Inspector: Pixel-Based Automated Game Testing via Exploration, Detection, and Investigation

TL;DR

This paper introduces Inspector, a pixel-based reinforcement learning agent for automated game testing that explores game space, detects key objects, and mimics human interactions without deep game integration.

Contribution

Inspector is a novel, generalizable game testing agent that operates solely on pixel inputs, enabling easy application across different games without deep integration.

Findings

Effectively explores game space using curiosity-driven rewards.

Successfully detects key objects with minimal labeled data.

Discovers potential bugs in tested games.

Abstract

Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) has attracted much attention in automated game testing. Early attempts rely on game internal information for game space exploration, thus requiring deep integration with games, which is inconvenient for practical applications. In this work, we propose using only screenshots/pixels as input for automated game testing and build a general game testing agent, Inspector, that can be easily applied to different games without deep integration with games. In addition to covering all game space for testing, our agent tries to take human-like behaviors to interact with key objects in a game, since some bugs usually happen in player-object interactions. Inspector is based on purely pixel inputs and comprises three key modules: game space explorer, key object detector, and human-like object investigator. Game space explorer aims to explore the whole game space by using a curiosity-based reward function with pixel inputs. Key object detector aims to detect key objects in a game, based on a small number of labeled screenshots. Human-like object investigator aims to mimic human behaviors for investigating key objects via imitation learning. We conduct experiments on two popular video games: Shooter Game and Action RPG Game. Experiment results demonstrate the effectiveness of Inspector in exploring game space, detecting key objects, and investigating objects. Moreover, Inspector successfully discovers two potential bugs in those two games. The demo video of Inspector is available at https://github.com/Inspector-GameTesting/Inspector-GameTesting.