[RFD] Actor Analysis (UML)

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[RFD] Actor Analysis (UML)

Post by DominionSpy »

I thought that doing some analysis and design in UML may help to nudge the project along a bit and would help during the implementation.

Actor analysis is aimed at finding the actors (users and other systems) that interact with the system to start building a use case diagram (look it up if you have no idea what I'm on about).

In this stage we just look at the actors and define a small role description. I came up with a few today, based on the real-life counter parts rather than thinking directly about the game:

Track here is any medium on which vehicles travel (road, railroad, airspace, waterways).

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Actor       Role
----------------------
Company     A company owns and operates one or all of transport vehicles, track, contracts
Manager     A manager controls and directs a company or companies
Employee    An employee works for a company, be it as a vehicle driver, ticket collector...
Passenger   A passenger pays a company to travel on their vehicles
Government  A government constructs public track within a country
If you think of other actors, please state the name and role here (as short as you can), or if you think these are wrong please say.
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Post by Hellfire »

In the perspective of the game, I'd expect "Player" and "AI" as actors. Is this what you have in mind?
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Post by DominionSpy »

Hellfire wrote:In the perspective of the game, I'd expect "Player" and "AI" as actors. Is this what you have in mind?
Well my idea was to look at it from the "real world" perspective - this is what is generally done in use case diagrams. You work out what users/systems interact with the system, then you develop use cases for the actors, which go to make the use case diagram and use case documentation.

In this instance I would say that the Player and AI would both be represented by the Manager actor in my list, since they hopefully interact with the system through the same channels.
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Post by Hellfire »

Ok, so how would the "Employee" fit in?
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Post by DominionSpy »

Hellfire wrote:Ok, so how would the "Employee" fit in?
I guess it could be like RollerCoaster Tycoon where you hire maintainence guys, entertainers etc., or it may not have an obvious effect on gameplay (ie done automatically behind the scenes).

Remember that I'm not talking about the system as being "the game", I'm talking about a real-life transport system. Some of the real-world actors may map to game elements, but it should help us with the architechture of the game.

If you think this is the wrong approach, please say and we can discuss a better way.
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Post by Hellfire »

DominionSpy wrote:Remember that I'm not talking about the system as being "the game", I'm talking about a real-life transport system. Some of the real-world actors may map to game elements, but it should help us with the architechture of the game.

If you think this is the wrong approach, please say and we can discuss a better way.
I'm not sure... At least it is an approach towards an architecture, instead of the usual "magic-hat architecture". Let's go ahead and see what happens. :)

If we're talking about real-life transport systems, then we should not rule out the freight contracts: companies (or people) who want goods moved around the map.
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Post by DominionSpy »

Hellfire wrote:If we're talking about real-life transport systems, then we should not rule out the freight contracts: companies (or people) who want goods moved around the map.
Yes, that's a good point - a company might be a courier and sub-contract a transport company to do the actual moving around. I think Royal Mail transports some of its mail up and down the country by train.

In my opinion, I think that there should be many different roles the player (manager) can play, eg they can set up a company that simply does trains, and another that delivers mail and has a few trucks but uses the other company's trains. Another player might simply have a track building company (like Network Rail) that other players' companies pay to put their rollingstock on.

This gives plenty of scope for individual choice and variety in the game (and therefore replayability).
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Post by Hellfire »

DominionSpy wrote:In my opinion, I think that there should be many different roles the player (manager) can play, eg they can set up a company that simply does trains, and another that delivers mail and has a few trucks but uses the other company's trains. Another player might simply have a track building company (like Network Rail) that other players' companies pay to put their rollingstock on.
I agree with you here, but I think that most players will play all roles. ;)
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