Game Design Cheat Sheet?

[JHighsmith]

“Unworthy of help,” lol. What is it with 'spergs? Some people just need a pulpit 24/7, I guess. Funny how there’s never a corresponding need to be helpful or ****** off if they can’t.

@;7718

I’ve been working with games for nearly a decade now, and I can tell you there are no conventions in how design documents are structured - some studios will even forgo an actual document entirely in favour of specialist software, or will produce a large number of individual documents for specific foci. There are however some nice templates for documents available on places like GameDev.net.

Yeah, a template would be great, I’ll look at gamedev site, thanks.

Don’t confuse design and development, they are two different parts of the same process (concept and implementation).

That’s what I went in thinking, and what I’ve been saying, but apparently a lot of folks think game design does not exist, or is a synonym for game dev, or something.

Where design may have more in common with art forms like music and have a bewildering array of different approaches suited to different individuals or teams, there are a lot of common development practices in the industry, from several schools of thinking. Many of these are focused on particular processes or disciplines, but one you see crop up most often would be Agile Development and Scrum. There are entire books dedicated to these two topics.

Hmm, interesting, but probably way above my pay grade.

Thanks for the useful replies, folks. Elynole, thanks very much. Didn’t expect anyone to write me a primer!