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I'm familiar with the usual "make a text game, then 2d game, then... then..." advice.

I also strongly disagree with it for the simple fact that you probably won't stick with it. Seriously, if you want to make an online 3D game, making a tetris clone is a long side quest with no gain other than a bit of knowledge. The amount of knowledge (besides becoming better at programming) is minimal as most of the skills are not transferrable and it will kill your motivation.

If you want to make MMOs or some other online game, I advise going to work on an existing text MUD, NWN persistent world or joining the Planeshift dev team. You will also learn programming skills creating a persistent storage system for an NWN PW and you won't lose your motivation so fast. Also, you'll be exposed to people who are operating a live world and you'll pick up MMO community management as well.

That is... if the OP is still around...

yeah he still lurks every now and then

Jackolantern wrote:You also need a design document. This is probably why you have a feeling of panic about starting a game. You are beginning work when you have no idea of which direction you are heading, which is a very bad idea. You may get halfway through development and realize that you need to make massive changes because of something that came up later.

Hey there

I've just introduced myself and I'm starting to check out some of the forum threads before actually saying anything, since I'm a total noob around these themes.

Most of the concepts are alien to me, but here's something I can grasp: A game design document.

So I have a basic idea for a browser based RPG.

What should a game design document include? Can it be a simple word document? I've actually started building tables in excel with creatures/weapons/general stuff. Is that correct or should I start somewhere else?

Thank you.

there are several different correct ways to make GDD.

try some of these

http://www.gamedev.net/reference/list.asp?categoryid=23

http://gamedesign.wikicomplete.info/gam ... t-template

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=w ... j8T_ZBFrdQ

Cool!

It looks just like a standard Business Plan, which rocks for me because I work on Marketing and these templates look really familiar

Thanks a lot

Well, a design document for yourself is going to be quite a bit different than one for a large, commercial development team. For me, I do break out a spreadsheeting program and work out all of the items, mobs, areas, etc., but first I use a word processing program to basically write down everything I want in the game. Then I stew on it for a while before writing any code, and likely change a decent bit of it. After a couple of revisions, I finally sit down to write some code. Commercial studios can be a bit more verbose on certain things, and other parts may not apply to a single-person team at all.

@Jackolantern Absolutely.

That's exactly the kind of design document I have in mind. Halls provided me with very useful info, but obviously every case is unique, and some (if not most) of the fields present on those design document templates would not apply to my one-man-nearly-impossible-project.

I reviewed the templates so that I can use whatever content I find pertinent for me, and it actually gave me some insights on things that are important but I hadn't thought of before.

Thanks for the input guys!