Is there a standardized format for writing for games? If so, where can I find it? Currently, I am piecing together different styles, including the format for screenplays (for scripted sequences) and regular paragraphical (<- is that a word?) writing, where I go over the outline of the story. I read the post below just now, sorry for similar post. But I guess it is a combination of all these things (flowchart, storyboards, screenplay), but is there any way they should be combined? (should the ideas flow linearly like the story, or should each part be broken up into segments (ie.- flowchart, outlines, etc.) and then referenced to link them together?)

No there isn't a standard format - standard script format (I usually prefer comic or animated movie over regular movie because regular movies have such sparse descriptions and stage directions) will work fine for a linear story. For an interactive story some sort of flowchart is required, and then each possible occurrence needs to be represented with its own little section of script. A storyboard is basically a script with concept art added, so you never need both a script and a storyboard, you upgrade your script to a storyboard. Then there's the design document, anything that isn't part of the script, for example character descriptions, goes there.

Well there isn’t a definitive format that everyone follows, but there are some guidelines to things that you would want to include in game documentation.

The problem with having a set format for games is that games can be so fundamentally different from each other. For example it wouldn’t make sense to make a timeline, story boards, and script for a puzzle game.

However there are some documents that can be put across most games. Documents like the executive summary seem to be relatively standardized. This will contain information like the high concept, genera, platform target audiences, unique features and a brief description of the game.

Another document that can be used in many games is the character design sheets. These will contain information like Name, Brief Description, Back-story, Visual Design, Visual Attributes (Gender, Height, Age…), Game Play Attributes, Design influences, and Vocabulary of motion.

In most of the game docs that I have seen there wasn’t really continuity between the separate parts. When put together the game doc will be something along the lines of a text book. Everything will be broken down to there own sections with one big table of contents in the front.

There is a pretty good article on game design documents on gamasutra called The Anatomy of a Design Document (http://www.gamasutra.com/features/19991019/ryan_01.htm) that walks through most parts of a game doc

Another place that I have gone to, to looks up formatting in the past, is Troy Dunniway’s website http://www.dunniwaydesign.com/. He has some pretty good design document examples posted.

Quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
Well there isn’t a definitive format that everyone follows, but there are some guidelines to things that you would want to include...

dang, I thought I was logged in