So I've been scouring over every bit of information to find the best ways to document a game idea, from the early drafts to the final versions. From what I've learned so far (Kindly be warned that I have just scratched the surface here. The more I learn, I'll keep updating this post) a game documenation comes from 5 separate areas of expertise - Writing, Art, Design, Technical and Marketing. Barring my limited knowledge in coding, I'm not much upto the task of Technical documentations right now. And I have no shame in admitting that I know jack about Marketing.
So for the time being I'll concentrate on stuff that I CAN cover, which all would be next in my to-do-list.
So for the time being I'll concentrate on stuff that I CAN cover, which all would be next in my to-do-list.
Writing
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Art
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Design
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- Story - Game Narrative, Backstory and context of the game
- Script - Cut scenes, Dialogues
- Art Bible - Look and feel of the game
- Storyboard -
- Proposal - Unless you have bucket-loads of money, you need to learn how to pitch your ideas, to those who have $
- Concept Doc- Goes along with proposal. A very rough draft of the game idea
- Flow Charts - Tracking the flow of levels, worlds, menus
-Character arc/ Character development
- Design Doc - The leviathan of all the game documents.......
This one mainly covers the Functional Specifications, Gameplay, Game Mechanics, Worlds/Levels. After referring to a lot of GDD's I think I'll present it in the following format :
- Table of Contents - Its good to start with an appendix of the contents in the GDD
- Intro/Overview - Understanding the game, General Info(Console, Genre, Demographic)
- Story Overview - Just a brief idea about the story in which the game is set
- AI - How world reacts - Independently or to Player's actions
- Game Elements - Characters, Items, Objects/Mechanisms
- Game Progression - Break down of Level/ Stage Design, How difficulty increases
- GUI and HUD - Main Menu, Interactive interfaces (Mouse clicks, keys, tap/swipes etc.)
- Game Mechanics - Levitathan inside the leviathan...............
- What/How the gameplay really is
- Camera, Controls, Characters
- Avatar(s) components and capabilities
- How Player controls Avatar/ Physical commands for player movements / Avatar's movement model
- How game control shifts over different levels/stages/worlds
- Non Playable Character(NPC)s
- Hitpoints
- Replayability
- Multiplayer
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