Anyone has got some examples in developing games with UML?

UML is not a programming language. It is not code. I don't think it is possible to make a game in UML.

I have seen some documentation and design notes that used UML, but never more than that.

For example, when I develop a general purpose software I know the question that I have to make in order to define the uses case diagram (who will use the software? What features should the sw offer?); when it is a game, I will need a systematic and disciplinate developing model too.

You note you are coming from university studies, and your post reveals more of that.

These are not academic exercises contrived to get you to do a thing.

Games document their target audience very easily. Features are easily described with words and design documents.

I've only worked on one non-game product that had use-cases specified --- but not with UML diagrams --- as simple spreadsheets listing features in terms of who would use them and what they would do.




Recall what your professors told you and you cited: UML must be used only of it helps to make ideas clearer and not for "documents' sake".

Use it when words are not clear enough and you need a diagram. Don't start with the diagram, start with the words. Only when a diagram would be more clear is it time to include a diagram.

So, how much UML should I use when I develop a game?

It's a question we cannot answer. Only you know how much is useful to you.

Instead of asking these questions, why not just start? If you feel at some point, a bit of UML might help, try it. If you feel it's not useful, don't do it. See how it goes.

If it goes fine, keep doing what you're doing If you goes badly, try to figure out what is wrong, why does it go badly? Then think how you can avoid or fix it.

Even for a single person there is not a single answer for this question. What you feel as good now, will be different in one or two years. As you get experience, everything shifts in all kinds of directions, and that's good, it means you're growing. However, that also means there is no single answer for almost everything. Ideas and needs shift over time.

From the responses above it seems that UML is very much alive and well in certain parts of the games industry. I've been a professional software developer for many years across a few companies outside the games industry and haven't touched or encountered UML at all since i left university 14 years ago.

Same here... the only UML documents I see in our company is to make the technical documentation look more "technical".

There is crap in it like a diagram how much of the code is thirdparty vs generated vs self written code, percentual distribution. I mean, it is useful to know that most of a front end code is actually generated with jaxb, but creating a chart out of it and filling most of a documentation page with it sounds like epic padding.

UML Diagrams usually are more useful, but used very sparingly. Mostly as a high level view to quickly communicate the general architecture of a software component to a developer new to the project.

But then most of the time I worked on small projects. And outside of the game industry. So I don't know how much my expierience is worth. For what it is worth though, My expierience was that UML is something you will use in University projects a lot to make them look more professional (and help the people that have to rate your work understand it quicker). And that you will then not use anymore as soon as you start working professionally until you have to write technical documentation (which usually happens as you change jobs and will have to bring a new engineer up to speed, or outsource a component)... or if you happen to be lucky enough to work on a project that is NOT just glorified copy-pasta (like many projects sadly are, at least from what I have seen), you might use it for its originally intended purpose, to DESIGN a system, instead of just DOCUMENTING one. Which might also happen if you end up as an architect (Which does mostly Project management it seems, at least where I work, and less system architecture).

Judging from my expierience with external vendors, UML is also used quite effectively when selling your hacked together mish mash of different opensource frameworks as the best and fastest product for <insert current fad in the IT world here>...

When the non-technical customers start to ask too many questions, answer them with a mixture of half truths, blatant lies and UML diagrams. It might look like old egyptian hyroglyphs to the sourcing reps and managers present, but it looks technical so the sales rep of the vendor must know what he is talking about, right?

Okay, I might have a VERY biased view on the last use of UML, so disregard it if you are programming software as an external vendor and DO create well written, well documented software that is NOT just trying to cash in on a fad by selling it to people without the necessary knowledge

UML is not a programming language. It is not code. I don't think it is possible to make a game in UML.I have seen some documentation and design notes that used UML, but never more than that

Yeah, I know it. UML is a design notation/language, not a programming language. I was asking for some example of design with UML used in a simple game.

For a simple game, UML is overkill imho.

I have only used UML class diagrams in some work projects for two reasons:

1) It generated class code for us, compatible with many other tools.

2) As it was the core data structure, it served as reference and documentation in the entire project.

Those projects are still alive, and the diagrams now come in handy when you have to change/extend the code, after a few years.