Quality of Reusable Game Software: Empowering Developers with Automated Quality Checks

Abstract

This study presents a quality assurance methodology geared to reusable (serious) game software that is posted on the Gamecomponents.eu marketplace portal. This portal provides an online hub for the exchange of serious game software components. The quality assurance methodology comes with a running prototype in C#. It is based on a flexible, plug-in architecture, which allows to flexibly add new checks. The tool starts at solution/project file level rather than code level and covers a variety of issues, e.g. naming conventions, warnings, documentation, portability, namespaces and classes. Specific coding level tests check for portability of game software components. Software testing results show that the approach uncovers a large numbers of hidden flaws and issues that require to be fixed. The tool will empower developers to enhance the quality of their software during development and will contribute to the overall quality level of exposed game software at the Gamecomponents.eu portal.