How much (if any) of your game writing do you include in your game design document? Do you give a small overview, a breakdown of the plot, setting and characters, or include the whole story? From what I''ve read, a lot of people either gloss over the story or substantially flesh out the characters and not a lot else... "NPCs will be inherited from the basic Entity class. They will be fully independent, and carry out their own lives oblivious to the world around them ... that is, until you set them on fire ..."
"When you are willing to do that which others are ashamed to do, therein lies an advantage."

I''m the type of guy who thinks the design document can never be too complete. My ideas always begin as a single vision, usually one single aspect of a game that will raise it above others of its kind, and then I work around that. I suppose a lot of people do this.

I usually write my stories in a linear fashion. That is, I make some notes of things I want to include, and then start at the very beginning and go forward. Once in a while, when a particularly gripping scene worms its way into my head, I''ll start a new document and jot the scene down. Then, when I''m ready to use it, it''s just a simple cut-and-paste (with a slight revision to smooth the transition).

I use a lot of pictures in my design docs, too. When you look through one of my notebooks, it''s more like looking at an artist''s scratchpad. I like to doodle little screenshots of how I envision the game to look, and I always draw characters, buildings, tiles, in-game menus, etc. In the end, about half of my design doc is graphics.

And that''s the way it goes for me.

For me it''s similar, but I don''t do so much drawings since I''m not thaat talented in art. At least not enough to draw what I see in my visions

As for the design document, I always start with some little notes on my ideas, just to keep them in mind, and when it''s clear what I want to do, I write a little Exposé (short document which answers some basic questions as "what is it going to be", "how will it be done", "what is it going to look like").

Then I start over to the Design Document itself. Sometimes I have to suppress myself to do the Exposé as it is a bit boring to do, but then I do it though, and afterwards I''m glad I did it since it made some things clearer which would''ve taken me hours if not days to fiddle out.
But you have to know what''s good for you.

And regarding to the content, well, that depends; there are some good articles about it around the net; but they''re only a guideline. You have to figure out by yourself what you need; just think of what Tom said: the design doc can never be too complete!


Good luck anyway
pi~