Planning Gui / Fsm

[kylelyk]

So I have been working on a map creator to aid the development of level design for a game I'm working on and have quite a few ideas of what features should be implemented. The problem is, I'm having a hard time keeping track of all the different "states" of the program and what conditions need to be met to enter that state. Is there a good way of drawing everything out using a program that displays the states, the variables that need to be checked in order to enter that state, the previous state(s) that are required, and anything else that needs to be considered? I've thought about using some kind of graph program with labeled edges, but I don't know if that will have everything I need. Once I can see it all drawn out, it will be immensely easier to find patterns and declutter code.

Thanks for any help,
-kylelyk

[GeoKureli]

if your editor is purely back-end you can just make an air app, Flash cs6 with a drag and drop ui creator. similarly you can get the free version of Visual studio and make a windows form (if you know some C#) VS has a great ui editor.

[kylelyk]

At 3/25/13 04:52 AM, GeoKureli wrote: if your editor is purely back-end you can just make an air app, Flash cs6 with a drag and drop ui creator. similarly you can get the free version of Visual studio and make a windows form (if you know some C#) VS has a great ui editor.

After looking at a lot of webpages, I realized that what I was really looking for was a flowchart maker (which there are tons out there). Your suggestions were thought provoking, but I started to think about what I really wanted this editor to do, and I realized that it would be better to keep it flash as3 since I might want to easily integrate it into the game I am making right now or maybe one in the future without a whole lot of additional work. I had pretty much figured out all the logistical stuff, like loading from json files and SWC files, all I needed is a way to plan all the different paths the program can take (since I want quite a few features to make level editing a breeze).

-kylelyk

[PMMurphy]

Flowcharts, tree diagrams, UML diagrams, XML diagrams.

Or you can go oldschool and get a giant marker-erase board with erasable markers and use post-its.

Tons of options here.

I find paper to be the best solution when it comes to designing complicated gui's and keeping track of tons of variables. Its very simple to just crumple paper and start over, where as a program you have to click all these buttons.