Re: [GD-Design] Design Documents

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----- Original Message -----
From: "Kent Quirk" <ken...@co...>
To: <gam...@li...>
Cc: <ph...@me...>
Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2001 11:38 AM
Subject: Re: [GD-Design] Design Documents


> But again, I'd recommend a simple collection of XML formats and a text
> editor. The document doesn't have to be a lot more complicated than
> something in HTML:
>
> <title>MyTitle</title>
> <subtitle>First section</subtitle>
> <body>Here's the first part of the body. It can go on for a
> while.</body>
>
> A decent text editor (check out EditPlus) will let you put these things
> in nearly automatically. And XMLSpy may actually go a lot farther than
> that, but I haven't used it for the last couple of revisions.

-- Out of curiosity, is EditPlus has HTML features not in Visual C / Visual
Developer that is helpful to design documentation?

-- I edit HTML just as another text window while I am writing code inside
the development environment.

-- Game Design becomes -> Comments and Structures and Placeholder Functions
becomes -> Source Code becomes -> Executable.

-- In fact, Game Design just seems naturally to become the Technical Design
(structural) of the Game Modules of the Source Code.

-- Sometimes it goes the other way, source code becomes comments. Comments
becomes HTML text file. HTML text file becomes documentation or design.

-- Not that Visual Developer is the greatest text or code editor I had ever
use (that would be the Brief type editors). But it is much more tightly
integrated into DirectX and Direct3D which I use heavily. Since I have to
use VD for DX and D3D, I try to do everything else inside it too.

-- I try not to let "game design" sit in HTML too long before prototyping it
into the code.

-- It is funny I used think that I like programming a lot more than many
things and therefore it would be easy for source code to outpace the design.
As it turns out, it is a really easy job to write a "design sentence", and
then a couple more days (average, sometimes shorter, sometimes longer) of
"source code" to actually implement a design phrase.

-- Coding definitely requires more time and effort than design. :) It takes
a lot of discipline to overcode and to underdesign, even for a programmer.

-- Though it can be said that part of the coding programming and
implementation is in fact design (i.e., not technology) work.