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I know everyone has their own ways of fleshing out ideas and direction for their upcoming game. I'm curious as to how everyone here personally is doing so. Do you just use plain old Word/Google Docs? Wiki's? Project Management Software? Mind-Mapping?

I keep things in my head for about a week, just picturing and imagining things. ONce I get some decent ideas, I switch to work. When i used to run my own website I had project management software for team collaboration which i worked with. Must mostly, its purely just typing and writing it all down in word.

I sometimes diagram things in Visio. I nearly always model my class models this way.

Other than that, I's got a hardcover notebook dedicated to my game. Any ideas go in there; be they lore, UI wireframes and workflows, game logic ideas, etc. I keep this notebook handy at all times.

i pop everything into a spreadsheet of some sort.

I'll have multiple tabs for different aspects and I try to break it all down. I usually end up reorganizing after i've put tons of stuff in it.

So like I'll make a tab called characters and list down all of what a character can do and skills or stats etc etc.

I usually think about things for a while in my head. But then when specifics hit, I reach for good 'ol Notepad. I use it first as a quick-and-dirty note taker actually because it lacks structure. When things are still forming, entire categories may be tossed out or changed. It is a lot faster for me to do it this way, just adding a few equal signs before a section heading is much easier than messing with font sizes, colors, spacing, list formatters, etc. However, I do eventually want all of that once things are more concrete. Then I move to either Word or Open Office to start building more of an official design. And once that is done, I begin working up any lists of things I need in a spreadsheet program like Excel or Open Office Calc. After losing some things before, I am now fanatical about backing stuff up. I usually keep a flash drive backed-up daily of my documents, and usually also have a back-up somewhere on the web.

I use and recommend Springpad for android. It's pretty good, I make a notebook and collect ideas, make notes, take a photo of a part of a movie that gave me an idea or a checklist. It's very complete!

I am a old Schooler. I grab a 3 ring binder and a mechanical pencil and start jotting down ideas

Fun topic I use Notepad++ for typing down ideas, adding some code logic or real code as I go, so that I can copy/paste it later to where it belongs. Also, Excel spreadsheets when it's about tables of data and preparing the ideas for DB structure. Also, since I almost always think of visual side of any part of the game I'm working on, I use Photoshop to make the interface, maps, icons etc. and comment them (or put layers of text there). Of course, paper is always handy and a notebook is always in the bag wherever I go. It turns out that whatever I write down is almost always some 50% better than what I type xD Plus, having a notebook with custom-designed cover (I like making a logo/main_graphical_representation of my current project, then printing it as a sticker to put on notebook cover) reminds you and motivates you to write something there every once in a while

I use Excel to make all tables like some sort of database of the items and etc.

But in a earlier dev stage i use the school notebooks to point my ideas and diagrams, maps etc

My ideas come to me at school... So I write my ideas on all my tests, and then when the teacher hands them back, I start programming...