Automated testing - what do you do?

[riddley]

As the title says, I'm interested in understanding what tools and practices people are using for automated testing of their ROM hacks. There are some truly excellent tools developed with or for the decomps (e.g. Porymap, pokeemerald-expansion) but I haven't seen much discussion of testing (searching the forum brought up this post with 1 reply).

One area that could be fruitful to explore is mGBA's scripting API. With this, it seems as though it would be possible to run tests that build the game, run through various button-presses (the pokeemerald-expansion's debug menu would be useful to skip ahead through the game, here), and then check certain parts of the game's state (and/or taking screenshots of the game at that point). The mgba-http project looks interesting for its ability to open up the scripting API to any programming language.

Are there any good tools out there for testing? What are people using? And has anyone explored mGBA scripting?

 

[Lunos]

As the title says, I'm interested in understanding what tools and practices people are using for automated testing of their ROM hacks. There are some truly excellent tools developed with or for the decomps (e.g. Porymap, pokeemerald-expansion) but I haven't seen much discussion of testing (searching the forum brought up this post with 1 reply).

One area that could be fruitful to explore is mGBA's scripting API. With this, it seems as though it would be possible to run tests that build the game, run through various button-presses (the pokeemerald-expansion's debug menu would be useful to skip ahead through the game, here), and then check certain parts of the game's state (and/or taking screenshots of the game at that point). The mgba-http project looks interesting for its ability to open up the scripting API to any programming language.

Are there any good tools out there for testing? What are people using? And has anyone explored mGBA scripting?

To clarify, because you mentioned the Pokeemerald-expansion, the expansion has its own testing suite built by MGriffin, which is used to keep the functionality of different things in check and ensure that nothing breaks between updates.

pokeemerald-expansion/test/battle/damage_formula.c at master · rh-hideout/pokeemerald-expansion

Feature branches for the pokeemerald decompilation. See the wiki for more info. - rh-hideout/pokeemerald-expansion

github.com

pokeemerald-expansion/test/battle/trainer_control.c at master · rh-hideout/pokeemerald-expansion

Feature branches for the pokeemerald decompilation. See the wiki for more info. - rh-hideout/pokeemerald-expansion

github.com

pokeemerald-expansion/test/battle/move_effect/aurora_veil.c at master · rh-hideout/pokeemerald-expansion

Feature branches for the pokeemerald decompilation. See the wiki for more info. - rh-hideout/pokeemerald-expansion

github.com

pokeemerald-expansion/test/battle/ability/bad_dreams.c at master · rh-hideout/pokeemerald-expansion

Feature branches for the pokeemerald decompilation. See the wiki for more info. - rh-hideout/pokeemerald-expansion

github.com

And a huge et cetera. They're all in the project's test folder, as you can see in the links above.
The tests that execute a preset battle can be executed inside the game by booting up the game's pokeemerald-test.elf file using mGBA.

 

[Anon822]

What are people using?

I don't think automated testing is used much outside of pokeemerald-expansion. Most people just test their hacks manually using debug menus, debug scripts and save files to get to the correct part of the game quickly.

 

[riddley]

They're all in the project's test folder, as you can see in the links above.

Ah, my bad! Yeah, this looks amazing - using this test framework seems like the way to go.