Well That was fun.

After sorting out the headless chickens at work, I finally got down to a bit of design work on the client today. I've got most of the functionality noted down so I know where and what certain bits do. The problem I'm having now is what these user interfaces should look like. I know the style that's needed but as I have the artistic ability of blind gorrila, I think I'm a little out of my depth.

The graphics can be sorted out at a later point as long as I can get the gameplay right. Most of the articles I've read in Edge Magazine and on the newgroups seem to imply that the graphical designs should come into it towards the end of the pre-production stage or even at the beginning of development.

The Impression I'm getting is there are four major stages to developing a game.

1. The Idea for the game (Inspiration).
2. Pre-Production (Rounding out the idea).
3. Production (Writing and testing Code).
4. Post production (Support, Patches, etc).

I suppose I'm still at stage 2. Both the server and the Client Specs have to be fully completed and the code I have written has mostly experimental. There is a very long way to go with this.