The Anatomy of a Design Document, Part 1: Documentation Guidelines for the Game Concept and Proposal The Anatomy of a Design Document, Part 1: Documentation Guidelines for the Game Concept and Proposal The purpose of design documentation is to express the vision for the game, describe the contents, and present a plan for implementation. A design document is a bible from which the producer preaches the goal, through which the designers champion their ideas, and from which the artists and programmers get their instructions and express their expertise. Unfortunately, design documents are sometimes ignored or fall short of their purpose, failing the producers, designers, artists, or programmers in one way or another. This article will help you make sure that your design document meets the needs of the project and the team. The intended audience is persons charged with writing or reviewing design documentation who are not new to game development but may be writing documents for the first time or are looking to improve them. The Purpose of Documentation The Benefits of Guidelines
Setting an Appropriate Tone for Your Game - Game Design Today, we have a very interesting topic regarding embodied cognition which will be extremely useful in setting an appropriate atmosphere and character perception in your game. The term embodied cognition is a philosophical term which has also been studied in psychology and it basically means that our rational thoughts are interconnected with our sensory experiences. Let's start of by having a look at these two experiments in psychology and hopefully you'll start seeing what I mean and how this applies to games: Experiment One: Holding a cup of coffee This study was conducted in order to determine whether temperature affects our judgement of things. So it's extremely important to consider things such as weather and season in your game. Experiment Two: Physical Stability This was more of the same as experiment one, the only difference was instead of testing temperature the researchers decided to test physical properties. Tiny things like these matter a LOT.
The Anatomy of a Design Document, Part 2: Documentation Guidelines for the Functional and Technical Specifications The Anatomy of a Design Document, Part 2: Documentation Guidelines for the Functional and Technical Specifications Editor's note: Part 1 of this article was published on 10.19.99. Did you ever look at one of those huge design documents that barely fit into a four-inch thick, three-ring binder? You assume that by its page count that it must be good. Well, having read some of those design volumes from cover to cover, I can tell you that size does not matter. This article is part two of a two part series that provides guidelines that when followed will ensure that your design documents will be pertinent and to the point. Functional vs Technical Specifications Traditionally in the game industry, there was only one spec. This problem was tackled as more and more seasoned programmers and managers of business software development moved into games. Therefore, the technical staff waited until the functional specification was approved and signed-off before starting on the technical specification.
The Fiction Engine Blog Games are out of touch with Life Games are struggling to excite within their players any emotion other than 'I'm Epic!' because, too often, they ignore that greatest narrative resource of all. Real life! Read more Narratology - The Study of Game Narrative I've just discovered that our efforts to understand Game Story has an official name. Read more The Reward This beautiful animated short film has managed to sum up EXACTLY why I play, make, and love video games. Read more Brothers - A Tale of Good Game Writing Brothers: Tale of Two Sons is a near perfect marriage of Story and Gameplay. Read more Game Writing equals Narrative Design "...there isn’t a line between the design and the writing, especially if you’re doing a narrative-driven game. Read more What makes good game dialogue? Read more Decisions Decisions - Nightingale 13 Dev Diary We're creating a gamebook for mobile! Read more The Problem with Game Writing Read more History of the Night's Watch Divulging Lore the transmedia way. Read more Read more
Effectively Organize Your Game’s Development With a Game Design Document Have you ever dived right in to developing a game, but found yourself having to constantly change aspects of the design or the gameplay due to a lack of planning? You should consider using a game design document: a guiding vision of the game as a whole, pulling together ideas and plans for the design, development, and business sides of your game. Introduction To put it simply: we like to tell stories. And as the stories grew in complexity, so did the tools used in their making. Although video games were first just about getting the highest score possible when faced with a determined task, developers soon realized the endless possibilities laying ahead of them. A game has the potential to bond player and story in a way never seen before. Unfortunately, since a game is composed of so many different elements, different experts from different areas are required in its creation, making the coordination of the development process a rather tricky job. Overview Marketing High Concept Gameplay Art
Procedural Dungeon Generation Algorithm Explained : gamedev Stuart Lilford's Blog - 5 Common mistakes made by students making their first games and how to fix them The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. As a lecturer in game design I see and play a lot of student games. These are often the first games these students have ever made. I have seen some really talented students develop their first games and I’ve noticed a few recurring mistakes in some of their early work (even the really talented ones). Obviously everyone’s first few games are awful, mine own included (see: The Adventures of Turquoise Macdonald), but I believe that with a little sprinkle of polish over some of these areas, student games can overcome these common mistakes and their games could evolve from awful to almost-good. Every year I teach students how to make games and inevitable I am asked the question “how do I add a menu” or “how do I add pause functionality to the game”. Tutorials are a contentious subject.
Are there any good papers/resources about the mathematics of computer games? (especially RTS/TBS games)?