave Liu Kewei a knowing look. Wasn't it Sophie who left the Holy Grail Studio two weeks ago, and Xu Zhuce started

Are you critical of their work and turning all testing work over to executive planners?

Although he saw Duan Shanshan's little move, Liu Kewei had no intention of making any response at this time. His mind was busy thinking about what new features had been added to the previous game versions before the incident. Unfortunately, there was too much time.

For a long time, there have been seven or eight versions of updates, large and small, and it is difficult to figure out what to do for a while.

The second question raised by Ling Xingning is why the bug was not submitted as soon as possible according to the prescribed work process?

The executive planners were dumbfounded and speechless. After all, they were all newcomers to society who had just stepped out of college. They had not received unified and standardized pre-job training, and their professional sensitivity and responsible mentality had not yet been truly established. In addition, they were scattered among

In the four different working groups, although their respective superiors have given some brief or long instructions on some common precautions in testing work, these older children who have long been tired of listening to the instigating instructions of their teachers and parents have another problem.

How many people will remember everything the leader says?

"This doesn't seem to work," Chief Xu, who had been silent all this time, finally spoke leisurely, "There still needs to be a dedicated person to lead them. From now on, the implementation of the plan will be left to Xing Ning to be responsible for unified guidance and supervision. In this regard, Xing Ning

I’d rather you pay more attention.”

With a single word, Cao Gong and Duan Shanshan were reduced to mere team leaders, leaving Liu Kewei with only She Jinshan as his subordinate. Ling Xingning couldn't help showing a bitter expression as if he had a toothache, and looked up

Opposite him, Cao Gong smiled harmlessly and tamely, Liu Kewei frowned and was immersed in thought with no sign of pulling out, and Duan Shanshan was looking at his notepad with an indifferent expression.

"Okay, I will try my best to help them adapt to the testing work as soon as possible." Ling Xingning reluctantly agreed. First he was appointed as deputy chief planner, then assigned to be responsible for the system and level groups, and now he takes over all execution in the planning department

Planner, is it really okay to lift me up so high? It’s not like I don’t know the principle of “shooting the first bird”!

It seems that in this newly joined company, it is difficult for him to make friends in the same department! Ling Xingning collected his scattered thoughts and asked the third question: Are there any similar bugs like the occasional "drop"?

, it has appeared before but it did not attract the attention of the executive planners and was ignored.

"What is a bug?" one of the executive planners asked with courage. What was terrible was that the other three people also showed blank and curious eyes.

"You can simply temporarily understand it as any game response that is not in line with the expected results of your operation. For example, if you control the character to go left, as long as the character in the game does not actually go left immediately, it is considered a bug.

, including walking in other directions, no response or delayed response." Ling Xingning chose a more understandable explanation.

The four executive planners nodded in understanding, and then collectively fell into deep thinking. Then, you and I put forward more than 20 situations that they thought were "suspected" bugs. After Xu Zhuce, Ling Xingning, Liu Kewei and

After screening by Cao Gong and the other two people, there were a total of eight bugs, large and small, including the one that accidentally "dropped".

Ling Xingning handed over the eight bugs that he had summarized and recorded in the notebook to Chief Xu for review, which was considered to have completed the planning meeting that he had hosted.

Chief Xu, who took over the chairing of the meeting, stared at Ling Xingning's record book while sipping his Shifeng Longjing. After thinking for a few minutes, he finally made a decision.

"After the meeting, everyone paused their work and devoted themselves fully to the reproduction test of these eight bugs. Once they are successfully reproduced, they immediately take screenshots according to the prescribed process and submit detailed instructions to Director Li of the Program Department.

Then the person who keeps the bug site waiting for the program will come over to confirm, and Ling Xingning will be responsible for this work."

Well, the burden on his shoulders was a little heavier, Ling Xingning sighed silently.

Returning to the planning department, Ling Xingning first sent the eight bug descriptions in the notebook to the rtx planning group, and then joined everyone in the testing work to reproduce the eight bugs.

Ling Xingning, Cao Gong and Liu Kewei, who are no strangers to testing work, successfully reproduced and submitted two, two and three bugs respectively. Director Li personally confirmed the seven bugs and gave corresponding functions to the programming department.

The person in charge proposed a timetable for solving related bugs.

Only the occasional "falling" bug seemed like it had never existed. The planning department spent a whole day and could not detect it.

In desperation, Ling Xingning took Liu Kewei and Cao Gong and ran to Director Li to describe the bug that had appeared but was not submitted in time or reproduced.

"Accidental bug?" Director Li frowned as soon as he heard the word, "You also know that just saying it is useless. It's not that I don't believe you, but if it can't be reproduced, even if I know that there is

The problem cannot be checked. The conventional way to deal with bugs is to interrupt the game when an error occurs, and then verify the currently executed code line by line, as you all know."

As expected, the three of them exchanged disappointed glances with each other. They also knew that Director Li was probably not trying to push the envelope. Under normal circumstances, the prerequisite for solving a bug is to reproduce it, preserve the scene, and let the program go through hundreds of steps based on verbal descriptions alone.

It is impossible to check the problem in the 10,000-byte game code.

"Wait a minute." Liu Kewei suddenly remembered something, abandoned the other three people in the discussion, and ran back to the planning department without looking back.

Director Li, Ling Xingning, and Cao Gong were stunned, completely confused as to what kind of medicine Liu Kewei's gourd was selling.

After a few minutes, Liu Kewei hurried back.

"I checked the update records provided by your program and sent the update function log rtx of the three versions that are most likely to cause code errors to you, Director Li. See if you can deduce which part it is.

There is a problem with the code." Liu Kewei said while gasping.

This was a hopeless solution. Ling Xingning was surprised as he looked at the young level team leader. Being able to do this without any clues was quite commendable. It seemed that the planning department of Holy Grail Studio

He is very powerful. At least Liu Kewei's experience and ideas in handling problems are top-notch in the industry.

Director Li said "Oh", returned to his desk, opened the message box of rtx and looked at it carefully. Che Guanglong next to his seat also heard the whole previous conversation, and couldn't help but lean over at this moment.

Look.

He quickly scanned the three updated function logs sent by Liu Kewei line by line. When Director Li saw one of the lines, his heartbeat couldn't help but accelerate, and the expression on his face also changed slightly.

That is one of the new open features of the game engine he is responsible for. The development of the engine has not been going smoothly, and the progress has been delayed again and again. However, this piece of work is of great significance to the director of the programming department, and he has always

He keeps the relevant code of the game engine firmly in his own hands and never discloses it to other people in the programming department.

Simply put, as long as you have a game engine developed by yourself, you can license it to other game development teams at a high price, or you can build your own game development team around the engine. Because this is usually the most valuable thing about a game.

, and the most critical heart, is simply a goose that can lay golden eggs.

If you are forced to disclose the game engine you developed to other programmers due to bug issues, it is no different than opening your wallet and letting others enjoy it as they please.

Suppressing the uneasiness in his heart, Director Li tried his best to pretend that nothing had happened and said: "It is impossible to tell where the problem may lie simply from these update function logs."

The three planners had disappointed expressions on their faces, but Che Guanglong, who understood the cause and effect, locked his eyebrows on a certain line of text on the screen. It was the new function of the game engine that made Director Li uneasy.

"The z-axis of the 3d coordinate axis (xyz) is open."

p.s. God bless me and I finally published this chapter before 12 o'clock. I did not break my promise. If there are any omissions in the text, please forgive me. I will revise and polish it later.