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Hi, i am starting to make a game again (yey), but this time i wanted to properly document the game and what i need to do etc, so the workflow gets done alot easier and more fun (like a shopping list kinda thing), i tried doing this before but it always screws up in my face and i end up doing the game without guidelines then adding new stuff which then gives me problems and so i give up.

I was wondering if there was a good template or a method of preparing your game, like you might prepare before you right an essay (i could never do that either).

Thanks in advance.

The idea of the game is something similar to that of Warcraft. (Not WoW, the strategy one).

Write somhere your Warcraft idea in case you forget about it until you become proficient coder.Try something you think is possible for yourself as you know better your skills.Making simple game not making you simple.Everyone need to start from somhere.RTS and RPG and specially MMORPG are complicated, a lot!And you`ll need a team for doing one.You can do it yourself but it may take 10 years to finish it.Making all the media, sounds, objects, coding, testing...

Try making TicTacToe, Pong game,Tetris game, Alien Invaders.Something like this.

About organizing your game.You can start from the pen and the note.
After you pick a game you want to make, divide your game by stages.
Imagine the content of the game menu in details.Write down what menu leeds to what, it`s functions and so on.Later you can bother with how it`ll look where it`ll be positioned, media used and so on.I suggest you following one line of desing and do not changing it too drasticly.Then start making it piece by piece.

In Stage of Main game you need to check few things.
Who`ll be the main character.He may be a ninja, a robot, or else.
What kind of properties he`ll need.He`ll have health and mana or health only?Maybe health is not needed but he`ll have few Lives instead.Check which combination you need.The arsenal of the character?Guns, knives, slaps, bombs?Powerups.Does your game need them?What kind they can be?Health boosters, live givers, invulnerability ones,BFG`s(Big F* Guns).
What kind of enemies he`ll need to face?Count them all.The small alien from space, his cousin and their big unckle?
Does he have allies?
World?Where the action take place?
Do you need levels?If you do you can make one testing level, but do not bother with this for now.When you are at certain point start designing of real ones.Be sure to make the first few of them not too hard, next few more complicated, and the last few hard as hell.Do you think about bonus stages?

What chalenges you`ll give the player?Brake the record?Beat the clock?Kill them all?Find all the hidden gold chests?

What rewards you can give him?New weapons?The mentioned boosters?Or it can be concept art unlock?

Do not forget that you need to bound the player tightly giving him the ilusion that there is a choice.If he hit boundaries everywhere or if he have full control he`ll get bored fast.That`s why modern games suport cheat codes in practice mode only.

How will the story end?Is it neverending adventure?Happy end?

Something like this.I hope i gave you some base to start.That`s the way i imagine the things.

I'm pretty sure outscape is quite a good coder. I've seen some of his code around, I think.

What I do, is just write a basic plan of my game, get the foundations of my game engine. E.g Movement and camera. Then add the more complex things, such as collision. And the top level stuff, such as missions for the game etc. I try to comment every block of code i write, so i always know what it is should i need to debug.

If you aren't as good a coder as i thought, go with luckos

Nightmare

, Well, WoW was made in an evening and i sold it to blizzard, made me a few mil, but i only did that roughly, every 2 years or so they ask me to make a small expansion, which is always fun, takes an hour or two.

Apart from that matter, i have been reading the replies, and i even read the one that got deleted somehow, and tyvm for the replies they helped alot , if anyone has anymore ideas to help me to stay on track on this project then please voice your opinion.

At some point you always have to put pen to paper - I tend not to enjoy this aspect so I avoid it, but it's inevitable. I tend not to make design documents, really I concentrate on planning and organizing individual parts, rather than trying to come up with everything for everything in one go.

Personally, I'd drag my heels writing a design document for a game like Warcraft. See, you don't know what units you will have, or the settings, so it's more important to get the tech stuff out of the way. I would start with a terrain, then some units, then moving the units and attacking other units, then when there's enough code in place I would then start to organize. These projects are always organic, so you might want to add a whole new race, a new unit, or a new resource type, and the easier you make that for yourself, well the easier and quicker it will be. Making good systems to support your units is more important than having kick ass unit designs.

So I would get some sort of terrain in place first, one that looks good enough and supports what you need it to do - you could go for advanced terrain which is basic but easy, or make your own memblock terrain and shader system which is more difficult, but more powerful. Decide on a polygon limit - like from the standard camera handling, what size should the units be, and how many polygons is a good number at that distance.

Once the ground work is in place, it's much more straightforward to experiment with units and AI, and more sensible to build the game around that. If you have a cool idea for something a unit does - maybe a dwarf gets drunk, but hangs onto the bottle to throw at the next enemy he see's, that sort of stuff is important in these games. If you have an idea like that, then you want to test it, put it in the game right away, and that is conceivable with a solid game engine. Once you have AI functions for checking the position of other characters and enemies, then things can get really interesting. I'd seriously have a ball watching the little dwarves wander around with bottles, looking for heads to smash them over. That adds character to a game, and is one of the most important factors in actually finishing your game project. If you don't have fun when making it, then you won't finish it.

Once you can add different units and settings, that's a good time to get back to planning, plan the different races and settings, be elaborate, give each unit, building, and entity in your game it's own page in a notebook - sketch it, jot down some specifications, notes about origin etc.

Well, for simple and organised noting i use treepad (the free version) its like a structured notepad, works a bit like the windows help files/chm only upi can add your own nodes and stuff, pretty neat for random scrawlings, in the end it ends up like a dynamic GDD

to help documenting your game, use the balloon chart approach, you can do it yourself or check the microsoft website were you can purchase the software for £150. (sorry for the expensize advise).

http://emea.microsoftstore.com/UK/en-GB/Microsoft/Microsoft-Automatic-Graph-Layout-2007

I try to avoid buying proprietry software until i know i'm going to use it frequently, this isnt a pick at MS products, but while they do tend to be some of the best for whatever you are doing they are very expensive, and unless you are using them all the time (or you are stupidly rich :p ) then they are often overkill.

go to wikipedia and search for mind mapping software and outlining software to get a list of applications to play with, the lists arent exhaustive and they tend to favour the crossplatform/opensource crowd but still useful, and if you find you use the software a lot then its worth considering buying a more rounded and better supported proprietry software package.