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Documentation during scenery development

A

ArneJ

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16
Country
germany
Hi,

at the moment, I study the SDK documentation of FSX and learning everything about scenery design from several sites in the web.

Later on, I will try to develop own sceneries for FSX.

The question is now: During the development of new (freeware/payware) sceneries, how do you document the ongoing development process for the new scenery. Do you have any tips or suggestions how to document everything ?

Thank you for your help.
Arne
 
Hi Arne and welcome.

Perhaps you could be more specific on what you mean by document. Do you mean the end user documentation that will get released with the scenery or do you mean the steps to take for the design and development process (project plan)?

Or it is something else?
 
Hi Jon,

I mean the project plan for me as developer. Because, during develpment, a lot of bgl's and textures will be created. Excludes for standard objects must be created etc. And so I think the scenery designer has to create a document, to stay focussed on the items. After months of works, I think there are some parts lost if you do not have a "project plan".

So, the easiest way is to write a doc. Or is there a better way to do this, than an simple word doc ?
 
I would think that for a scenery design project a simple task list would be enough.

For the development of ADE (which is a design tool rather than a finished scenery) I use a to do list type of program. I have used project management tools in the past for major projects (multi million $$$) but would find that a bit of over kill for what we are talking about.

I think the most important thing is to find something you are comfortable with - and more importantly will keep up to date!
 
Hi Arne,

Work on one aspect of your airport at a time. Give your mdl's, bgl's and textures meaningful names.

Start from the ground up, do the land class and ADE (AFCAD) first.

If you do create a development document you could add things like coordinates, heading etc;

Also make BACKUPS regularly.

David
 
Jon and David,

thank's for your input.

This weekend I wil start to exclude the standard FSX buildings and create new gmax buildings incl. accurate textures in the vicinity of Egelsbach aerodrome (EDFE) near my homwtown. So I get to be familiar with gmax modeling and texturing. Also I will try to use Maxon Cinema4D for modeling, export it as collada file and then will use Arno's 'SketchUp' converter, if its possible.
 
I don't know what tool you plan to use for airport facilities design but you should be aware that ADE makes it very easy to exclude stock items such as buildings.

Generally the question arises as to which tools to use of course.
 
I wrote a simple exclude.xml, with the correspondig coordiantes to exclude the buildings.
 
ArneJ said:
I wrote a simple exclude.xml, with the correspondig coordiantes to exclude the buildings.
Click to expand...

OK but if this is for FSX beware that you do not also exclude things you don't want excluded like jetways and signs
 
a very simple excell worksheet is great for projects. You can put in a to-do-list, as well as post things you create, what they do, what they reference and work with, etc... Include dates and times, and you have a great way of tracking what you do, when how, and why...

- Greg
 
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