Testing the game

Emme73

Hi, is there a recommended best practice or tools within AC that let's me test parts of my game without having to play to the part I want to test?

Cheers,
Emme

ChrisIceBox

Welcome to the community, @Emme73.

While the best way to go about this will vary depending on the game, AC does have a few features that can help with testing:

• Variable presets can be used to bulk-assign all Global Variables to specific values. This is useful if you know what values the player might have at a certain point in the game (e.g. "end of Act 1"), and these can be assigned from the Variables Manager at runtime
• In the Inventory Manager, clicking the cog icon beside Items will give you the option to give them to the Player. The cog icon beside "Create new item" also lets you obtain all Items.
• If your game's state is very specific at the point you want to test, playing through naturally and then saving at the start of the section to test will then let you return to this point after re-entering Play mode. AC's save system is flexible in that adding new Items, Variables etc won't corrupt existing save-files, allowing you to continue revisiting it.
• If you define an input named "EndCutscene", then pressing this during any skippable ActionList will cause it to run to its end instantly. You can disable this for the final release, but it's useful when skipping cutscenes you've already tested.
• A custom Menu in e.g. your game's Title scene can be set up to provide Buttons that assign Variable presets, alter Inventory items, and switch to specific scenes.

Much more control over your game's state, however, can be gotten through the use of custom scripting - as you can affect variabes, inventory, and other data through AC's API.

This is all generally speaking, however. If there's a particular area you'd like advice on when it comes to testing, let me know and I can give more specific advice!

Emme73

Thanks so much, that's already a lot of great pointers in the right direction !