Company: Supermassive Games / Sony Interactive Entertainment
Bravo Team was a cover based shooter for PlayStation VR, built around two players working together online. I came onto it straight after The Inpatient, so I already knew VR, but a shooter and online co-op were both new to me.
What I did
- Got up to speed on shooter testing: aiming, weapon handling, cover, movement, enemy AI and how all of that works in VR.
- Tested online co-op for the first time, which meant a lot of time on syncing, lag and what happens when someone drops out.
- Wrote a set of test cases for the co-op mode covering disconnects, high latency, and joining or rejoining a game that’s already running. The team picked them up and used them for the rest of the project.
- Played through on the higher difficulties. I was good at the game, so I could reach situations other testers weren’t getting to and find the bugs and balance problems hiding there.
- Helped organise the daily work for a team split between the studio and remote testers, including setting up lots of two player sessions so co-op and single player both got covered.
What I took from it
Bravo Team was where I first learned shooter and online multiplayer testing, and both came up again and again in later roles.
Tools
DevTrack for bugs, Confluence for test plans, Unreal Engine 4, PlayStation VR and Supermassive’s own debug tools.