11 replies to this topic

[Jufa]

What program you use to make documentation for your program/game?

I've been planning my own little game for over year and I'm not so good at making documentations so its not well organized (the documentation, that is).
Well... actually I havent written down all the things I've planned but I remeber the rest.

So that's why I'm asking about what kind of programs there are to help people like me that can't do well-organized documents :)

[Wernaeh]

Doxygen ? :)

Seems to be a popular choice these days, though I don't really like the html output it produces (weird styling...), and I'm too lazy to change it...

For documenting ideas, design choices, and similiar, I'd say normal .txt or open office text suffices for one man projects. Perhaps somebody else might add on more convenient, larger-scale solutions for these issues.

Cheers,
- Wernaeh

[Jufa]

Doxygen? Gotta google for it...

I got couple of my friends and my little brother to judge my ideas and to give their own ideas. I already have decided my target group and lots of other things that help me to target my plannings to the right direction. I want well-working game so I want to do things right.

Anyway, I'm going to check Doxygen out and some other things I've been told to be worth of looking through. I also got desing document template so I think I have pretty good base to start on :)

It doesn't matter if this isn't going to the developement level but its good practice.


edit -
Doxygen generates technical document? Well, this isnt needed yet, but if this goes to the developement level, it will be useful :) Thanks anyway.

My bad, my bad. I should've mentioned I meant desing documentation :P

[TheNut]

Microsoft Word & Visio. I have a few templates to work with so I just plug in the stuff. I also comment my source code.

[Jufa]

Templates for Microsoft Word? If so, do you know if they work in Open Office?
(I dont have Microsoft Word so I use Open Office)

And I comment my source code too :) Its nice habit.

[FlamingHawk]

Design Documents?

[Jufa]

Yep, design documents.

I just god (stupid) idea:
I'll put up a wiki-page and then I can organize my ideas and my friends can judge them and add their own ideas :)

Hmm.. I'm interested to see how that ends up :P

[monjardin]

You should take a look at trac. It's made for just that purpose and is intergrated with SVN for version control.

[Jufa]

But thats made for technical documentation if I understood right.
I dont need it yet and I dont think I ever will because I'm the only coder of this project (I highly doubt there ever will be other coder).

But anyway, thanks for the advice :)

[monjardin]

OK. Well what do you need that OpenOffice can't do? Do you plan to create UML digrams? It sounds like all you need is a text editor.

[Reedbeta]

So you want to make a design document, but you're not sure how to organize it. It sounds to me like a wiki would be useful. You don't have to figure out what order to put things in, you can just make an article for each item/enemy/aspect of the game and cross reference them to your heart's content. It's pretty easy to set up a webserver, install PHP, MySQL, and MediaWiki. And you can even make it editable by other people and so forth if you want.

[Jufa]

Reedbeta: Correct. The organizing is the problem.
Well, it was. Now I have a wiki up and growing.

After I've organized the ideas etc. I can make the design document with OpenOffice. Someone pointed me at Chris Taylor's design template and I think its fairly good and I'm going to use it as a base.

I think the case is closed now. Thanks to everyone. :)