quote: Original post by Obscure
The original poster was asking what the important elements of "the design document" are - "document" being the important word. My response was aim specifically at that.

Okay, I see what you meant now. I agree, gameplay is not something you address explicitly in your design document; it is instead a product of your design choices and emerges out of the interactions of all the relevant parts.

[edited by - chronos on November 20, 2002 5:51:04 PM]

if you´re using your design doc in a presentation (say to a publisher) then you´ll have to have sections describing how the game will play and feel (preferably right at the top, you can never know how much of your doc will actually get read).

With that concept most-likely being true, try to keep the long story at the bottom.

Hase,
You are confussing the design doc with the concept/pitch document. The non-technical people at the publishers would get the story as part of a pitch document but you would only need to supply the design to the development staff.

Dan Marchant
Obscure Productions

@Obscure:

Not really, from my experience most publishers want to see full design docs, that usually means that the non-game guys will have at least skim it before handing it down to be reviewed. And for these instances you have to include some general overview and gameplay descriptions in the design doc.
If you have requests for a technical design then it´s a different story entirely, but so far most publishers have wanted "the" design doc (which doesn´t mean that they won´t get all the marketing stuff as well), in which case it´s good to provide an overview as well - it doesn´t hurt to do it, the extra effort is negligable and if you can hold your readers attention for a few pages more then you´ve already taken a big step towards securing a contract.

I don''t know about you guys. But I''m able to design gameplay. In one of my design documents I gave an in-depth descriptive of how the character moves, how the controls would be, and the fighting system of the RPG(that I was working on).

I''m not sure why you guys said, "You can''t design gameplay."

.....Well, it just hit my head. I was describing gameplay mechanics wasn''t I? Isn''t that the samething?

"A programmer being told to ''''go to'''' hell sees the ''''go to'''' part of the sentence as the bad part."

Obscure - I noticed that your first post in this thread, after saying that gameplay is not an element of the design document, then goes on to say:

quote:
The following are all key elements of a design:
User interface
Depth of gameplay
Learning curve
Side with the player
Consistant design/environment

So, how do you fit "depth of gameplay" into your design document?

[edited by - rmsgrey on December 11, 2002 7:00:37 AM]