Testing for Bad Geometry

Geometry in game development is a set of parameters that govern the world of polygons and intractable objects in the game. Having a large number of polygons can make the a game level or world seem to have more depth and geometric realism. When polygons are formed together they create more sophisticated objects and more realistic game forms. Obviously, the Xbox 360 is fully advanced with the sheer amount of polygons the system can hold. The Xbox 360 gives more realistic character models and a great amount of detailed objects in a given level or world. As a Xbox 360 game tester you will need to find and test software for bad unrealistic geometry, broken geometry, and problematic geometry.



Testing for Broken Geometry

As a Xbox 360 game tester you will need to easily find broken geometry as efficiently as possible. A game doesn't usually get mass produced with broken geometry, hence these mistakes should be found fairly quickly by game testers. Broken geometry is geometry in a game that just doesn't work. Maybe there will be a wall that you can pass right through, or an object that should allow you to pass through it (like a bush or plant) and doesn't allow you to. The more freedom that is added in an Xbox 360 game the more broken geometry you might find. If the consumer is given enough time with a game they might find certain glitches that are easily overlooked by the developers. These problems exist in pretty much every game genre: first person shooters, adventure games, plat formers, and so on. To find broken geometry in an Xbox 360 game you might have to search the lands for and think past the intentions of a developer.

Testing for Unrealistic Geometry

Some video games give you total freedom when you are put into a level, and other games give you a very limited play experience. None of these are a bad thing, it is just how developers want to make their games. To give an example; the Resident Evil games always were very limiting when it comes to their geometry (mostly in older versions like Resident Evil, and Resident Evil 2). Most of the game play has you being pushed away from most objects that lay in the environment, and a lot of the level is pre-rendered and doesn't allow much camera movement (until Resident Evil 4 and 5 came along).

To give an example; the Resident Evil games always were very limiting when it comes to their geometry (mostly in older versions like Resident Evil, and Resident Evil 2). Most of the game play has you being pushed away from most objects that lay in the environment, and a lot of the level is pre-rendered and doesn't allow much camera movement (until Resident Evil 4 and 5 came along). A lot of last generation console suffered from unrealistic geometry and didn't allow much movement near objects making you stand a foot away from the wall by an invisible barrier. The opposite problem may also occur when a object might easily be visible going through another object. This can be seen in a lot of first person shooter where you will see a person's gun or hands sticking out a wall or door. Video game testers will need to find these unrealistic limitations and test how much interactivity one might have in the levels.

Testing for Problematic Geometry

Problematic geometry is geometry that may work fine but the movable objects or characters may cause problems. To explain further I will give an easy example that has a lot of problematic geometry. The game Half Life 2 has an incredible physics engine called Havok which allows the player to move objects in the world and have them interact with other objects according to a set of rules. This game is revolutionary, but also has some sticky geometry. You can influence objects that will get stuck in other objects or you may even get stuck in a level causing you to reload your check point. It can be very hard to test for things like this since a lot of these games give you the freedom to try whatever you want. Still, getting stuck in geometry, or losing an important game item can be a problem that testers have to find. This might be the hardest thing to test for because it takes tons of time to learn and figure out how these factors could effect your game play experience in a negative fashion. This part of testing can almost be considered goofing around but is very important. Understanding a games parameters and learning to manipulate those parameters is very important.