One of my side projects is a perennial roguelike. In its current incarnation, I've got a solid engine for weapons, armour and combat - Melee and ranged. The only major detail to do there is add speed adjustments to them. But all that is programming. My problem, as you may guess, is a design problem. That is, "Where do I go from here?" I've never gotten this far with this solid a design before and I'm rather lost. Note: I design and program "Ground-up", as I understand it - I add things as I see the need for them. Thanks for any and all help.

If you have a decent design, the next step is to have a decent design document. If you have a decent design document, I'd go to one of the multitude of sites found using google with a good outline of everything a design doc needs. If you already know your design doc has everything, then you should either look into writing a technical design doc, or having a software engineer write one for you.

If you have no funding and aren't planning to do anything for a good long while, I wouldn't go that in depth though.

What about level, spell, item and enemy definitions? Are you planning on designing or generating the levels? There's also quests if you're including them.

A design doc might work for you but it sounds like you might work better adding, playing and testing until you come up with what you like.

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Original post by way2lazy2care If you have a decent design, the next step is to have a decent design document. If you have a decent design document, I'd go to one of the multitude of sites found using google with a good outline of everything a design doc needs. If you already know your design doc has everything, then you should either look into writing a technical design doc, or having a software engineer write one for you. If you have no funding and aren't planning to do anything for a good long while, I wouldn't go that in depth though.

No worries about funding - It's a hobby project.

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Original post by Wavinator What about level, spell, item and enemy definitions? Are you planning on designing or generating the levels? There's also quests if you're including them. A design doc might work for you but it sounds like you might work better adding, playing and testing until you come up with what you like.

Hmm...Point.

Part of why I'm asking is curiousity - I'm taking a break; my right hand is telling me it needs to type less for a few days, "thank you very much".

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Original post by Narf the Mouse That is, "Where do I go from here?" I've never gotten this far with this solid a design before and I'm rather lost.

I'm not sure what you mean by "what's next?" - what sort of answers are you looking for, exactly?

Do you know what your "final goal" is? That is, do you have a basic idea of what kind of game you want to create and you're just not sure what the next step is? Or are you trying to decide what sort of game to create?

In my experience, unless you have a clear goal for your project, you'll just end up spinning your wheels adding "nice-to-have" feature but never actually progressing towards a finished product. Try to nail down exactly what you want to have in "version 1.0" and then you'll have a much better idea of where to go from here. It might just be a hobby project, but I'm sure you'll want to release something at some point, otherwise what's the point?

Thanks - There's one "What's next" I didn't think of.

Mostly, that's pretty much it - I'm looking for people's thoughts on what would come next for them.

Not that I intend to copy, but more info generally equals a better decision.