Making a plan

Ok so this is the first time I have written a blog, so I don't know how flowy it's going to be, so please bear with me.

Ok so I am currently finishing up a course in computer game programming and I feel like I have gained a wealth of knowledge from embarking on this learning quest. After getting this far and handing in all my assignments there is one thing that was constantly being said by all the trainers, and I'm not quite sure why it didn't stick until after I had completed my major project, maybe it was the fact that I thought I could think of everything on the fly or maybe I felt there was never going to be enough time to put it into action, It doesn't really matter what my thoughts were on it at the time, I was wrong.

Always Plan your Project out!

I'm sure for a lot of people this is a "Well of course you should plan your project" moment, but I am not just talking about coming up with a core mechanic and making a design document, technical document, art bible. I'm talking about going, "Ok, what is going in this game?" and putting pen to paper to write it out. So ill be honest here, I don't use a pen and paper to plan this stuff out, I go to good old Draw.IO and just make everything into little, ok when I say little, I mean, stupidly bigger than you think they'll get, graphs where I break everything down to its smallest reasonable component.

For example, the biggest thing you are going to make, is... the game, of course, but what makes up that game, well a normal game has menus, splash screens, levels etc.

Fig.1 A very simple example of what I talking about

So with this in mind breaking it up even further would be easy right? you would just take all the sections you listed and figure out what makes them up. I can assure you that this small graph you have will keep getting larger and larger as you think of more things your project will need, keeping it within the bounds of reason, of course.

Next, as a programmer, artists and designers will probably be able to do something different, but as a programmer planning out UML Class Diagrams is the logical thing to do.

I mean sure you could jump into the project not knowing where all your code is going to go and just wing how it all ties together and you know, keep tweaking Frankenstein's monster so it is nice to all the villages, or, you could visualise how everything is going to work together and create a piece of Unity that just absorbs everything into without complaint or issue, from the start... ok that is a bit of an exaggeration but hey it would be better to have a real solid foundation to start coding instead of just jumping in and writing a spaghetti of functions and variables that are tangled worse than the cables you hide on the non-transparent side of your computer ( that can't just be me... right? ).

Yes, these may be things, if you have read this far, you may already do. If, however, you have the same kind of thoughts I listed in the first paragraph, plan a small project, and I mean small, like a one-level game for example, and see how large that graph gets, you will be surprised.

So if you are planning a small personal project or you are getting ready to pitch your idea to a team, working out all of this stuff is not only going to show the scope of your intended project but will make actually working on the project a lot easier, as a team or by yourself.