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Testing Challenge: real-time input game

Posted by Albert Gareev on Jun 01, 2010 | Categories: ExercisesMessages

Now Closed – Proceed to Results

A short intro

I wholeheartedly support Matthew Heusser‘s (update: this blog is now only available under paid STP membership but you can access another Matthew’s blog) call to practice craft of testing, anywhere and anytime, above and beyond work responsibilities.
Exploring, experimenting, and learning is always fun. To make a testing challenge even funnier I offer to test a small game.

The game

The program, or an online game, or an application-under-test, is called Escapa (The link points to Wikipedia article about it).
The goal of the game is to move the red block around without getting hit by the blue blocks or touching the black walls – as long as you can. Moving speed of blue blocks gradually increases.
Once the game ends, a pop-up displays game time in seconds.

Click on the image below to open the game in a separate window.
Note: you need to have JavaScript enabled in order to play (or test) this game.


 

The challenge

This game has a few bugs, and there is also a number of cheats. How many of them can you find?

I also call for sub-challenges:

The shortest game time ever

The longest game time ever

Let the screenshot of a pop-up be a proof.

The rules

You can do anything but:

  • changing the original source code of the game
  • faking the pop-up in any way

Feedback

You are more than welcome to tell about your experience with this testing challenge. Leave comments here, make your own blog posts (and pingback), or discuss it in Software Testing Club’s forum.


  • 2 responses to "Testing Challenge: real-time input game"

  • Jon Bach
    1st June 2010 at 17:19

    Fastest: .020 seconds
    Longest (exploiting bug #7 below): 412.547
    Honest Longest: 20.758

    Bugs:

    1) Typo: “Click onto the red block with jump over it” — sentence does not make sense
    2) Typo: “Move the red block avoiding crash with the blue ones.” Comma needed after block, period needed at end of sentence.
    3) Typo on dialog: “Fp” at end of dialog — what is this?
    4) Squares move the same way every time.
    5) If moved fast enough, the red block can pass directly through a blue square.
    6) Clicking on a blue square appears to draw a cursor on it (or highlight it)
    7) Clock continues even though a right-click will stop the motion of the blocks.

  • MaikNog
    2nd June 2010 at 8:10

    1) Possible cheat issue:
    Enlarge the play area with + sign (in Firefox).
    Somehow it makes it easier to manoever the red block.

    This allowed me to increase my time from barely 11 seconds on “default” play area size to easyly 15 seconds.

    2) Video record a “game”. Play it in fast forward and in loop.
    You can see a pattern of the blue blocks moving.

    Rote memory of pattern increases time (call it “workaround” if it would be a bug in production system).
    Somehow 2 minutes for pilots doesnt seem so impressive in this “context”.

    3) Collision detection
    The area where the system decides for a collision is questionable.
    In enlarged play area (see 1) i got a “collision” when optical there was white space between the blocks ==> either collision was done a) on “default” play area size or b) the collision parameters are questionable.

    Cheers,
    MaikNog

  • Trackbacks

  • Trackback fromBETTER TESTING | bettertesting.co.uk
    Wednesday, 13 October, 2010

    […] So all that was left to do was to find something to test & I did thanks to Albert Gareev who’d previously done a challenge on a game called Escape, that he’d titled “Real time input game challenge”. […]

  • Trackback fromNotes on debrief - Automation Beyond
    Friday, 15 October, 2010

    […] I’m very glad that the testing challenge I set went to a second round […]

  • Trackback fromChallenge: Escape! Games+testing = fun
    Thursday, 21 July, 2011

    […] to Albert Gareev who’d previously done a challenge on a game called Escape, that he’d titled “Real time input game challenge”.  Thankfully this post never gave nothing away & I held myself back from reading his next […]

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported
This work by Albert Gareev is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported.