{Last Update: 2006/11/16}
{Licensing: You can use this template without giving credit to anyone. This design document template is free for you to use to design your own games.}
{The purpose of the design document is to aid in the construction of the game by having everything laid out so that everyone on the team knows exactly what's going on. Anything else is just fluff. Don't make your design documents into advertisements.}
{Paragraphs in {}'s are comments about how the design document should be set up and should not be included in the final design document. Text included in []'s is stuff that you should fill in - the text is the description of the field.}
{As your game progresses, your design document will change a great deal. Update the design document every time you make a change and keep an archive of all the old design documents. You should do the same with each working prototype of the game as well.}
{Some parts of this document are intended for writers, others for artists, programmers, or musicians. The design document should contain details about alot of things. In some cases, you may want to split the document into several separate documents for easy maintenance.}
{When you have a prototype of the game, you should use the same version number for the prototype as for the design document. You can update the version number for both once a week of so (depending upon how fast work is progressing). It doesn't really matter whether the version # starts at 0.00 or 1.00 or whatever so long as you remain consistent.}
{List versions in decreasing order - newest on top, oldest on bottom.}
| Genre | [genre] |
|---|---|
| Input Devices | [list all input devices along with whether they're required or optional] |
| Platform | [platform] |
| Program Type | [full-screen application, windowed application, applet, or something else] |
| Rendering | [type of rendering (2d vs 3d, isometric or not, etc.). Also, include information about the scale of the objects in the game. For instance, a 2d tile-based game would specify the tile size here.] |
| Screen Resolution | [size and color depth for full-screen applications. If your program's a windowed application, you should note that here, along with the minimum/preferred/maximum window sizes. If it's an applet, just specify the size of the applet.] |
| Target Audience | [Who should play this game. This should include what the ESRB rating should be.] |
| [Special Concept 1] |
|---|
[Description of this concept.] {A concept is a statement that will be true about the final product. Also include some information about why this is a good idea. These concepts must be useful during game construction, so things like "It will be 50% funner than Diablo 2." are useless. Also, don't list things that appear elsewhere in the document unless they're really important.} |
{Example:
| Streamlined Gameplay |
|---|
Many RPGs feature equipment screens, merchant screens, unnecessary skills, minigames, and even strange sequences where the player has to jump across precarious chasms. In some games, these "features" can become a huge annoyance. Mythale RPG leaves all that out so that the player can focus entirely on the gameplay. Equipment is acquired by accomplishing quests and is automatically used. The player uses the same basic equipment throughout the game and simply upgrades equipment in various ways. |
}
| [Special Concept 2] |
|---|
...
| [Special Concept n] |
|---|
[Include a general description of the game. It's usually best if this description references other games to compare their features to the features of this game. Saying that you want to make a game with a particular feature from another game is usually a good way to get your point across.]
[If your game is so unique that it's not like any other game, you're probably creating a new genre.]
[This is for how your character develops (e.g. going up levels, gaining skills).]
[Describe the combat system.]
[Options that the player can set.]
[Describe whatever magic-like system you have (if any). Only include how the system works - the spell list comes later.]
[Describe what happens outside of combat.]
[Describe how the player perceives the world. Does he just walk around like in Diablo? Or does he have separate town and world maps like in Final Fantasy and Geneforge games?]
[If there are separate kinds of maps, there may need to be separate descriptions in each subsection of the Game World section.]
[Note that the term "world" is used loosely. If the game has multiple planets, alternate dimensions, or whatever, that will be detailed in this section.]
[List each town, fortress, enchanted forest, or whatever here. In general, you want to list them in the order that the player will probably visit them in and number the list. If there's several places that the player could easily visit in any order, use one number for that region and assign each place a letter - just like you would do in an outline of a document. List things like the surrounding terrain and the sort of people/monsters/whatever that live there. Don't list specific Npcs or story elements.]
{Example: 1. Academy - This is a large instructional facility carved out of the side of a mountain. All the people here are either instructors or students. Art Schema: cave.sch}
[Describe how time passes in your game. If your game has a day/night cycle, describe it here. What you put in this section can vary from "Time doesn't pass" to huge charts of astrological data. ONLY list what is actually relevant to the gameplay!]
[How the player moves through the world.]
[Area "Flow" describes the path that the player will take between areas. It doesn't describe specific areas. Rather, it describes how they are connected in general. This is most commonly used to describe how rooms in an interior environment are connected. Are the rooms small or large? Large rooms will be better for games with long-range projectile weapons. Are they typically connected by hallways, or does one room flow straight into another? Is there symmetry?]
[Describe how the player transitions from the interiors of buildings, etc. to the outside world and vice versa. This may not be relevant for some games.]
[If a game has multiple types of maps (i.e. world and town maps), describe how the player transitions between them.]
[How weather affects the game if weather exists at all.]
[In this section, it's generally best not to include things like statistics. Statistics will change as you tweak the game. What you really need here is general descriptions of the important characters and what they do. Depending upon the game, you may want to include things such as appearance and personality.]
[Describe the player's character, including how to create the character (if applicable). Do not include information on how your character changes (e.g. goes up levels, gains skills, or whatever) because that is described in the gameplay section.]
[This section is for people who can join your party. So this is primarily for RPGs. Don't list people who just give you valuable information here - they're just Npcs, not really "allies".]
[Who do you fight? You don't necessarily need to describe every enemy in the game, but the major bosses should be described.]
[People who you don't fight you (generally, people you can talk to). In general, split them up by location. You can also have a section for some key "standard" characters (e.g. inn keepers, shopkeepers) who appear everywhere and are always about the same. Do NOT list enemies in this section - they are listed in the Lists at the end of template.]
[What is going on in the game right now? This determines what the player's goals are in the game.]
[Some story-heavy games may require a history of the game world. Most will not.]
[Describe what the player should feel while playing the game. Should the player be excited or scared? Should the player laugh alot?.]
[Describe how the game makes the player feel the way he/she should feel.]
[Describe the place & time the game takes place in. How complete this is depends upon how story-oriented the game is. An arcade game might have just a few words, such as "medieval fantasy world". An RPG would need alot more.]
[Describe the multiplayer game. Don't include information that is relevant to both single- and multi- player games.]
| Gaming Sites | [Note whether you want to support sites like Gamespy] |
|---|---|
| Max Players | [How many players can play at once] |
| Options | [Typically, the server can set options that affect the game] |
| Persistence | [Either you have a persistent world on your server, you allow the player to save the game somehow, or a game disappears as soon as you stop playing.] |
| Servers | [What kind of client-server system (or whatever) your game has] |
[A basic description of the single-player game. Don't include information that is relevant to both single- and multi- player games.]
| Hours of Gameplay | [This should be a range from how many hours it takes to beat the game if you did only the quests required to how many hours it takes to complete all the subquests and interesting other "stuff" too.] |
|---|
[Detail how the single player game is saved and loaded. Detail the file format if that's appropriate.]
[Outline the story here. If it is small, you can include the whole story here. Otherwise, put it in a separate document.]
{When writing the story for a game, it should look almost like a walkthrough for a game, but don't bother with listing what items appear where and things like that. And instead of saying what to do, say what's happening. Something called the "Loomis Ladder" may be useful depending upon what kind of game you're making.}
[What does the player have to do to win?]
[How does your user interface work?]
[Anything that the player can do with the keyboard, mouse, or other input device. For mouse-controlled games, you generally describe the things you can click on as one input each. In addition to buttons, etc. that you can click on, make some mention of the TYPES of objects (e.g. levers, people) you can interact with by clicking on them.]
[Detail whatever is output by your game. In general, it's best to detail things one box of output at a time. So you might have a screen for viewing the current map, a screen to view some sort of journal, a regular noncombat screen, a combat screen, a spell-selecting screen, and who know's what else. Describe each one, including the layout of the objects on the screen.]
{The purpose of this section is so that the artists know what to draw.}
[First, describe how the artwork will be formatted. You should include both the file format and how the files will be arranged. Then list groups of characters that are all similar. For instance, the goblinoid group could be goblins, orcs, ogres, and trolls.]
[As above, describe how the artwork will be formatted. Then describe what artwork you need here. Typically, you should have sets of art that you need made. Each set of art can be used in many areas.]
{Example: cave schema - The walls and floor are both rock. Use mud for the ground image because the area around the exit of the cave will be in the same map as the cave itself. Use the default furniture, etc. images.}
[There are a couple of things to note here. First, music could be one song per area, or it could be a list of songs that is randomly cycled through no matter where you are. Or it could be something else. Whatever it is, describe that here. If you like, list what pieces of music you need.]
[Describe the main information about the game engine. It could almost be a list of features that you want implemented - this section is mainly for the programmers.]
[Describe anything special about your artificial intelligence system. Don't detail standard things like collision detection, unless there's something unique about it.]
[List any formulas that are used within the game and explain what they're for.]
[This is how the game "works" internally. In a computer RPG, this would include everything that you would find in a pen-and-paper RPG's main source book. In an arcade game, this might include something about how weapons are fired.]
[Describe how your game will be rendered. Describe things like lighting and camera angles here. For 3d games, this section will be much more complex than for 2d games. 2d games need little more than the camera angle and a couple of details about how the art should be drawn. This section is primarily for the use of artists and programmers.]
[Guess what sound effects you'll need and list them (along with what they're used for) here.]
[Describe whatever world editing tools you want to have here, whether they'll be included with the game or not. If you plan to just describe the world in .txt files, note the format of the .txt files here.]
[List the objects that can be found in the world. Split the list up into sections if you have lots of items. For instance, weapons could be one section, armor could be another.]
[List and describe any special abilities the characters have. If there's different kinds of special abilities, give them separate sections.]
[List anything that you might want to implement in the future but probably won't. These are features that are flawed in some way, don't fit in with the rest of the game, or would take too long to implement. Whenever you remove a feature from the game, be sure to list it here along with why you removed it.]
{This section is a good place to look when you're thinking about adding more features or want to create a patch for an existing game.}
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