Author Topic: So You Want to Make a Game - Design Documents  (Read 3247 times)

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Offline Doan Sephim

So You Want to Make a Game - Design Documents
« on: March 12, 2007, 02:12:34 PM »
After 3 years of hanging around SCI forums, I have seen countless great games not be released. I have seen my own great game ("Doan's Quest") gather hard-drive dust before so much as a demo could be released! I wanted so badly to add something cool to the SCI fan-based gaming community, but failed!

There are many ideas about why this happens, but for myself I know it came from being ill-equiped. I had many ideas floating about in my head and tried to draw them and code them immediately. I had pieces of story, art, music, and coding all floating around up in my cerebrum, and tried to get it to come out as a unified whole called "Doan's Quest".

Game designers don't do this! This is bad method, and I think it led to a lot of great SCI games gathering dust or even getting deleted!

Make a "Design Document" first. Force yourself to articulate the features, the game world, the entire story, clearly on paper before you work yourself into a place where you must find a way to fit unconnected peices together or run out of ideas - which will leave the game, even if completed, unpolished.

If everything comes together in a unified whole on paper first, then it will simply be a mattter of translating it from paper to the game - much easier than getting all those nebulous ideas and images in your head out on the first try!

Attached is a Design Document Template by Chris Taylor, and I am using it for Betrayed Alliance - I hope that it can help you as it is helping me!


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Offline joek0

Re: So You Want to Make a Game - Design Documents
« Reply #1 on: March 25, 2010, 07:29:38 PM »


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