ok..I'm a little confused, but a design document is (probably) an everchanging document right? A design document also works better if more then one person is working on it since it'll could turn it from a bad/decent game to a good/excellent game in the end right?

Quote:Original post by hawk2k3
ok..I'm a little confused, but a design document is (probably) an everchanging document right? A design document also works better if more then one person is working on it since it'll could turn it from a bad/decent game to a good/excellent game in the end right?

You are right: a design doc is an everchanging doc. But there are parts that have to be tagged as "unchangeable" at some time - you don't want to change a major gameplay element 15 days before the release of the game.

Even if you are alone, some design doc will help you to clear your mind. When working in teams, the goal of a design doc is not to make the game better but to give the same vision of the game to everyone in the team AND to help the design of the software itself.

It will also help to see what are the needed resources. For example, your design doc may state that you'll have to use mocap for all the character movements (mocap canbe inexpensive - all free for non commercial use). With a good and complete design document, you'll we able to plan what movements you need and how many movements you need. You'll also be able to spot all the needed special effects - and thus to avoid the creation of unneeded special effects which will slow doan your dev.

A side note on the wiki design docs: it may easily handle such kind of requirements. Great.

The creation of a design doc in a small team may involve all the team via formal or informal meetings (irc or im systems are great if you cannot meet irl), but it should be good to have only one person who will be allowed to modify the doc (with, of course, the result of the meeting).

HTH,

Quote:Original post by Anonymous Poster
You are right: a design doc is an everchanging doc. But there are parts that have to be tagged as "unchangeable" at some time - you don't want to change a major gameplay element 15 days before the release of the game.

Let me clarify on the 'better game' part, I meant that maybe the designers/programmers might not be able to add feature X or that mission Y might work better with some changes then what has been laid out.

Feel free to consult GameDev's resources here.

Quote:Original post by Drew_Benton
Feel free to consult GameDev's resources here.

um..Stormrunner made me aware of that in the second post(which BTW they all lead to Gamasultra