- The rough model of the scene - 
When you assign the scene to one of the graphic designers it's advisable to accompany the text and photos with a simple model
 of the scene. It will save you a lot of time, trouble and misunderstandings. And you'll certainly get a result that's closer
to your vision than you'd get if the graphic designer had to do without it. Also we should emphasize that you'll NEVER get
exactly what you imagined. To get that you'd have to create all the scenes yourself which is generally not possible (with the
exception of small projects). Anyway, what is exactly a rough model? It's a 3D representation of the future scene, however 
using very primitive shapes. Effectively that means placing a block named "a chair" on the spot where there's supposed to be
a chair, a cube called "a table" where there's supposed to be a table, a slope where the terrain supposed to slope down 
calling it "steep land" etc. The point is to give the graphic designer a more detailed info about objects, the layout etc.

- The photos - 
A very important component, as I've already written once. If you've got a professional team, then maybe you can afford to 
travel to e.g. Vietnam and live there for some time, take photos and film tons of material that you'll use as a style guide 
or a direct source of graphic material (e.g. textures). If you've only got a freeware team, then you'll have to settle for 
Google (as the big studios do quite often as well) when searching for photos of corresponding places. Or if you know where 
to find a similar place near you then you can just grab a camera and take the photo yourself exactly as you want it. We could
divide the photos into several categories according to their purpose:

- Places - 
A source of inspiration for the scene as a whole - that is if you'll manage to find a photo that corresponds with 
your vision. And it can be anything really - from an interesting chair, to an intriguing pattern on a piece of cloth to an 
interesting expression of a person etc.

- Objects - 
Photos where only a tiny part is highlighted - the one that corresponds with your idea.

- The atmosphere - 
This one's quite obvious: these photos are meant to illustrate the intended atmosphere of the scene. We keep in mind the  
general colour balance, the lighting, the overall design and simply put: the feeling. There's a difference between writing 
the scene should look "gloomy" and providing a photo of a genuinely gloomy place - along with the perfect colour balance 
and lighting - and telling: This is how the scene should look like.



All these photos should:

- show exactly how we've imagined it (because as I've written before,a picture can say more than a thousand words). BTW this
is where the artworks and sketches would come in handy (although I lately have serious doubts if they are really that 
necessary). But it's definitely better to provide a photo of a steep cliff then to describe it great length... "A steep 
cliff, declination 40 degrees to the right, 60 degrees to the left, spiked with rocks, on the left there's a..." You'll 
probably still have to provide a text description anyway, but thanks to the photo it's only necessary to describe some 
specific details.

- another reason to use photos (and probably the most common one) is to provide inspiration. Inspiration is very important to
graphic designers. You can be a genius but you're still not a robot (unfortunately :-)). Even if you're a veritable "Mozart"
and you'll be inventing all the locations yourself after 2 or 3 years you're still going to burn out and you'll be forced to 
give up. It's rather nwise to try to invent everything without some photo inspiration even though I've tried it too). It's 
not impossible but it's too difficult :-) And in the end you're still bound to find out you have no idea how some tiny 
details looks like - should it be the headrest of an armchair or a pillar of an ornamental staircase etc. And trust me, that 
you can really get lost in this kind of things! So, inspiration

- a necessity (and I have to stress that inspiration and only inspiration itself - if you're copying someone elses work, then
it's a completely different matter...)

Well, all these points could be called "pre-production steps". At first glance it may seem a bit "pointless" to the 
beginners: "It can all be thought out on the go, to hell with all the details..." "We've got a rough outline, so what?!" 
"I can complete that any time, it's all just petty details..." However, it's not that simple. Some people consider 
pre-production to be even more important than the production process itself. And because usually in the professional teams 
the pre-production is done by a far smaller team than the production itself, you can find yourself spending far more time on 
the pre-production. 
After you've finished with the pre-production, the project should already have a firm shape with all the things and scenes 
and monsters and weapons etc. ought to be well thought out and defined. It's possible to make some changes on the go, they 
tend to happen and it's really not that bad but honestly: Before you start with the development itself, the project should 
have a well thought out structure as thoroughly as possible... But don't overdo it: just think through what you've got time 
for and what's really overstretched. Madly detailed descriptions as some programmers like them might not necessarily be what 
you need. 
Well, we're near the end of the first part of the developer diary. Finally I'd like to criticize myself a bit (hopefully, if
I do it first no one else will): in this diary as well as the previous ones we've touched a lot of subjects and even though 
I had promised a look at the development process as we see it in the end you can find a lot of general development tips in 
here. So it came out as a sort of a mix of everything. Well, what can be done...?

Hopefully you've liked even this developer diary and you'll come back in a mere week (not a month this time), when the second
part will come out where we'll focus on the very creation of the scenes itself. Speaking of the future, why not make the 6th
developer diary a special one? Any special requests...? So if you've got any suggestions, a secret longing, something you'd
like to read about at the end of July (when the next regular developer diary will come out), just let us know in the 
discussion below. Or if you're interested you can just ask single questions regarding anything that interests you and as soon
as the questions accumulate we'll take a close look at them and we'll even try not to avoid touchy subjects :-)... Anyway, 
for now we just wish you a pleasant winter!