UI State Crawler for Video Game Navigation
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Solution Overview
Problem
The complexity of state tracking in video game user interfaces due to thousands of possible states and transitions makes identifying and fixing bugs and issues challenging.
Innovation Solution
A UI state crawler system that simulates user inputs to map UI states, creating a UI state tree and map, allowing for deterministic, consistent, and game-agnostic UI state identification, and a UI state navigation system for navigating UI states without executing the game, reducing the need for a game executable and enhancing security.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If traditional manual tracking methods are used for UI states, then developers can identify and fix bugs, but the complexity increases significantly due to thousands of possible states and transitions
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates a UI state map that is a simplified copy or representation of the actual game UI states. Instead of manually tracking thousands of complex states, the system generates a mapped representation that captures essential state information, making it manageable and analyzable while preserving the ability to identify bugs and issues.
Solution Approach 2:
The UI state map acts as an intermediary between the complex game UI system and the debugging tools. It mediates by translating complex UI state data into a structured, navigable format that reveals navigation paths and potential issues without requiring direct analysis of the underlying complexity.
2Productivity
If a game executable is required for UI testing and debugging, then complete UI functionality can be tested, but the burden on game testers increases and security is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the essential UI state information from the full game executable into a separate UI state map. This allows testers to work with the extracted state data independently, reducing the burden by eliminating the need to run the complete game executable for basic UI testing and navigation analysis.
3Adaptability or versatility
If the complete game executable is distributed for testing purposes, then full UI functionality can be evaluated, but development security is compromised
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the necessary UI state information from the game executable into a separate map structure. This extracted data can be distributed for testing purposes without distributing the complete executable, thereby maintaining development security while still enabling comprehensive UI evaluation through the navigable state map.
Data Source
AI summary
A UI state crawler system may allow for the crawling of a video game UI that may identify and map UI states of the video game. The UI state crawler system may determine a user interface (UI) state identifier (ID) for a UI state of a UI of a video game based at least in part on a plurality of node IDs corresponding to a plurality of nodes of a hierarchical structure of the UI and determine a UI state map does not include a UI state map node corresponding to the UI state ID. In response to the determining the UI state map does not include the UI state map node corresponding to the UI state ID, the UI state crawler system may generate an updated UI state map including the UI state map node corresponding to the UI state ID.