gamedevlists-design

[GD-Design] Design Documents

[Philip H. <ph...@me...>]

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

RE: [GD-Design] Design Documents

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

We bother. Split into components: design, technical, art, etc. Assign owners
to different components (generally the leads). It's their responsibility to
keep it up to date (and to decide how up to date is appropriate under the
circumstances).

Sorry about being terse; finishing demo :)

Jamie


-----Original Message-----
From: gam...@li...
[mailto:gam...@li...]On Behalf Of
Philip Harris
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


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Re: [GD-Design] Design Documents

[Kent Q. <ken...@co...>]

Yeah, what he said -- with one exception. I believe (having managed a
couple of large scale design doc systems) that if you have the right
tools, you can reduce or eliminate the "assign an owner" problem. 

This is NOT to say that you don't assign responsibilities for keeping
specs current, just that I've seen specs fail because the
responsibilities were placed on the wrong people because of problems
with tooling or systems.

Basically, Microsoft Word is an inadequate tool for management of
collections of related documents, or for situations where you want
multiple people to have editorial rights. Just don't go there.

We have used Lotus Notes to manage databases of related design
documents, and anyone on the team can maintain them.

If I were starting over right now, I'd probably find a way to use XML to
create a standard document format, and check the XML docs into a source
code repository, and use stylesheets to format them for viewing and
printing.

But in any case, think of your design docs as a database of related
items, rather than one big document, and impose some standard formatting
on them, and you'll be a lot happier as the design grows.

	Kent

Jamie Fowlston wrote:
> 
> We bother. Split into components: design, technical, art, etc. 
> Assign owners to different components (generally the leads). 
> It's their responsibility to keep it up to date (and to decide 
> how up to date is appropriate under the circumstances).
> 
> Sorry about being terse; finishing demo :)
> 
> Jamie
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: gam...@li...
> [mailto:gam...@li...]On Behalf Of
> Philip Harris
> 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
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Gamedevlists-design mailing list
> Gam...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gamedevlists-design

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Kent Quirk                   | MindRover: "Astonishingly creative."
Game Architect               | Check it out!
ken...@co...      | http://www.mindrover.com/
_____________________________|_________________________________________

RE: [GD-Design] Design Documents

[Philip H. <ph...@me...>]

> We have used Lotus Notes to manage databases of related design
> documents, and anyone on the team can maintain them.
>
> If I were starting over right now, I'd probably find a way to use XML to
> create a standard document format, and check the XML docs into a source
> code repository, and use stylesheets to format them for viewing and
> printing.
>
> But in any case, think of your design docs as a database of related
> items, rather than one big document, and impose some standard formatting
> on them, and you'll be a lot happier as the design grows.

That's what we've been considering. Our current design doc is about 250
pages spread over about 10 docs at the moment (and it will be a lot bigger
when it's finished) and it's very unwieldy.

Some sort of web based document is looking a reasonable solution, my only
concern is getting the control for printed versions.

Phil

RE: [GD-Design] Design Documents

[Philip H. <ph...@me...>]

> We bother. Split into components: design, technical, art, etc. 
> Assign owners
> to different components (generally the leads). It's their 
> responsibility to
> keep it up to date (and to decide how up to date is appropriate under the
> circumstances).
 
Sounds sensible, assuming the leads accept the importance of the design.

> Sorry about being terse; finishing demo :)

:)

Phil

RE: [GD-Design] Design Documents

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

Leads accepting the importance of it is another problem :)

Jamie


-----Original Message-----
From: gam...@li...
[mailto:gam...@li...]On Behalf Of
Philip Harris
Sent: 07 November 2001 08:41
To: gam...@li...
Subject: RE: [GD-Design] Design Documents


> We bother. Split into components: design, technical, art, etc. 
> Assign owners
> to different components (generally the leads). It's their 
> responsibility to
> keep it up to date (and to decide how up to date is appropriate under the
> circumstances).
 
Sounds sensible, assuming the leads accept the importance of the design.

> Sorry about being terse; finishing demo :)

:)

Phil

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