Sharing Some Design Tools

Howdy,

I've been lurking around the GG site for well over a year. My wife (just married last month) just bought me TGE and Ed Maurina's book for my birthday. Last week I broke down and bought TSE. It's been interesting:) We are working towards building some environments, maps, and vehicles. It's really great to have someone so special, AND that loves the same things I do. She is very talented to boot! I'll post some of the things she is working on soon.

I wear a few hats at work, one of my focal areas is in design and concepts. I'm always on the lookout for tools that can help to articulate and document ideas. Thought I would share a few of the things I have run across, in hopes that it might spur some discussion and additional sharing.

One of my favorite tools for brainstorming and organization is MindJet MindManager www.mindmanager.com. It's super keen for loose and fast assembly of ideas. It is expensive ($229 and $349), but it is really great. It will automatically build Web based outputs, exports to lots of formats, and will connect with Microsoft Project if that's your pleasure. There's a free alternative (sourceforge.net/projects/freemind/) that I don't enjoy as much, but it gets better as time goes on. Inspiration (www.inspiration.com/) is another good tool for diagramming that doesn't cost too much:)

When brainstorming design ideas and diagramming flow, if you don't have the $$ to invest in MindManager (this one is good for things that MindManager doesn't do well) -- I'd recommend giving cMap a shot. It's free and has some really nice features for branched design. Could work both for story and for brainstorming process and program flow cmap.ihmc.us/

Here's something I've toyed with in the past that seems like it would be extremely helpful in capturing game design elements for story and dialog driven content. It's free:)
www.celtx.com/overview.html

The best tools are usually the simplest tools. I've been using Writely for awhile. Google acquired Writely and last week they Googlized it. Check it out: docs.google.com I've found it is good for collecting ideas and actually documenting design flow tables. I use it at work and am going to start documenting design ideas for my hobby projects. Incidentally Google Docs also has a spreadsheet option. Could be good to keep simple track of budget and time - if you have the need. Nice for an online collaborative toolset.

Related to Google Docs, a similar tool for flowcharting. www.gliffy.com - is good for simple charts, but I wouldn't use it for anything super complex. It's cool for a collaborative tool though and you can embed the images in your own documents with live update from the collaborative core. I paste the image link into my Google Docs pages.

I think these online tools are a great place to centrally store docs in a closed, open, or collaborative space. I'll dig up some of my other research on tools for various things (video editing, audio, 3D modeling) and post them as I get the time. Sharing seems to be in the spirit of the community - what comes around goes around:)

Thanks for reading.