[Update 2022] AltUnity Tester becomes AltTester Unity SDK starting with v. 1.8.0 and similarly, AltUnity Inspector becomes AltTester Desktop starting with v. 1.5.0 and they are both available here.
This comes with a series of major changes:
1. AltTester Unity SDK is now available only through our website and is no longer available on the Unity Asset Store
2. We moved the AltTester Unity SDK project from GitLab to GitHub.
Read more about all the major changes in this article and join our Discord Server, if you have any questions or issues with AltTester!
AltUnity Tester 1.7.0
AltUnity Tester 1.7.0 is here with a variety of changes and improvements! The upgrade guide we created contains a list of the breaking changes to make your upgrade smoother.
New communication protocol
We decided to switch to web sockets in the detriment of TCP sockets which were used by earlier AltUnity Tester versions (<=1.6.6). Therefore we had to replace the entire communication protocol for all languages (C#, Python and Java). As intimidating as it may seem, we assure you that these changes do not influence the tests you’ve already written using earlier versions of AltUnity Tester. The main reason for the protocol swap was to support WebGL and to solve certain bugs, the underlying source being related to serialization. As a result, the communication between AltUnity Tester and AltUnity Inspector was improved, meaning that we have the possibility to send notifications to the Inspector in the future, making it more responsive.
Commands are getting better and plentier
We introduced a new command to retrieve static properties and fields. We also improved PressKey and SetText to invoke events such as OnValueChange and OnSubmit. These modifications were accompanied by updating the AltUnityObject commands which now all return strongly typed results instead of strings. After these changes we realized that we have some inconsistencies related to method and custom data type naming, so we fixed those as well. These updates break backwards compatibility, but no worries. We created an upgrade guide for you to make the transition from AltUnity Tester 1.6.6 to 1.7.0 much easier. You’ll find there all the changes we’ve made related to commands, specifying the exact form of the new command to replace the old one with.
Awesome AltUnity Tester Editor window features
Double clicking any test name in the list displayed within the AltUnity Tester Editor window will open the file containing that specific test at the line at which the test is implemented.
Do you remember those scenarios when the ALTUNITYTESTER scripting symbol always got deactivated? We created a checkbox under Build Settings especially for these cases. By checking it, you’ll keep the ALTUNITYTESTER scripting symbol inside your instrumented game.
Extra
Some of you asked for the SampleScenes app made in Unity as a basic example which had sample tests attached to it. You can download and import them inside your project under the AltUnity Tester package in case you need some references.
The new version of AltUnity Tester was followed by the release of AltUnity Inspector 1.4.0.
AltUnity Inspector 1.4.0
For the reason that AltUnity Inspector and AltUnity Tester are often used together to create automated tests, changes made to one tool will affect the other.
New communication protocol
Since AltUnity Tester 1.7.0 is now using web socket based communication protocol, we had to switch from TCP sockets to web sockets inside the Inspector as well.The main goal was to make AltUnity Inspector 1.4.0 compatible with the new version of Tester. Keep in mind that swapping the communication protocol is a breaking change, so older versions of Inspector won’t connect to games instrumented with the current version of Tester (1.7.0).
Aside from the compatibility changes we have some great improvements of existing features.
Support for multiple texture formats
This bug fix was actually the solution to a problem reported on Discord. The Inspector was able to connect to the instrumented game but the screenshot would not appear on the left side. The issue was caused by the fact that the Inspector did not support the texture format the image was sent in. We adapted the Inspector to handle any texture formats that devices might use. This is a great example of how your feedback can help in improving our tools.
Improved element details area
Older versions of AltUnity Inspector would display on the third column the methods, fields and properties of the selected component without showing the component name. This was a drawback because you might forget the name of the component and in cases like this you would have to go back to the previous panel to check it again. We solved this issue by displaying the component name together with the assembly of the current element on top of the third column when methods, fields and properties are shown.
We modified the list of cameras within the dropdown from element details area to show only active cameras thus avoiding potential errors.
Driver logs were improved. Certain errors were marked as info in older versions which was fixed in this release.
Upgrade to Inspector 1.4.0 and to Tester 1.7.0 to access all the improvements presented above!
Don’t forget to check out our Inspector and Tester documentation. If you have any questions or feedback you can reach us on discord.
Happy testing!