Flow chart for preparation

[Xer0botXer0]

Hi guys,

I'm wondering how you go about preparing to create your game ? I know studios normally use a game design document, but what do you use ?

I've had to rewrite my game a few times because I get confused with functions. Should these two functions have been written together, I don't want to write unnecessary code, that could've been written better if I planned ahead.

With that said the previous projects allowed me to see what needs to be considered before hand. But how would you go about putting that into a visual demonstration ? Perhaps a list, or a flow chart.. thoughts ?

 

[Lonewolff]

I fire up GameMaker and just start typing.

Admittedly, not the best approach for large projects. In that scenario a whiteboard is king!

 

[RichHopefulComposer]

I just keep it all in my head, mostly. I very rarely scratch something down, but it's almost always for figuring out a piece of code or whatever, not for planning big picture stuff. If it's important for my game, I just trust myself to remember it. No problems so far! =)

 

[andev]

In that scenario a whiteboard is king!

Woah that's a such a good idea. Brb, buying one

 

[Electros]

I find spreadsheets are great for listing down anything related to the project, be it design decisions, random thoughts, considerations etc - and then they can be translated into work tasks quite easily, and broken down where needed. From there you can bullet the key things you need to do to get those work items done.

In terms of the creative side in general, I always carry a blank sketchpad and a pencil - I find it invaluable to be able to jot and sketch whenever ideas or solutions pop into your head.

 

[cidwel]

I start with the roof without a plan. That's why I have never finished anything

 

[RichHopefulComposer]

Woah that's a such a good idea. Brb, buying one

I bought a whiteboard, but ended up never using it. Liked the sketchpad paper better for planning. Easier for me to write with a pencil than a dry erase marker, haha.

 

[Thunder Lion]

I fire up GameMaker and just start typing.

Admittedly, not the best approach for large projects. In that scenario a whiteboard is king!

Lol I literally did that with an other project, it became sok different in a good way but I didn't finish it. I beleive I ended up losing the latest version which was lightyears of the other systems. Camp Liver one day I will remake you, but this time I might just pay people to make it. Ill give them the information and concept arts I made....its my deepest love child project.

 

[Yal]

I'm wondering how you go about preparing to create your game ? I know studios normally use a game design document, but what do you use ?

I've had to rewrite my game a few times because I get confused with functions. Should these two functions have been written together, I don't want to write unnecessary code, that could've been written better if I planned ahead.

I also make GDDs. Just writing down your ideas in text makes them much easier to assess. If you can tell the ideas sound bad once they're written down, you just saved yourself the headache of ending up code a game you scrapped in the end because it was so bad.

I strongly recommend multilevel bullet-point lists, too, they help structure up stuff in a tree fashion and every document editor ever supports them.

Don't worry about writing unnecessary code - it will happen. But try to write code that's easy to refactor, so you can remove anything that's really bad after you realize it is.

 

[Rayek]

Agreed, writing down your ideas in detail (like a GDD) is the way to go in my opinion. For narrative flow and story writing I use ArticyDraft or Twine. I write backstories to characters, etc. Perhaps a bit much, but it motivates me to move forward with a game, and it is far easier to keep track of ideas and scope creep.
I am not a fan of bulleted lists, though - I prefer a good old spreadsheet (LibreOffice Calc).

And I plan as much as I can ahead, and use Taiga's Kanban board to keep track of everything.

 

[Toque]

I really needed to write something down but had no paper. So I wrote on the wall with a sharpie. I loved it. When I finished a game I painted over the wall. Start over.

I got married. So Now I use a notebook....... Apparently only 2 year olds write on walls......

 

[andev]

I wrote on the wall with a sharpie. I loved it. When I finished a game I painted over the wall. Start over.

You could have sliced it off the wall, framed it, and sold it as a collectors item for your game. Missed opportunity

 

[Rayek]

I really needed to write something down but had no paper. So I wrote on the wall with a sharpie. I loved it. When I finished a game I painted over the wall. Start over.

I got married. So Now I use a notebook....... Apparently only 2 year olds write on walls......

No, not only kids. It is actually a quite common practice in some companies for idea generation. Just convince your wife you need this:

 

[BaBiA Game Studio]

I've never really bothered with a proper GDD, but when I first get a game idea I just put a very rough description about it into my "Random thoughts and ideas" document on google docs. If I haven't committed to a project and just keep getting ideas that may work for one, I just add those to this document as part of that main idea, and if I finally think it has a chance of being something decent then I split all that info out into another doc specifically for that project and then just flesh out a few of the details before I set up the project in a kanban board.

In my kanban board I put every feature and break those down into the relevant tasks that I need. It allows me to keep on track (majority of the time) by doing everything sprint-based, can have it up on my second monitor while I code things, and I can change as I go (finishing items, or deciding that they should be removed or changed completely). I use TFS/Visual Studio Online (or whatever MS are calling it now), and I can access it anywhere during the day when I suddenly think of something that might be good to add, or if I realise a way to do something differently. It only takes a couple of minutes to get to the project and make some notes or add the new feature to the board.

Sometimes I scribble things down in a notebook as well - but this tends to be world/room maps or attempts at UI layouts to see what might be best.

 

[Toque]

You could have sliced it off the wall, framed it, and sold it as a collectors item for your game. Missed opportunity

Sold it?? Never! I would just hang it back on the wall!

 

[Thunder Lion]

You could have sliced it off the wall, framed it, and sold it as a collectors item for your game. Missed opportunity

Or took a nice picture

 

[Toque]

No, not only kids. It is actually a quite common practice in some companies for idea generation. Just convince your wife you need this:

Unless George Clooney is holding that sharpie there will be no convincing.

 

[Online Handle]

A kanban board can be very useful.
trello.com

 

[JackTurbo]

Sounds like I invest more time in organisation that many on here.

If I've got a concept that I like and that I want to pursue I'll do three things almost straight way.

1. Start a new notebook for it.
2. Set up a folder on google drive for supporting documentation.
3. Set up a board on trello for project/time management.

N.b this may occur after having already mucked about with rough prototyping of a particular concept /idea/mechanic, but will usually be followed by a recode from scratch (as my quick protoyping code is generally 99% spaghetti nonsense)

 

[Rayek]

Unless George Clooney is holding that sharpie there will be no convincing.

 

[JeffJ]

I use a variety of different tools both for planning and for managing - the whiteboard is actually one of my favorites. I use it for just about any "broad overview big picture" kind of planning - right now it contains an overview of the various groups of spells and skills that I need, as well as some sketches for a stealth system and various notes on requirements and considerations before implementation.

Here's an old picture from the earliest phase of my current project - in this case I used it to plan out something as basic as file and folder structure for the game. It really helped me visualize it and saved me a lot of time before starting to code so I wouldn't have to redo anything when I was finally done.

Spoiler: White Board Image

Once it's time to clean the slate I take a few very high-res pictures of the board before I wipe it, and store those pictures in the project's Dropbox folder.

For more "listy" kinds of data and general small notes I simply use text documents on my computer. I used to have simple "todo" lists like this, but once the project reached a certain size, I switched to Redmine (https://www.redmine.org/) - it's a bit like the Mantis bugtracker that YoYo used to use, and I can strongly recommend it. Here I divide my tasks into "Features" and "Bugs", and make sure to categorize them properly - and typically I will also make a "major issue" containing lots of smaller "children issues" - for example, a "major" could be "Settings", and then another major (but a child to "Settings") could be "Video Settings", and then that could have lots of children issues like "Resolution", "V-Sync" etc..

It really helps me keep track of what I have done, how much time I have spent on it, and what's left to do. Here I also tend to upload relevant photos from my whiteboard to further illustrate an issue on the tracker.

For shared to do lists and documents, I have very good experiences with Google Docs. That way you can follow the progress of your team mates and you can be very annoying by adding a few more items to their list once it's almost clean.

A few years ago I would have never done anything as expansive as this, but the scope of my projects has grown a lot, and I've also experienced how bad planning can really lead to a lot of wasted time down the road - so this has become a habit for me now - and I'm actually really liking it.

 

[GMWolf]

i dont do much game design, mostly code.
when organizing / figuring out code, i mostly use a notebook. Either draw quick class hierarchies or dependencies. or diagrams to solve geometric problems.

When working on an especially large project in a team, I like to use tools like UML designer, as I cannot fit such large models on paper and O can easily share the file.

Previously I would use Microsoft OneNote rather than using a notepad. It works well enough if you have a tablet, but really pen and paper is much more natural to me, and somehow it must activate a different region in my brain as I do get tend to find problems easier to solve.

A whiteboard is also quite nice: Have used them a few times, but dont own one myself. (not enough space in my room).

If you need to document progress, excel is a good way, if you are not already using source control.

Source control will actually help with keeping track of progress too. It logs each bit of progress, you can have a different branch for each bit of work, etc.

 

[Kobold]

I do agree with Ghost ... open the IDE start messing around with functions, insert some place-holder graphics and then let it morph over a few stages until it becomes something concept-worthy.

It worked for me.... somehow.

...might be a progressive sorta type, making up as you go... while others need to have an agenda right away.

 

[caustique]

I know studios normally use a game design document, but what do you use ?

text document. separated into sections like, things that need to be done, things that need to be fixed, and future ideas. i think a gdd is better for a team or a huge solo project

 

[Freddy Jones]

TL;DR: Yeah, making a control flowchart is really effective for your problem. It lets you easily visualize what things fit together and once you got that picture you can code the missing pieces into place after you got the stubs.

For the problem you specified, a control flow document written by hand iterated a couple of times will be the "best"(nothings truly the best) choice. Since you're having trouble deciding how you want to piece things together, it's good to figure out how it will all "fit" together at a larger level.


Answer the big questions, put them into some sort of logical flow and then, if necessary, do it again but trying to piece together the smaller details. Don't get too descriptive in your flow chart though, you will soon realize that the smaller details are something you're going to have to answer by writing the code itself. Say you write a high-level flow chart, you could make a flow-chart for each complicated piece on its own!

A good flow chart should answer. . . The start, the middle, the end, and logical branching.

Note: And again, nothing will ever really be faster than doing it on paper where you can just keep jotting things down.
Note2: Also when you're facing problems with your code, the best practice is to see what part of the composition is holding you back and rewrite that piece/module to make it more composable. When rewriting, make sure anything that's being used by multiple things is as decoupled as possible. Anything that's mission-specific should be used sparingly; ideally used in only one area of the code.

Tip: Make sure your charts on paper are organized. IE: Descriptive title, page details, concise bubbles.


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Edit

An important addition I just want to finish adding is that, all together, I would do it like this:
GDD( Design Of Game): Just a whole bunch of notes, drawings, sketches, ideas all thrown into a folder stapled in relevant pairs.

Flow Charts( Logic of Game): As described above, used to help define interactions and workflows and lay it all out

Flowchart + Drawings( Gui ): This has always been my sore spot when it comes to design because I never have a solid proof GUI choice. Knowing the capabilities of your GUI framework and how it works really helps here. First describe what you want your GUIS to do and how they interface with your game VIA a flowchart. Should be relatively high level. Then, draw a literal ton of iterations how you want them to look. If you don't have a physical visualization on paper it's really hard to imagine how it would look like in code.

 

[The-any-Key]

I use "simple mind" a mindmap app with all details about the game and with code flow. (To include the code flow really helps with debugging, you usually spot bugs before they happen in game)
https://simplemind.eu

 

[Gamebot]

Depends on the project.

Normally I just start typing to see what I get. When I start running into issues I use one or more of the following: power point, excel, word and two whitboards.

 

[bit-bit]

No, not only kids. It is actually a quite common practice in some companies for idea generation. Just convince your wife you need this:

This is great. I'm gonna paint one of the walls in my office to do this.

Currently I open up VISIO and start mapping out logic for game objects. You can also do it on pen and paper but with VISIO I can make quick edits and move things around as I layer on more.