gamedevlists-design

Re: [GD-Design] Design Documents

[J C L. <cl...@ka...>]

On Wed, 7 Nov 2001 14:04:16 -0600 
Mike Sellers <Sellers> wrote:

> FWIW, I don't know anyone using SGML or LaTeX -- are people really
> still using these?

A lot of 'net related documentation is written in DocBook (which is
SGML-compliant).  Many (most?) technical journals require
submissions in TeX with several also accepting the LaTeX macro set
(all that I've run into).  As I'm a dinosaur I do all my letters,
reports, articles etc in LaTeX.  More specifically I refuse to use
page-layout styled word processors.  Useless things.  I want and use
markup languages for document authoring.

As to the size of the population?  Not sure.  LyX, a GUI front end
to LaTex is actively maintained and developed as is the auctex mode
for (X)Emacs, and per the mailing lists seems to have a reasonably
active user base.  A decent percentage of the technical
documentation sites I used are auto-genned by exporting HTML from
DocBook (they typically also export PS, and PDF).  A couple of the
companies I've worked for (most notably IBM) kept all their product
documentation under something that was very DocBook-like (different
name I forget).  Beyond that I've few/no impressions on their wider
use.

-- 
J C Lawrence
---------(*)                Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
cl...@ka...               He lived as a devil, eh?
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/  Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.

RE: [GD-Design] Design Documents

[Sellers, M. <mse...@or...>]

Albert Reed wrote:
> We use Word for our non-technical design documentation and 
> have yet to really run into problems. However, for the most 
> part only one person ever edits a given section of the design 
> document at a time. Everyone contributes ideas, and someone 
> who's a good writer sticks them into the doc. We have it 
> broken into several sections and then exported into HTML. The 
> doc right now is about 70 pages. To keep people up-to-date we 
> just paste changes onto the homepage of our internal web 
> server for all to read.

I should add given my earlier comments that we use "Word + Perforce" not
just word by itself.  Word is great for docs, and Perforce (or your favorite
source control tool) manages the versioning/branching/merging issue.  We
keep our docs accessible from an internal web site as well, so you don't
have to check them out to view them or anything.  

> The reason we went with this solution was simplicity. If you 
> don't need to have multiple people editing the same section 
> of the document at the same time, then you won't run into any 
> problems. Saving as HTML and putting it onto a web server 
> works great for us, since it's super-easy for programmers to 
> look up the information they need just by browsing around on 
> our internal server. There's no setup time, and file->save 
> as... Is about as easy as it gets.

Yep.  And simplicity wins out *big* in areas like this.  Tools that are
way-cool but at all cumbersome to use just won't get used; people will find
it easier to circumvent the tools instead.  (FWIW, ours is a large team
project too, so this doesn't seem to have issues of scaling to support a
large project or a large team.)  

Mike Sellers

RE: [GD-Design] Design Documents

[Tom F. <to...@mu...>]

Wikis do indeed rock for docs that are trivially easy to maintain and
update. I heartily recommend them for pretty much everything - coding docs &
specs, design docs, todo lists (both personal and company), etc.

http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki for more info about Wikis and how they work and
stuff.

Tom Forsyth - Muckyfoot bloke.

What's he up to now (and can I have a go)?
http://www.eidosinteractive.com/downloads/search.html?gmid=86

> -----Original Message-----
> From: J C Lawrence [mailto:cl...@ka...]
> Sent: 07 November 2001 21:50
> To: Sellers, Mike
> Cc: 'gam...@li...'
> Subject: Re: [GD-Design] Design Documents 
> 
> 
> On Wed, 7 Nov 2001 14:08:07 -0600 
> Mike Sellers <Sellers> wrote:
> 
> > Yep.  And simplicity wins out *big* in areas like this.  Tools
> > that are way-cool but at all cumbersome to use just won't get
> > used; people will find it easier to circumvent the tools instead.
> > (FWIW, ours is a large team project too, so this doesn't seem to
> > have issues of scaling to support a large project or a large
> > team.)
> 
> Aye, this is specifically why I've installed WikiWikis (specifically
> TWiki) at three companies now.  The barrier to use factor is
> obscenely low, and its easy to create automated tools to
> mechanically inject and maintain relevant content (eg recent stats
> etc).
> 
> -- 
> J C Lawrence
> ---------(*)                Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
> cl...@ka...               He lived as a devil, eh?
> http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/  Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.

RE: [GD-Design] Design Documents

[Andrew P. <aj...@eu...>]

I have been trying out zwiki (a wiki built in Zope - a python web server).
Does anyone have suggestions for producing printable and/or self contained
linked electronic format documents from such wikis?

Regards,
Andrew


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Re: [GD-Design] Design Documents

[J C L. <cl...@ka...>]

On Tue, 13 Nov 2001 19:04:17 -0000 
Andrew Perella <aj...@eu...> wrote:

> I have been trying out zwiki (a wiki built in Zope - a python web
> server).  Does anyone have suggestions for producing printable
> and/or self contained linked electronic format documents from such
> wikis?

PhpWiki has some crude tools in this direction (zipdump).  IRRC
there was a project a while for TWiki to be able to export PDFs, but
I don't know what, if anything happened to that.

-- 
J C Lawrence
---------(*)                Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
cl...@ka...               He lived as a devil, eh?
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/  Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.

[GD-Design] Article on 'Evolutionary Game Design'

[Daniel C. <dan...@an...>]

For your reading pleasure:
http://www.lostgarden.com/evolutionary_game_design.htm

This article looks at creating a design 'process.'  There are dozens of
methodologies for creating great code, or streamlining the creation of
suitable art assets.  Designers can ask a related question, "What are a set
of rational step-by-step activities that can be followed in order to create
a more playable game?"

Enjoy,
Daniel Cook

Re: [GD-Design] Article on 'Evolutionary Game Design'

[Martin G. <bz...@wi...>]

I'm afraid the link is broken, dude?

Cheers,
Martin

----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Cook" <dan...@an...>
To: <gam...@li...>
Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2002 11:04 PM
Subject: [GD-Design] Article on 'Evolutionary Game Design'


> For your reading pleasure:
> http://www.lostgarden.com/evolutionary_game_design.htm
>
> This article looks at creating a design 'process.'  There are dozens of
> methodologies for creating great code, or streamlining the creation of
> suitable art assets.  Designers can ask a related question, "What are a
set
> of rational step-by-step activities that can be followed in order to
create
> a more playable game?"
>
> Enjoy,
> Daniel Cook
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Gamedevlists-design mailing list
> Gam...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gamedevlists-design
>

Re[2]: [GD-Design] Article on 'Evolutionary Game Design'

[Kerim B. <wa...@st...>]

Try this one:

http://www.gamedev.net/reference/design/features/evolution/

or this:

http://www.google.com/search?q=evolutionary+game+design


> I'm afraid the link is broken, dude?
> 
> Cheers,
> Martin
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Daniel Cook" <dan...@an...>
> To: <gam...@li...>
> Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2002 11:04 PM
> Subject: [GD-Design] Article on 'Evolutionary Game Design'
> 
> 
>> For your reading pleasure:
>> http://www.lostgarden.com/evolutionary_game_design.htm
>>
>> This article looks at creating a design 'process.'  There are dozens of
>> methodologies for creating great code, or streamlining the creation of
>> suitable art assets.  Designers can ask a related question, "What are a
> set
>> of rational step-by-step activities that can be followed in order to
> create
>> a more playable game?"
>>
>> Enjoy,
>> Daniel Cook
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Gamedevlists-design mailing list
>> Gam...@li...
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gamedevlists-design
>>
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Gamedevlists-design mailing list
> Gam...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gamedevlists-design
> Archives:
> http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=556

RE: Re[2]: [GD-Design] Article on 'Evolutionary Game Design'

[Daniel C. <dan...@an...>]

Yep, the lostgarden.com link is down for about another week or so.  The
gamedev.net link should work for a while though.

Thanks for the interest. :-)
-Danc.

-----Original Message-----
From: gam...@li...
[mailto:gam...@li...]On Behalf Of
Kerim Borchaev
Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2002 11:54 AM
To: Martin Gladnishki
Cc: gam...@li...
Subject: Re[2]: [GD-Design] Article on 'Evolutionary Game Design'


Try this one:

http://www.gamedev.net/reference/design/features/evolution/

or this:

http://www.google.com/search?q=evolutionary+game+design


> I'm afraid the link is broken, dude?
>
> Cheers,
> Martin
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Daniel Cook" <dan...@an...>
> To: <gam...@li...>
> Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2002 11:04 PM
> Subject: [GD-Design] Article on 'Evolutionary Game Design'
>
>
>> For your reading pleasure:
>> http://www.lostgarden.com/evolutionary_game_design.htm
>>
>> This article looks at creating a design 'process.'  There are dozens of
>> methodologies for creating great code, or streamlining the creation of
>> suitable art assets.  Designers can ask a related question, "What are a
> set
>> of rational step-by-step activities that can be followed in order to
> create
>> a more playable game?"
>>
>> Enjoy,
>> Daniel Cook
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Gamedevlists-design mailing list
>> Gam...@li...
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gamedevlists-design
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Gamedevlists-design mailing list
> Gam...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gamedevlists-design
> Archives:
> http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=556



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RE: [GD-Design] Design Documents

[Jamie F. <ja...@qu...>]

I think you need to be careful. A load of document that becomes meaningless
when you start implementing something is bad; but for a designer to know
when that happens takes experience, as they don't generally understand
what's going on under the bonnet (US: hood).

Jamie


-----Original Message-----
From: gam...@li...
[mailto:gam...@li...]On Behalf Of
Matthew Newport
Sent: 06 November 2001 14:32
To: gam...@li...
Subject: RE: [GD-Design] Design Documents


I don't really have an answer to your questions but I have one to add :-)

How long and how detailed are people's design docs generally? I personally
feel that our design docs could do with being a little longer and more in
depth but I don't know how they compare to those used elsewhere in the
industry. I read in the Deus Ex post mortem that their design doc ran to
hundreds of pages, which is rather more detail than we have in ours...

Matt.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Philip Harris [mailto:ph...@me...]
> Sent: 06 November 2001 14:04
> To: gam...@li...
> Subject: [GD-Design] Design Documents
>
>
> Two questions about design docs.
>
> Firstly, given that for a reasonable size project the design
> doc is going to
> exceed several hundred pages, how do people organise them.
> Single word doc,
> multiple word docs, HTML?
>
> Secondly, are these documents kept up to date and if so how?
>
> Or...does nobody bother with them in the first place.
>
> Phil
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Gamedevlists-design mailing list
> Gam...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gamedevlists-design
>

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