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[Banov]

Hey all,

Was browsing the designer's workshop and found this to be an interesting topic of discussion, but the workshop doesn't seem to be very active, so I thought I may as well give this its own topic.

I'm curious what people's thoughts are on design documents: are they necessary?  Do you make them?  If you do, are they very detailed? 

Usually I see it suggested (strongly) that you make one for every game you develop, but honestly I've never really done it.  I did make one design document once in my career, but it was unfinished and I ended up going pretty far off of it and never actually updated it.  You might call me horribly disorganized and impractical, but I tend to just make things up as I go along.  And despite all the warnings, this method has worked out pretty well for me.

[Mikademus]

My take on it is that the larger the scope of the project and the more technologies and dependencies are involved the more important a design document becomes. Note that a design document isn't necessarily carved in stone, it can (and should) evolve with the project.

I have my design doc for my current large-scale project on a wiki. It first lists the informal aspirations as well as the formal design goals of the project; it then goes into a succinct discussion of the technologies involved; and ends with an in-depth discussion on selected topics (f.i. MVC architecture and network structure) and a short section with current status and a topmost-level TODO list.

The design document links to other aspects of the project design, f.i. a detailed project coding standards specification and description of core data structures (game entities, file formats, graphic formats etc).

None of these documents are finalised, all are alive and open for being updated, revised or changed. Still the existence of the documents acts as a focus and a way of keeping consistency and to the intended track.

Note however that this is a MLoC project, and smaller ones have less need of thorough specification.

[Glaiel-Gamer]

on a team its kinda useful if the team is large, but on my own I usually get away with a text file of ideas and file format descriptions

[Chris Pavia]

on a team its kinda useful if the team is large, but on my own I usually get away with a text file of ideas and file format descriptions

+1

[Important]

I have my design doc for my current large-scale project on a wiki.

I too use a wiki.

I host a version of media wiki on my laptop. There's a page filled with game ideas - every time I have an idea I think might be fun I throw it in there. Usually it has it's own page that I add to as I flesh the idea out.

When I'm developing a game I have a big todo list on a separate page (and several other pages about technologies, file formats and stuff). Also a notebook.

It's working very nicely.

[Hempuli‽]

I don't do this kind of documents, but I usually have the game 'map' including all the planned frames, and then I describe there a bit what is intended to be in each frame, and mark those I've finished.
I also tend to create very many smaller design and mockup drawings/documents.

[PureQuestion]

I generally stick to an Idea list, for the most part.

[raiten]

I do fine without one until the last 10% of the game development... that's when things get ugly and irritating. At this stage, I make lists of what I've got left to do.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

There are two threads in the tutorials section on design documents which turned into discussions about design documents, you may want to check them too.

[Banov]

I've made ToDo lists before, but I never thought those counted as "design documents"... maybe I'm just thinking of a design document the wrong way.  Either way, I can now say with certainty that 99% of the people here are more organized than I am. 

I'll be sure to check out those tutorials, Paul... thanks!

[c-foo peng]

Working at a studio of 40+ people, design docs are important. Very important. Otherwise, nobody would know what game they're making!

At home, I generally just write up a list of features and generally how I want them to work, and then kinda do whatever I want from there.

[Mikademus]

^ Yeah, it's all a question of where and when the creativity is. If you're working by yourself you will probably have what you need in your head. A design document can even hurt your creativity in the same way as focusing on an engine rather than a game will, or by making you believe that you can't change the Document, thus killing spontaneity, flexibility and exploration. Creativity is to a certain extent distributed throughout the development.

But in a larger team, or on a large project, creativity is it's own phase more concentrated to the project start. In this case a design document is critical.

That's not to say small projects can't benefit from them, even a small game can have a very complicated setting, premise, story, rule structure etc, and better to write it down than risk losing it. Just don't let it take over, one reason for developing by our selves is creative freedom and flexiblity.