Design Documentation Tools | |
1. Lots of paper and pencils (nothing digital has yet replaced paper and pencil for hacking out ideas). 2. Even more erasers. 3. A good integrated document application that includes features such as: a. A good outliner. Most decent word processors have an outline mode. It's amazing how few people ever try out this feature. Some word processors will even automatically number and sub-number your items for you on the fly. An outliner makes it much easier to create documents in a nonlinear fashion, jumping around and inserting and moving information from place to place. An outliner also makes it easy to produce what I call "two-dimensional documents" - meaning documents that can be read both vertically and horizontally. Moving the eye vertically, a reader gets a feel for the contents and major concerns. Moving horizontally provides the reader with detailed information. b. The ability to link illustrations to text. c. Cross-reference updating. d. Spreadsheets. e. Tables. f. Hot links are great. I recommend Nisus Writer (Paragon Concepts) as the most powerful document processing tool, but ClarisWorks (Claris Corp.) is still the best integrated application available for both Mac and Windows. There are all sorts of project management tools available. I reserve those for the next stage of development. 4. A prototyping tool. mTROPOLIS, from mFactory, is a killer for determining behaviors of objects and getting things to happen really quickly. Macromedia Director is still the standard for quick and dirty animations. You may also need a 3D modeler, such as 3D Studio. 5. A basic library of sound effects. You don't have to make the final decision, but you'll probably want to try a few things yourself and give your audio engineer some idea of what you want. 6. Some pieces of art representative of the style that you intend to use. You'll probably need to make a list and use it to work with an artist while you are composing your document. 7. A knowledgeable friend to read the thing over thoroughly once it's finished and point out the remissions, contradictions, and ambiguities that every author fails to notice. |
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