Abiathar Confidential: The Testing Cycle

If you've seen my video tutorials series on Abiathar, you've noticed that I almost always run into problems with the program while recording it. That's because I typically use halfway in-development versions while recording, which is good because it helps me find bugs but somewhat embarrassing because, well, people see crazy bugs.

Full released versions of Abiathar get tested a lot more. I have a battery of tests that are run against it before deploying a new version:

• All the operations in the first video
• Opening dependency files from v1.4
• Creating new dependency files
• From defaults
• From modified files
• With the strange options in the NPW
• Running the resulting files in-game

I'm particularly fond of the test that involves Keen Dreams maps with tileinfo dumped from memory and embedded into the MAPHEAD on saving. (It exercises the most code paths.) Additionally, I send beta versions to testers, who use it like normal people do. They usually find any problems quickly.

So, between my IO-focused tests and the beta testers' UI-focused tests, we get it covered pretty well.