Planner? I hardly know her!

In my first year of university, I did a module on Software Design and Development, which is the last time I planned my code. After that, anything I worked on was planned while I was writing it.

Imagine you're writing a book, you'd plan every detail and plot-hole to an extensive degree so you don't lose the readers or leave them with burning questions for you to answer on Twitter later. There's no reason code is any different. If you don't know how you're going to do something then it'll end up worse than it could have been if you'd known what you were doing in the first place.

I've finished the Game Design Document for my first project of the year. Having planned it out and given myself deadlines for certain milestones I can say I'm confident on being able to deliver it on time instead of it coming to March 25th without me having done anything because I didn't know what to do. Its nice to have things ironed out and explained. This makes me wonder why I've never planned an assignment out in university, because it would have certainly made most of my university life easier.

I suppose its a different thing to plan a coding logbook that the lecturers give you to complete than it is to plan a whole game made from scratch, but maybe if I'd at least have had the milestones it would have saved a lot of stress on deadline days. You learn a whole lot more at university than just content, and maybe it has taken until my final year to learn it but its something I'd rather come out of university knowing.

Next week I should have a working prototype for this game to be able to show people. It'll also show me how the game is going to be played and can be something I can use to change any smaller parts of the design document where the game isn't as fun. A prototype is something nice to have to reflect on and see if this game is going to work.

As for the game, I won't tell you too much. Let's just say its a game about a frog who's just trying to get home.