The process of developing application software for mobile phones is also termed as mobile application development. The developed applications, especially games are either pre-loaded or downloaded with help of mobile software distribution platforms. Each of these platforms has an integrated development environment which enables the developer to successfully perform the tasks of writing, testing and deploying the application developed for mobile phones.
The entire course of mobile game development and making it executable in different environments is a highly technical and complex task. The complexities of the development process make it mandatory that rigorous testing procedures are adopted to ensure successful performance. It would be prudent on my part to provide additional details of the different types of testing methods.
Testing as most of us are aware of is the technique used by developers for uncovering the bugs, if any, in the developed application. The intricacies involved in developing mobile games needs testing the game across the board to be sure that that the developed game performs successfully on different handsets, in different languages and locations. The different types of testing involved in mobile application development are described in the succeeding para's.
1. Functional testing – a test based on the specification of software component where the functions are tested by feeding them as the input and then examining the output. Functional testing is in sequential procedure which begins with identification of the functions which the application is expected to perform; this is followed by the creation of input data which is again based on the specifications of the functions. This next task is to determine the output which once again is an entity dependent on the functions. Executing the test is the fourth task and is finally followed by the comparison of the actual output and the expected output.
Functional tests are extremely important in the mobile game development process because any malfunctioning at a later stage can dent the reputation of the developer.
2. Security testing – is done to ensure that the basic security concepts of confidentiality, integrity, authentication, availability, authorisation and non-repetition have successfully been taken care off.
3. Load testing - is done to identify the maximum operating capacity the applications including mobile games, both under the normal and anticipated peak load.
4. Performance testing – which can be both qualitative and quantitative is done in conjunction with stress test and covers a broad range of functional and evaluation tests. Emphasis in this testing is on the final measurable performance characteristics. The quantitative test determines the response time while the qualitative test helps evaluating the attributes of reliability, scalability and interoperability
5. Usability testing- is a technique of using different methods to evaluate the usability of the product without actually involving the users.
6. Localization testing – is done with the key objective of internationalizing and localization the software aspects of the developed application.It includes translating the application user interface and adapting graphics to specific locations.
Testing is vital there are no doubts about it but for the test for a successfully testing of a mobile game application is determined by few critical factors which include using test automation , making use of emulators and actual devices, testing the mobile environments and the complexities of the developed application.
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