I took some time last night and put together two templates for sketching out the rooms for the game. One is a detailed page that I think I will use when working out more detailed ideas. The other one is a page with 16 thumbnail screens with some room for a few notes.
After I had a few sheets of the templates printed out I cracked open my sketchbook and did a mind map of locations. I found this much easier doing it by hand instead of on the computer. Another upside I had not thought about but now appreciate is that when doing this you are naming locations first. This made it much easier for the next step.
After I had a decent sized mind map of 29 rooms I figured I should do some quick and dirty thumbnails. This was harder to get into at first and I found I had to come back to it the next day. When I did come back to it everything came together really quickly. There are some ugly thumbnails that are just a mess but it is enough for a first pass wireframe.
After getting all 29 rooms roughly thumbnailed I scanned them and broke them apart int their own rooms using my mind map names as the room names. I then ran through each room and roughed in each hotspot that will link the rooms together. After that it was time to setup the room linking logic.
After the logic was setup I ran through all of the rooms checking their links. There were about 3 or 4 that I had missed completely but that was easy enough to catch and fix that I was able to get all 29 rooms wired together. It is pretty cool to be able to move to all of the rooms and get a sense of the space. Now that the rooms flow together I can start doing a more detailed block in of the rooms and start think about interactions.
After I had a few sheets of the templates printed out I cracked open my sketchbook and did a mind map of locations. I found this much easier doing it by hand instead of on the computer. Another upside I had not thought about but now appreciate is that when doing this you are naming locations first. This made it much easier for the next step.
After I had a decent sized mind map of 29 rooms I figured I should do some quick and dirty thumbnails. This was harder to get into at first and I found I had to come back to it the next day. When I did come back to it everything came together really quickly. There are some ugly thumbnails that are just a mess but it is enough for a first pass wireframe.
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| they ain't pretty but thats they work |
After getting all 29 rooms roughly thumbnailed I scanned them and broke them apart int their own rooms using my mind map names as the room names. I then ran through each room and roughed in each hotspot that will link the rooms together. After that it was time to setup the room linking logic.
After the logic was setup I ran through all of the rooms checking their links. There were about 3 or 4 that I had missed completely but that was easy enough to catch and fix that I was able to get all 29 rooms wired together. It is pretty cool to be able to move to all of the rooms and get a sense of the space. Now that the rooms flow together I can start doing a more detailed block in of the rooms and start think about interactions.
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