Plan for Stephen
by Stephen Burns · 09/28/2002 (6:40 pm) · 2 comments
31-10-2002
A good design document is like a good map. It can help you get you to were you and your game making team want to be heading.
Why don't people learn? I am tired of working with groups that send me very little description of what they want. For example I wrote a 40 page design document for the programmers working on the strategy game. Plus also I made concept pictures of every screen in the strategy game. This is a part of game making that people leave out. A lot of starting up groups I find does this (mostly the young people like me). Lead game designer "I am going to make a counter strike clone err make some guns for me". I am sorry I can work with this I like to see a design document first even if its two pages long. A design document sort of lays out what's going to be built for the game (like a design for a House). Now tell a Builder "Make me a house with stuff in it" and he will tell you he needs a " Plan/ design" to work from. So a good plan/design document is the first thing a game making team needs. Or the lead designer must be very good at feeding information to the members of the team and keeping them updated.
Well I am working on a new design document for a Space strategy game. I am laying out the game on a website using front page. My programmers can then go through the whole game as a web site and look at each area. Also I have just completed all the notes for the research tree, games units and Planet management. This new game project will start maybe in January next year and I have already done a bit of work on the design document for it (about 20 pages of ruff notes plus a test website laying out the games screens).
A good design document is like a good map. It can help you get you to were you and your game making team want to be heading.
Why don't people learn? I am tired of working with groups that send me very little description of what they want. For example I wrote a 40 page design document for the programmers working on the strategy game. Plus also I made concept pictures of every screen in the strategy game. This is a part of game making that people leave out. A lot of starting up groups I find does this (mostly the young people like me). Lead game designer "I am going to make a counter strike clone err make some guns for me". I am sorry I can work with this I like to see a design document first even if its two pages long. A design document sort of lays out what's going to be built for the game (like a design for a House). Now tell a Builder "Make me a house with stuff in it" and he will tell you he needs a " Plan/ design" to work from. So a good plan/design document is the first thing a game making team needs. Or the lead designer must be very good at feeding information to the members of the team and keeping them updated.
Well I am working on a new design document for a Space strategy game. I am laying out the game on a website using front page. My programmers can then go through the whole game as a web site and look at each area. Also I have just completed all the notes for the research tree, games units and Planet management. This new game project will start maybe in January next year and I have already done a bit of work on the design document for it (about 20 pages of ruff notes plus a test website laying out the games screens).
About the author
#2
06/06/2007 (5:12 pm)
Yeap my big tanked project, 12 months for the art and 16 for the code I think. 
Torque Owner Javier Canon