Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
The design process
Already have an awesome idea for a game? Great! Now put it down in writing and
try to be as detailed as possible. You may have heard of a design document, which
is exactly what it sounds like; a document full of details of your game, whether it's
story content, weapons, items, characters, and so on. Here's a good baseline template
for your design document:
•
Name of the game
•
Storyline
•
Overall environment of the game
: Do you want it to be comedic, or dark?
•
Objectives
: Things your player will have to do to resolve the issues in
the game
•
Game Progression
: How is the game going to play out? Slow and steady,
or fast?
•
Features of the game
: We are talking about SDK (Software Development
Kit) level here. What do you want to include?
Game Center
,
Xbox Live
,
Leaderboards
, or online multiplayer?
•
Characters:
This is a fun one to work on. Who is the main character? What's
his (or her) background story? What does he (or she) look like? What are they
wearing? Who is the girl you meet in the next town? Who is the antagonist?
There are so many details you can go into here. Have fun!
•
Controls
: How are you going to control your player? Touch screen,
keyboard, or mouse? What does each button do?
•
Level design
: This is an interesting one to design too. For example, you start
off in your home. What does it look like? What objects can you interact with?
Now you can go ahead and actually draw out the level.
This is a much stripped down version of a game design document. You can go into
a ton of details, and remember, the more details you include, the better. There are
many elements to the game design phase. The next element of the design phase is
storyboards for planning out cutscenes.
