Grim Fandango Design Doc

[stepsoversnails]

I've been designing an adventure game for at least two years now. Until recently it was spread over various notes, drawings and little tests done in the AGS editor. After reading the Design Document for Grim Fandango i decided it was the perfect format for my own design doc. So i was wondering if anybody else has used a similar system to Tim's Grim Fandango design document or if they follow a different method that maybe you got from another game or you completely designed yourself.

[selmiak]

I have lots of papers with even more sketches, some words and lots of arrows on it. But once I start drawing out the sketches or writing lines of dialoge or even advancing the story while coding these papers are rough frameworks, it's all in the flow.
Do you have a link to the GF design docs? Would be helpful for this thread.

[Ali]

Yes, I copied it exactly for the sequel to Nelly Cootalot! All I added was different coloured boxes to indicate how difficult puzzles were.

I know Tim Shafer took it off the Double-Fine site for legal reasons, but I think it's still around somewhere...

[Eric]

There's also Al Lowe's design docs. Any others floating around?

[Sughly]

I've used the Grim Fandango one exactly as it is for my game, Anna's Quest. I started out all over the place like you guys, then kind of attempted a table for all the rooms... only it didn't really get a good sense of how the game was flowing. The Grim Fandango one is great, extremely happy with following it myself. Really helps see gaping flaws in the design, how puzzles are weighted, etc etc.

[magintz]

I've used the Baldwin Game Design Document Template as well as http://www.e-games.tech.purdue.edu/DesignDoc.asp. I'm actually working on an online game design document builder/collaboration tool at the moment... but it's super secret because I don't have much time to develop it at the moment I'll wait until I have something concrete in place first.

[straydogstrut]

Nice resources folks, thanks!

I've been working with one's we used at uni (which seem to borrow elements from some of these) but it felt a bit 'by the numbers' and stale so i've been looking for inspiration on this kind of thing.

I really like the Grim Fandango one for puzzles and the walkthrough style of the Al Lowe ones, particularly Torin's Passage. I do prefer more visual indicators though and I find some of them a bit wordy - I like to see an overview of who appears where/what items are found in which areas rather than long columns of text - so i'm complementing these with flowcharts, mindmaps and story/inventory matrices.

Good stuff!

[Ali]

I can't believe Sierra went through that many names and ended up calling it 'Torin's Passage'!

I find the GF document more readable (and it is a significantly better game), but it's interesting to see that Torin's Passage seems to have been planned in even greater detail.

[Stupot]

These DDs ave done the rounds on these forums before.  I really like the Torin's Passage one, but it reads more like a linear walkthrough.  What I like most about the GF ones is the little puzzle stucture for each section.  This is surely the most important bit, especially for the programmer.  It shows clearly the different sets of puzzles the player can be solving simultaneaously, giving the impession of non-linearity.

Is this just a coincidence or do the forums genuinely go down when I try to do a search?

[stepsoversnails]

My search is working fine but I do know I've had problems with it before.
The flowchart and the puzzle explanations saved me from a world of hurt. Before I had been writing out puzzles a little bit like this: Get key> Use Key with door> Go to next room> Talk to frank. The only thing I've really changed about the doc is that I added coloured boxes to the flowchart that show when your objective changes.

[theo]

Most of all I found the GF document an incredibly inspiring read, that really gave me that nice warm "I love developing games" feeling. It also does offer a good example as to how one can boil down the essentials in an easily overview-able document, as I must agree the Torin's passage document completely failed to do. It mostly made me dizzy. But as a holy bible for a development team to follow, I'm sure the TP document did a good job. It seemed to cover pretty much EVERYTHING.

On a side note, it is interesting how Mr. Lowe , in the TP design doc, actually discusses the fact that the in-game hint system will lead to less hint-book sales than usual.  I wonder how much of Sierra's total revenue back then came from selling hint-books for their some times ridiculously difficult games...