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And really is the best way to layout your project and
how communicate it to other people?
Now, we've talked about different approaches to the game design document in
the previews classes, but at its core, the primary components for
it are, a synopsis of your game story, a description of your game play,
and something that describes the look and feel of your world and its characters.
Now these could all be in written form, but even better would be a combination of
text and graphics to really help paint your picture.
You've been working on this document throughout this capstone project.
And as you put together this final iteration,
here are a few tips to help you along.
Start off with a strong opener.
This is the best way to get anyone past that first page.
To do that, take your story, your idea of who and what and find the essence of it,
and give the reader your story's spine right away in a couple of sentences.
Once you have them interested,
in this core idea, move on to describing your story by showing us the characters.
Who they are, what their story is in context of the game,
and what the games goals are, what are you trying to do.
Organize your information so that it flows easily, can be understood, and
appreciated.
This gives your intended audience a feeling that you know your game and
what's important in it.
Use descriptive text and back them up with striking artwork
that shows who the characters are and where they exist.
You've seen tips and suggests,
instructions even in previous classes on designing characters and worlds.
So put all of that to good use in getting artwork prepared to slide into
the game design document alongside compelling written descriptions.
I advocate creating all these pieces, these documents, from the story synopsis,
to the character descriptions, to the game flow chart, all separately and
each distinctly, so that each part can stand on its own strength.
When everything is complete,
you can then assemble a more polished presentation built on those strong parts.
This constitutes the start of a good game design document.
And a basis on which to show off your game design.
Of course, keep showing these things to people you trust and
work with and do incorporate feedback from your peer reviews.
You don't have to keep every single comment.
But you should take the time to consider them all, and
allow that feedback to help strengthen your ideas.
Now a game design document is not necessarily the same thing as a pitch.
But if you like practice presenting this document as a pitch to your family and
friends.
See how well you grab and how well you keep their attention and
get them excited to play your game.
You find that your test audience is losing interest or
getting confused, go back to those sections and rework them so
that your vision is as clear to your audience as it is to you.
And that's really the thing here if it's not
clear to you by the time you've generated all these different bits and
pieces all these idea sheets and separate documents.
You have to go back and you have to keep thinking on your game until it is clear.
Dariush DerakhshaniFaculty, Character Animation
Théotime VaillantInstructor, Experimental Animation
