Planning, planning and more planning

My recent development time has been spent in adherence to one of the British military's oldest maxims, known as the Seven 'p's:

"Proper Prior Planning Prevents P**s Poor..." sorry, I mean "Pretty Poor Performance."

So instead of rushing ahead and building a vast edifice of code just to see it topple the instant I actually *thought* about how the game should work I got out a pen and paper and started to jot things down. Amazing!

Now don't mock even though I am not joking all that much. This is pretty much the first time that I've really systematically thought through a development roadmap, so to speak, for the game.

Yes, the inventory system required a degree of thinking through in terms of which parts need to affect which parts of other parts, but a full-on think through of the game as a whole is new to me.

OK you can mock the picture here, this is actually what I think of as "planning":

If you can't read it well tough! It's not meant for you, it's really an aide memoire for me more than anything else.

So it isn't exactly impressive, but the moments that I spend thinking on paper are hours not wasted on pointless, aimless coding.

Most importantly that particular piece of scribbling led to a very important decision on how to lay out the kitchen, which is even more muckily shown below:

As I imagine that that simply won't make the least bit of sense without context, I'll explain:

The idea is that the kitchen will feature fully upgradable equipment, including Fridges, freezers, ovens and dishwashers.

Part of the implementation of this means that I will need to make sure that things have a place and reserve space around that place for their use even before the items are purchased.

To deal with fresh herbs, for instance, initially you'll just have to use a knife, which will be not particularly effective a way of cutting them.

Soon you will upgrade to a cheap pestle and mortar, which will be substantially more useful but also take up space on the worktop.

Even later it will be replaced with one of those whirring spice grinder doodads, which again will be a different size and shape than the pestle and mortar or the empty space before it.

This is all very well but it is going to have to sit next to the kettle, which you are likely to buy before a pestle and mortar, so we need to make sure that whatever decisions are made later regarding the size and shape of the kettle - do we, for example, offer the novelty swan-shaped kettle for sale? - don't interfere with the pestle and mortar.

And this is where the need for planning comes in -  by setting aside time now to decide these things, and think through how things are going to work - I am going to save a lot more time later on when I realise that I needed to have set aside space to include x, y or z.

Of course I will doubtless still have to do this anyway, especially as there is every chance that I will suddenly decide to make this a game about planetary invasion rather than fast food provision, but this still does help to some degree at least.

You may be thinking also that this is all a little obvious, that of *course* planning is necessary, but I still feel that the point had to be made.

Besides I needed a way to justify wasting all of yesterday morning trying to get Pizza Tycoon working in the name of "Market Research" and the afternoon watching YouTube videos with a pen and paper in my hand making occasional notes.