GAME DEVELOPMENT DOCUMENTATION Uğur Büyükköy

«The following two statement usually both true: There is not enough documentation. There is too much documentation.» Larry Wall

DOCUMENT YOUR GAME You will be primarily concerned with what is commonly called the design document. There many pieces of documentation. It is important to understand what each of them is supposed to contain and how the different documents interrelated.

Concept Document, Pitch Document, or Proposal These are usually first formal documents created for a given name. This document is shown to the green-light committee. Concept documents discuss all aspects of the game idea. These documents are not much use in the game’s actual development.

Competitive Analysis When writing a competitive analysis, you will need to include a discussion and potentially screenshots from the leaders in your title’s genre. This is another document used in trying to sell your your game. It typically lists unique features of the game being developed. It also provides similar games, provides brief synopsis of the fiction, describes how each of these games performed. This document do not help very much with development.

Design Document It is also referred as functional specification. The goal is to fully describe and detail the gameplay of the game. A well written and complete document can also be of vital importance where a game subsequently converted to another platform by a different development team. The guts of design document are detailing of game mechanics: What players able to do How they do it How that leads to a compelling gameplay experience It should not spend time to describe the game’s development from a technical standpoint. It should describe how will game function, not how that functionality implemented.

Flowcharts Flowcharts may often be included as part of the design document or as a separate document. Flowcharts are a means for visually representing a chunk of gameplay.

Story Bible Story bible is needed if the game being developed involves a complex story line with variaty of characters and locations, or if the games takes place in a universe with a specific history. A story bible is a good place to document a game’s potentially extensive back-story. Once a story bible has been created, when an artist wishes to learn more about the character he is modeling, he can turn to bible and find out about character’s childhood. A story bible might describe the history of the game-world. The creation of a complex story bible depends on the working style of the team.

Script If a game has a story, it is quite likely that at some point players will be asked to listen to narration, hear characters talking, or read information about upcoming missions. The non-linear nature of games demands that the script be organized and presented differently from a play, movie, or television script. In-game dialog may be randomly varied between a number of expressions that communicate the same information but say it differently. Designers will often want to write their interactive script to syntax found in such an editor, so that when it comes time to implement the dialog the process will be greatly simplified.

Art Bible The art bible is often composed of concept sketches and other resources. The information contained in the art bible needs to correspond and be consistent with the story. An art bible may also contain technical guidelines that artists need to follow to create assets that will work..

The Game Minute The game minute is typically describes in detail a short section of gameplay. These documents can be used to communicate to the team or to upper management what direction the game is going and to serve as a reality check.

Story Boards Story boards are an established film and television device for sketching or mocking-up shots before they are actually filmed. Story boards can also be used as concept sketches or mock-ups for how the game-World will appear to players. It may be advantageous to use some kind of branching story boards, where the consequences of major player choices are drawn and then laid out like a flowchart or decision tree.

Technical Design Document A technical design document is the sister specification to the design document. It discuss how the functionality will be implemented. Here is where the code’s structure is laid out and analyzed.

Schdules and Business/Marketing Documents This document emphasizes the schedules, budgets and marketing projection information.

No Standard Documentation Different companies may have different standards for what documentation they create. Usually, how much documentation a publisher requires is inversely proportional to how trusted and experienced you and your team are as developers.

THE BENEFITS OF DOCUMENTATION Beyond making the suits happy, good documentation really can help make game better. You should be involved and interested in the creation of all the documentation described before.

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