Game Design: UML and Work Items part 1

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In software design there are many names for the design process.  In the process I am going over right now is a mix of UML and Storyboarding because that is the mood I am in.

In this case we will story board using UML to create work items which we will link to items in PowerPoint using the storyboard system.  Which I think has a bug because I should be able to add a work item in PowerPoint but don’t seem to be able to.

First we will start with Use Cases, which is where I usually give up on and simply waste time on writing code that is poorly documented, sell it off and then move on to another job.  This time I am sticking with it, at least till I have to do something else.

What is a Use Case? For various reason I am going to the OMG.ORG, which does not stand for Oh My God Organization, although that would be cool.  OMG stands for Object Management Group.  https://www.omg.org/index.htm

However quick reads of the documents at OMG there was no easily found definition of the UML Use Case, but the web site:

https://www.uml-diagrams.org/use-case-diagrams.html defines the Use case diagrams as

Use case diagrams are behavior diagrams used to describe a set of actions (use cases) that some system or systems (subject) should or can perform in collaboration with one or more external users of the system (actors). Each use case should provide some observable and valuable result to the actors or other stakeholders of the system.

 

Games tend to be simple creatures with respect to external resources or are they? 

Let’s start off with creating a simple UML diagram in Visual Studio 12 Premium RC, to use this feature see the article at:

How to: Edit UML Models and Diagrams

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd409405(v=vs.110).aspx

then come back to this page.  Or not.  Whatever you do keep designing and innovating.

What they don’ show you is, what if you make a work item connected to your actor or object? 

 

image

Now let’s think about our game pieces, let’s say a pong like game.  There are only a few components:

  1. Player 1 (human)
  2. Player 2 (human)
  3. Computer Player
  4. Ball
  5. Score
  6. Sounds
  7. Start page
  8. Leaderboard

So Pong has quite a few pieces.  Are all of them actors?

More in the next post.  Surf’s up.  Actually I have to go down and see if there are any dolphins in the surf line.  It’s research.  See how that works?

Don’t tell my manager. Smile

Oh, and still haven’t heard from President Obama nor Mitt Romney’s campaign headquarters about the Kinect Based Presidential Debate.  I think it would be great if they played one of the games.

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