Comments on: Test-Driven Development for Games http://www.cynicalstuff.com/test-driven-development-for-games A blog about casual games development, science, culture and cynical observations Mon, 26 Dec 2011 11:10:31 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Bruce Onder http://www.cynicalstuff.com/test-driven-development-for-games/comment-page-1#comment-62364 Bruce Onder Fri, 05 Feb 2010 04:40:44 +0000 http://www.cynicalstuff.com/test-driven-development-for-games#comment-62364 It seems like Jamie was doing bad things in order to get code under test, such as creating public methods or properties to let him write a test that will use that method/property as part of the test. It's a pretty natural thing to do, and unless someone with a little more experience with TDD points out a better way, you're unlikely to do anything different and eventually give up in frustration. What I like to point out is that if you are doing things you normally wouldn't do to enable your code to be testable, then you need to step back and think about how to refactor your code to enable testability without the bad stuff. In my experience, dependency injection is the TDD developer's best friend. This allows you to test component parts independently, and also inspect them as part of a larger engine. Of course, performance is often a major consideration in game development, and some design patterns are not speed demons. However, I do think that what has been reported here is pretty typical "first time results" and with a little more practice, Test-driven game development could be much more productive, enjoyable, and successful. It seems like Jamie was doing bad things in order to get code under test, such as creating public methods or properties to let him write a test that will use that method/property as part of the test.

It’s a pretty natural thing to do, and unless someone with a little more experience with TDD points out a better way, you’re unlikely to do anything different and eventually give up in frustration.

What I like to point out is that if you are doing things you normally wouldn’t do to enable your code to be testable, then you need to step back and think about how to refactor your code to enable testability without the bad stuff.

In my experience, dependency injection is the TDD developer’s best friend. This allows you to test component parts independently, and also inspect them as part of a larger engine.

Of course, performance is often a major consideration in game development, and some design patterns are not speed demons.

However, I do think that what has been reported here is pretty typical “first time results” and with a little more practice, Test-driven game development could be much more productive, enjoyable, and successful.

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