XNA Framework GameEngine Development. (Part 3, TDD)

Introduction

Welcome to Part 3 of the XNA Framework GameEngine Development series.  In this article, I will introduce the Test Driven Development piece of the game engine.  Better late than never.

There are plenty of articles covering TDD so I will not argue the benefits here.  I personally see TDD as just another tool for writing good code, starting early and writing test cases often is always “The Best Practice”.  The simple fact that I am introducing TDD in the 3rd article of the series indicates I am not an extremist.  I would be happy to entertain your thoughts and suggestions.

Creating a Unit Test Project (Updated to use Managers Namespace)

I chose to use NUnit as my unit tester, mainly because it is free and is what I use at work.  Also, please note, I do not use the Express Additions of Visual Studio, I have no experience setting up TDD in VS Express.  If you have questions or experiences please feel free to leave a comment.  Updated, KaBaL was kind enough to provide some code for the Visual Studio Team Suite test cases, please see below.

First, create a new windows class library project, I named mine RoeEngine2UnitTests.  You will need to reference your game engine project as well as, Microsoft.Xna.Framework, Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game, and the nuit.framework.  Most likely you will also have a couple System references at this point, keep those as well.

Next, Rename or Delete/Add the Class1.cs file to RoeEngineTestCases.cs and add the following code.

 Note:  Updated, thanks to KaBaL for pointing out that I renamed the namespace Manager to Managers.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using NUnit.Framework;
using RoeEngine2.Managers;
using Microsoft.Xna.Framework;

namespace RoeEngine2UnitTests
{
    [TestFixture]
    public class RoeEngineTestCases
    {
        private EngineManager _game = null;
        private const string _windowTitle = "UNITTEST";

        [TestFixtureSetUp]
        public void SetupTestFixture()
        {
            _game = new EngineManager(_windowTitle);
            EngineManager.Game = _game;
            _game.Activated += new EventHandler(game_Activated);
            _game.Run();
        }

        void game_Activated(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            _game.Exit();
        }

        [TestFixtureTearDown]
        public void TeardownTestFixture()
        {
            _game = null;
        }

        [Test]
        public void GameStartup()
        {
            Assert.IsNotNull(_game);
            Assert.IsNotNull(EngineManager.Game);
            Assert.IsNotNull(EngineManager.Device);
            Assert.IsNotNull(EngineManager.ContentManager);
            Assert.AreEqual(_windowTitle, EngineManager.WindowTitle.ToString());           
        }

        [Test]
        public void FpsCounterCreated()
        {
            Assert.IsNotNull(EngineManager.FpsCounter);
            Assert.AreEqual("0", EngineManager.FpsCounter.FPS.ToString());
        }
    }
}

Finally, we are ready to run our test cases.  Open up NUnit and navigate to your bin/Roeengine2UnitTests.dll file.  Run the project and voila! Updated… This is what makes the open source community so great.  The following was contributed by KaBaL.

using System;
using System.Text;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting;
using RoeEngine2.Managers;
using Microsoft.Xna.Framework;

namespace RoeEngine2UnitTest
{
    ///
    /// Summary description for UnitTest1
    ///
    [TestClass]
    public class UnitTest1
    {
        private EngineManager _game = null;
        private const string _windowTitle = "UNITTEST";

        [TestInitialize()]
        public void TestInitialize()
        {
            _game = new EngineManager(_windowTitle);
            EngineManager.Game = _game;
            _game.Activated += new EventHandler(game_Activated);
            _game.Run();
        }

        void game_Activated(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            _game.Exit();
        }

        [TestCleanup()]
        public void TestCleanup()
        {
            _game = null;
        }

        [TestMethod]
        public void GameStartup()
        {
            Assert.IsNotNull(_game);
            Assert.IsNotNull(EngineManager.Game);
            Assert.IsNotNull(EngineManager.Device);
            Assert.IsNotNull(EngineManager.ContentManager);
            //Assert.AreEqual(_windowTitle, EngineManager.WindowTitle.ToString());
        }

        [TestMethod]
        public void FpsCounterCreated()
        {
            Assert.IsNotNull(EngineManager.FpsCounter);
            Assert.AreEqual("0", EngineManager.FpsCounter.FPS.ToString());
        }

        public UnitTest1()
        {
            //
            // TODO: Add constructor logic here
            //
        }
    }
}

 

Conclusion

We have just set up a very basic testing environment for our engine.  Remember, all of this is optional, TDD may not be for everyone.  I strongly urge you to use it, but you know your skillsets better than I.

Please feel free to leave me any comments or suggestions/improvements to the code you see here.

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