How do you automate repetitive tasks during game development?

Custom scripts have saved me the most time. Automating repetitive editor tasks lets me focus more on development instead of repeating the same actions over and over.

I usually write scripts for automation, but it depends. I only automate two things:

1. The stuff I am really bored with and I have to do regularly, such as switching to the Bootstrap scene... screw this, I better write a script that loads the scene if it hasn't been loaded regardless what scene you have opened

2. QA-related stuff for testing the game in playmode

The second is picky, because people are prone to want complete QA automation, which harms the game in the end and only speeds up the tickets movement on the Kanban board or smth. So, if you consider the playmode related automation, then simply introduce cheat codes, custom scripts, and unit-testing for important stuff, but don't overautomate stuff, it will end up bad

In my youth, I decided at some point that I shouldn't do what a computer can do faster or more accurately. Ever since, I write scripts and small applications for relatively small tasks, in order to get rid of having to do them manually.

I use Python as my default language for these scripts; it's quick to develop and an expressive language. You can do a lot in a few lines. Python comes with a large library. If that's not enough, there exist more than enough open source implementations of just about anything.

I also write a script if I think that I need to solve the problem only one time. Until now however, I have never actually managed to run a script exactly once. There is always some reason why it's useful to run it more often.