Flowcharts can be helpful for understanding some elements of the game, such as the way a player can progress through various levels and choices of game options. Based on the player's selections, various UI elements or screens may become hidden or unavailable. Another example is to define how you make various missions available (or blocked) to a user. IF you want to use this on a low level, flowcharts are good for working out algorithms inside specific code modules such as damage calculation based on weapon, armor, distance, etc.

Another useful type of simple graphic representation is a Message Sequence Chart (http://www.item.ntnu.no/fag/ttm4115/MSC_HTML-version/02-01_MSC-Introduction/MSC-Intro-description.htm). This captures how information should or could pass between game subystems, and how each subsystem responds to the new information. For example, you could represent the process of how a player logs into your MMORPG from their PC at home, with information passing from the player's PC to a login server which checks the player's information and then gives him a choice of world servers to play on, from which he chooses one particular world and then you retrieve information about the player's characters on that world form a world server and send it back to the player's PC. The world server and/or the player's PC client may respond differently if he has no active characters on the chose server.

What I like about both of these methods is that I can do them by myself with pen and paper - there's no need to have any underlying record-keeping software running (although there are programs that will do that), or I can work it out on a wihte board with other people on my team.

Quote:Original post by Cold_Steel
If you have an OO system though, then they probably won't do much good, since the code will be sufficiently abstract and (relatively) easy to understand anyway.

I don't think OO code is inherently any easier to understand than other paradigms.