I'm just wondering if anyone can help me out with a formalized way to develop my games. Questions such as do I really need a design document. How should I prepare the phases of developing my game? How do I chart my progress, do I need to write down how much everything costs. Things such as this, anyone give me some ideas they have on the subject. Please note i'm not really asking how to design a game as such, but more what to do to chart my progress and set milestones for myself, things of that nature? Keith

What genre of game? The process of designing an RPG is hugely different from the process of designing a little puzzle game or arcade shooter.

There's got to be some things that apply to all games. However, as i'm getting no where with this thread, i'll say sidescrolling platformer.

Keith

Certainly there are some things which apply to designing all genres of games: requirements, specifications, and implementation plan, which taken together constitute a design document, which I suppose answers the question of do you really need a design docment - yes you do, however rudimentry. But I assumed you wanted a more than 3 word answer, and for that it's necessary to know the genre of the game. ;)

So, in more detail:

Requirements - This is a description of what you want the game to do, how you want it to behave, what you want it to feel like to play. It is often done in two sections: a features list and a pseudo-walkthrough.
-----Features List - This answers questions like "How many playable characters are there? What platform is the game for? What input device is used to control the game? What game modes are there?"
-----Pseudo-Walkthrough - This is a step by step description of an imagined scenario of you playing the game.

Specifications - This is the detailed description of the game's specific content and behavior, and varies greatly by game genre. A sidescrolling platformer's specifications would incude a descrption of each playable character, what actions they can take and statuses they can have within the game, what effects these actions and statuses have, how the game is scored, how the game physics work, what items and monsters are in the game, what these items do and how these monsters behave, how many levels there are in the game, and what is in each level.

Implementation Plan - This is how you are going to program all of the above.


Those are the three documentation phases. After that you get the implementation phases: alpha, beta, stable, playtesting and revision, release, packaging promotion and publication.

I always create a design document of some description even for small projects and assign days + 'relies upon' against each topic.
I found these useful...
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/list.asp?categoryid=23