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Playtesting...do not assume anything (part 10)
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Playtesting...do not assume anything (part 10)
#1
When you are making games (or anything for the matter) do not assume anything. Do not assume the user knows how to do this or that. This might sound simple, but a lot of people do it.

Think outside of the box
Try things that is not suppose to happen. If you are suppose go left. Go up, right, and down and see what happens. If a section is locked off until you are upgraded, try to get into it too early. Try to break the code everywhere.

Playtesting
This is the simple act of giving your game to someone else to play it. As much as you think you found bugs and fixed them, others will surely find them. You need to get as many people as you can to play it and and give feedback. You can only diagnose so many issues. You need help.

Do they get errors? Do they get stuck? Is one part impossible that you did not realize? Is one part too hard, another too boring? Do I need to do more artwork to make it look better? You want to get as much feedback as possible.

Do not get offended when people give feedback. They are only giving you their point of view. You can take it or leave it. It can be impossible to customize it to everyone's liking. At bare minimum remove all errors and make it playable to everyone.

Provide multiple ways to contact you. Savy users will use the "issues" section in Github, but others may just want to email you or post on a forum.


Make it easy to play
People will not playtest your game if it is not easy to obtain or run.

Provide multiple methods for access. Put it up on both Github and Bitbucket. Put it on Itch, Game Jolt, Gog, Humble Bundle, Kongregate, Pygame, etc.

Consider every error that someone gets is a lost playtester for you. Meaning, they get an error and never tell you and just abandon it. The same with having to install libraries or even Python itself.

The easiest solution today is to make an exe file so they do not need to install python/pygame or any other library you added. This creates more work for you as a programmer, but makes it easier for your users. Which is always the goal. Go above and beyond.

Make an exe for Windnows users, make an executable for linux users, give the source code provided with 3rd party libraries in your code for those that want to run the source directly. Thus they do not have to go out and install those odd-ball libraries.

Make a single runnable file in one directory. Do not make the user find the main file. Calling it main.py is better, but it is even better to be the only file in the directory to not allow any mistakes.

Run your game on different operating systems before handing it out. Even though you may run your game in Windows, someone else may run it in Linux or Mac, and get an error.
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