Game Documentation Guide - Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing - page 35

In my experience, this document is usually broken up into separate lines and
placed into a spreadsheet document such as an Excel document. Each line gets a sep-
arate identification name, such as Batman 001, so that developers can easily reference
them and name each voiceline similarly.
Further, each line, if it is to be recorded by a voice actor or actress, should have
a small note of direction in its row, giving the voice talent some clue as to how the
line should be delivered and to whom they are talking. This makes things a lot easier
when recording time comes along.

The Art Bible
The art bible is a document filled with concept drawings and reference images that
the game's artists refer to when trying to build objects in the overall style of the
game. Normally, it is created before production begins to serve as a guideline. This
document will also include written instructions on how to implement the style of
the game (e.g., “gritty, dark� or “cool blues�) and possibly technical instructions on
how the art pipeline will work. For example, artists may make objects in Maya, draw
their textures from a central, shared folder on the network, export their objects into a
specific folder associated with the area they are helping to create, and other pipeline
info.

The Technical Design Document
The technical design document is the document the programmers will refer to when
determining how the game will be programmed, what types of systems will go in the
game, and other details. It's usually written by a game designer with a certain degree
of technical expertise. The following should be included in the TDD.

• The system requirements that the programmers should be programming to-

wards, including performance targets, and specific requirements that the game's
engine has to have to implement the game's design.

• Architectural design of the engine, which includes the game engine's capa-

bilities, including how it works with animation, lighting, shading, graphical
effects, sound, and its abilities to interact with third-party solutions.

• A detailed design of the engine's components and modules. This should cover

specifics for programmers to refer to in terms of how the engine's parts work
and how they interact with one another. Included may be such things as how
threading works, streaming, how the engine renders objects and scenes, how
the engine works with multiple processors and other hardware, data structures,
and so on. It should also deal with how artificial intelligence works within the
game.

• A detailed design of how the engine will take advantage of the native tools the

platform has available.