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How to document a game engine + game development?

Calculemus Calculemus · 2011-09-03T13:44:17

How to document a game engine + game development? My game engine + game, two projects solution, got 2500 lines today. I already begin to forget how I did some stuff. I need first of all: 1. To find a way HOW to document my engine architecture. 2. Then to reread the whole code and document what is done so far, before it gets more complex. UML diagrams could help for high level design. All the cool stuff we learned in class I might apply now. Finite state machine would be nice. Sequential diagrams are nice too. Sometimes just code comments is enough documentation, for example for some method. For some things I feel like writing explanations in pages. So the way I imagine this is a pdf file with lots of UML diagrams, code examples and text explanations here and there. Like a reference for my engine. Imagine there is Contents as in a book, and you have stuff like UI, IO, Managers and then in Managers you have chapters like EffectsManager, LevelManager, BulletsManager and so on... I would spend two weeks on something like this, including research on HOW to do it first of all. It would make things so much easier when this game engine hits 10 000 lines and more. Not to mention how easier it would be to get comments about the engine. I can give that document to a pro game developer, he can read the whole in less then hour, and throw some suggestions. I have not done anything like this before so give me some opinions guys. Thank you