as far as writing game design documents go...

you could do worse then to learn from looking at game guides, like the ones located at www.gamefaqs.com

some of the longer ones (200kb and up) are written very nicely, often better then any professional.

you''ll see alot of good ways for writing a long easily accessible document. Including, making version updates at the top of the document, after the contents, to make everything easy to find and distribute.

Someone that doesn''t use a game design document is Derek Smart...



Zaptruder

quote: Original post by 3tehakanyuksel

Original post by Sage13


All kind of projects and all kind of teams need design documents. Otherwise it would be just luck….



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Hakan Yuksel
3TE Games

Really, So I should write out a design doc for (let say) a game of "Enter the number"? I don''t think it would be nessesary in situations like this. Again it depends on the amount. Even better, it depends on your skill and communication capabilities, a design document is definitly not always the answer, it''s just a good idea.

It has been said that if your project is small, then Great. You''ll only need a small design document.
No matter how insignificant, if you consider it a project, it will be beneficial to your experience and -attitude- in the future to treat it seriously, with the whole 9 yards.

i made sure to have a design doc for my game, since it did have some relatively complex ideas which i didnt want to explain over and over to my graphics and assisting programming guys.

Including the script for our game, our design doc is around 790 pages. Not including the script (which is incomplete) its around 175 pages.

I don''t know, I think if you''re making space invaders, or some clone, you really don''t need it. if you''re making Tic Tac Toe, as a first project, you don''t need it, and if you''re making something else really easy you don''t need it. But if you''re planning on doing something pretty big, even alone I think it''s a good idea.

-=Lohrno

Actually I cheated, and made a couple small drawings for the Tic Tac Toe game I''m making. It''s gonna be a COOL tic tac toe game =D

-=Lohrno

Design documents aren''t needed, really. All that gets judged in the end is the final product. The methods of the programmers, artists, design teams, etc. aren''t judged by the consumers. Whatever methods get to the end product, preferably the fastest, are acceptable.

However, if you are writing a large, complicated game, then a design document would be a good idea. Design documents are similar to an outline for a large paper or a business plan. They keep you focused on the specific goals of the project and help to promote organization.

In my opinion, if you can already visualize your game and know exactly where it will lead, then by all means, start delving into the code. Just remember, designing and planning first can save you time in the end. You wouldn''t want to have to rewrite code because you realized it didn''t work into the overall design after all.

I would also suggest design documents if you are working with a large group of people, or even several people. The document would aid focusing the group as a whole and bringing everyone to the same level of understanding as to the goals of the project.

-- Neg

Design documents are needed like blue prints are needed to constructing a building.

Zaptruder

There was a comment in there that made me laugh. Someone mentioned that Peter Molyneux didn''t use design documents, or something nearly to that effect.

And that, my friends, is why you need design documents. I played black and white for a while. And I kept thinking "Why the hell do I have to do these stupid tasks? Can''t I just play with my pet? Won''t those damn things quit bugging me to move on?" And even in the interviews, you hear about how the game grew, and evolved and such, and it shows in the scattered way the game plays. I think I remember a mention in a gamespot article about how at one point he realized that what they had was cool, but that there wasn''t a game, just stuff to play with.

I think the essence of a design document is twofold. The first is that it answers the question "What am I doing?" And the answer has to be a real one. The second is that as things are decided they should be put down on record. Even if the decision is made during the process, even if the decision is just a tempoary one, it needs to be somewhere.

And true, while it may be possible for someone to visualize it and remember it all in my mind, I have enough trouble with remembering birthdays and visualizing the set ofl points at a distance of one unit from the origin in four dimentional space.