Flight recorder mode

[stickgrinder]

Benefit description

The engine can keep a log of the actions that the player performs in an abstract form, that can be rendered in different ways.

This basic feature may serve two purposes:

1. During debugging, user testing or to provide support: the game records a log of the player actions to be exported for a human to read and understand (helpful to replicate a newfound bug or to analyze the context that created a problem for the player).
2. To automate testing: the engine may be able to replay a dump of the log automatically in front of the developer. This would make for a sort of functional testing tool. Of course, to be interpreted by the engine a log must be exported in structured form.

Solution description

This issue is an epic and has to be defined in terms of solution design, but an overview of the elements follows:

• The ability to toggle this feature on or off in a game, from the setting, from an executable param, or whatever
• The ability to specify which format you want to log (human-readable or structured)
• A way to feed the game a structured log file to execute in real time (would be nice to have a convenient way to do it in the editor)

Exclusions

This feature is not meant to create a sort of scripting language or a way to edit an external script, it just record and replay the ACTIONS of the user, click by click.

Implications

None worth noting

[anthonyirwin82]

This could also be useful for game play testers who play the game and it records what the player does.

then the developer could run the flight recording and see what the player is doing. What they are trying to do.

if there is human readable export the developer could read through a log to see what players are doing faster then watching a video recording.