quote: Original post by Gaiiden
I''ve gotten into the habit of slightly rotating the pencil every single time I lift it from the paper to stop and think or end a sentence or something. It''s truly become an unconscious action and keeps the lead sharp by using various sides so that one doesn''t go flat.

Hehehehe. I just noticed that I do the same thing.

ShadeStorm, the Day_Glo Fish

I used to use paper alot until I got better at organizing sections in Word. Now that I'm a master of bookmarks in a Word doc, Word rules. Plus, I've gotten into sketching out stuff either in 3D or w/ photoshop and importing the sketches, as well as turning the whole doc into HTML (though I need practice there).

I even tried (though it didn't work too well) to bring in Dragon Naturally Speaking, voice recognition software that can integrate with Word. I like to pace when I think of ideas, and I had this fantasy of having a wireless mike connected to my PC and talking to myself as I roamed my apartment. Unfortunately, the voice recognition just wasn't up to snuff, and really had a hard time with phrases like quantum singularity and biomemetic interrogation.

For awhile, I even had a Cassiopeia handheld with keyboard, and was using USB to download ideas into Word. That is, until the damn thing broke... *sigh*

So, you see Gaiiden, the moral of the story is that you'll just have to face the fact that you're turning into a Luddite! (j/k!!!)

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Just waiting for the mothership...

Edited by - Wavinator on February 14, 2002 10:58:22 PM

By far my favorite medium is my Visor Prism with my fold-up Stowaway Keyboard. It works great. As soon as an idea pops in my mind I can have my Visor up and ready to type in 15 seconds. It also works great for taking notes...err or at least "pretending" (playing games) to take notes in class.

~Shaun

quote: Original post by Wavinator
I even tried (though it didn''t work too well) to bring in Dragon Naturally Speaking, voice recognition software that can integrate with Word.

I was never very good at dictating ideas, otherwise i probably would have tried this myself. Oh wait I can''t anyways, the mic jack on my soundcard is f***ed up. Stupid HP piece of crap. I wanted a Dell but the rest of my family wouldn''t listen to me. Oyez.

Wow, you guys have some pretty creative ideas for getting... ideas. :D

I refuse to use Word for getting any ideas with. I have Word 97, and it''s HORRIBLY slow. I really don''t know why, but it takes forever just to show the "File" dropdown window. ">gawd< Forget it!" I say. "I''ll do it on paper."

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Might I add, from the title I presumed this thread was another "piss-on" rant saying that pen-&-paper RPGs are better than graphical ones. So many people come here and do stuff like that, it''s become kind of a habit for me to come here and say, "W-What!? What kinda nerd would...."

But there''s no nerds on GameDev.Net, now are there? ''Course not.

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Oh, I should be trying soon to get my first game designed. I''ve tried to make clones of more famous games, but all I''ve discovered is that I just don''t like doing that. I understand how Tetris works, internally, and I would really like to do something else on my own. I''m probably going to take some ideas for designing that game from THIS thread.

Ah, life is perfect now... Got a kewl map from my dad (he got it from Yokogawa, I just love those big companies ^_^ ) together with the perfect pen (also from Yokogawa ^_^ ), so now I can sit down *everywhere* and write down ideas! No longer need a table

No question about pen and paper in my mind.

I made my first REAL game using The Games Factory Pro (pen & paper to setup how I wanted things to function):

http://www.geocities.com/powerful_hero/Ponging.zip

Let me know what you think.

tarzan_apeman@hotmail.com

Last Day Sale for Multimedia Fusion 1.5, A game authoring tool much more powerful than The Games Factory Pro.

http://www.clickteam.com

(Today only, the home version of MMF is $99 USD, and $269 USD for the Pro version... don''t wait, I got it, and I love the power!)

Good ole'' .5mm mechanical pencil (its perched behind my right ear as I type this- progging break to surf gamedev!), and graph paper by the caseload. I bring it along to work and brainstorm through breaks and lunch hour. Every inch or two, I "booklet" according to subject.

---email--- Tok ----surf----
~The Feature Creep of the Family~

I wish I could get a decent mechanical pencil... I use one for five minutes and it runs out of lead. Oh sure there''s a bunch of broken pieces stuffed up in there, but they only break into SMALLER pieces... sigh.

The thing about pen and paper (or notepads in my case) is that you can skecth scenes, diagrams, flowcharts, and stuff like that. Sketches are vital.