How many people plan their games out on paper?

#21 Planning game on paper before starting coding may have also a serious drawback, at an hobbyest level at least.
You tend to plan something impossible to achieve
That's why I quitted with preliminary detailed planning
I code fragments of game and then I put the pieces togheter

#22 I find that when I plan the game out on paper, I have a clear idea of what I'm working on. I'll even draw out the menu system and levels before I go and start coding/creating them. After I have a working 'model' on paper it's easier to put it together on the screen.

I do have my own working engine, so i don't have to worry about that. I also planned that out too.

#23 I use paper for everything. Cant have enough of it. Obviously for character ideas and drawings etc, but everything else too. Its a good way to structuring your thoughts and whilst your doing that you can come up with alot of other thoughts and links to that aswell. A good brainwave starter, and failing that somewhere to keep your idea's

As the person ahead of me said, you often plan somthing stupid and its impossible to do in the end. I find that I am having to make myself very limited, in terms of what is actually possible. I think as long as you keep your mind on the limits you can get a very good idea of whats going on.

#24 I like to separate the concepts of "designing" and "planning". To me, it's the difference between an artist's concept sketch and the finished architectural blueprint.

I see design as the process of brainstorming and sketching out ideas, no matter how wild and impractical. It's the creative part of the process: figure out what you'd like to see without worrying about the details of implementation. Pen and paper are essential, and there's usually a lot of doodling involved. About a half to three quarters of your ideas will probably wind up discarded or radically altered, and that's perfectly okay.

Once you've got a concept you're happy with, start planning. That's the nuts and bolts phase, the technical side of things. Figure out what's required to make your vision a reality. Consult with others. Run tests. Is it feasible? No? Tweak it! Go back to the design phase and figure out an alternative that fits the available resources.

With each iteration between design and planning, you bring your wild ideas closer to reality, and refine the technical framework needed to implement your visions. When they meet in the middle, you have your blueprint, and you're ready to rock.

That's how I've managed my projects for years, and it's worked quite well for me. I've stretched my own limitations, explored new technical ground, and even my discarded ideas have found new life in future projects.

Best of all, my doctors are so impressed with my progress, they let me design with real pens and pencils now, not just crayons! Now if I can just convince them to loosen the restraints so I can reach the mouse more easily, I'll have my current project done in no time.... =)

#25 I don't mean to sound like the retard of the bunch here,but I just got interested in making a game. I don't really plan on making a too far fetched year long game or anything, however I do have a general idea of what I hope to accomplish. I don't really understand the whole coding thing yet, but I am fairly decent at drawing pictures from my imagination. What I am trying to do is make a simple "click the buttons" game that will make a story progress as the player decides on what happens next. The story will progress accordingly.
The pictures aren't a slight bit of problem, however coding and how to arrange it is my main concern. If anyone can help, I'd really appreaciate it. Thank You.

#26 My team has several design documents covering each major MMO system for our game. If we added them all together, it would come to around 250 - 300 pages easily and we haven't finished them all yet. We're basically trying to build a design document that someone could read and know EXACTLY how to play every aspect of the game.

This allows us to get to a point where if we had to contract out, we could bring someone in and they would know exactly what to do. We're doing all art as concept art as well. Nothing is done as a model before it's drawn up on paper.

We're probably going a bit overboard with our planning, but the more planning you do, the less building is required ;)

#27 I write my design documents, etc. as text files on the computer, but I always have ideas written down on paper and diagrams drawn on paper as well.

#28 I use word to write my design documents, Concept art is a mixture of Photoshop created and scanned in had art.

#29 I tend to sit down with notepad++ and type in ideas, clean them up, flesh them out etc. - kind of a "design document".

For levels etc. I'll grab a pad of grid paper and a penci and go to town!

It works pretty well for me, being a one-man team like many others are. There are some decent tools out there for letting you electronically jot down ideas (Keynote is one, and it's free I think).

#30 I use a lot of Visio to do planning with a sheet for file relationships, the flow of the application, and object relationships. For my latest project, I did some more charting for how the network is handled and the merit and presentation-interpretation of packets. That was for a C++ project, I expect that with Torque, I won't have so much to document, but I'm new to it.