A while back, I blogged about a concept I called “simplest game”, the idea being to create a fun but basic game which was refined down to a few simple concepts. Something relatively fast to make, with few enough ‘moving parts’ that the complexity level was kept within a range that a small team or single dev could accomplish. The simplest game concept is ideal for contest entries, too.

And because the simplest game concept espouses the idea of a basic, uncomplicated game design, the design doc doesn’t really need to be hundreds of pages. A handful will do. Because your team size is one person, or a couple/few people, you don’t need to doc to keep a huge staff all pointed in the same direction – you just need it as a way to track your progress, figure out what is left to do, and as a reminder to yourself about the overall plan for your game.

What I’m going to go over here is the basic layout of a simple design document, and then I’ll give some examples. You’re welcome to use stuff from the examples – and the format – for your own games. I’d prefer you not try to just copy and paste one of my designs and try to enter it as your own work in a contest – keep in mind, I might just be entering that same design myself! The examples will be given in PDF format for ease of reading; the blank format itself will be in OpenOffice because it’s free and easy to use.

Title Page:
Title of the game goes here, along with your name and some sort of copyright notice. You can add a logo, if you want to. Not an essential element, but adds a feel of professionalism which is nice.

Mile High View:
In one sentence to two paragraphs, summarize your entire game. What genre is it? What is the setting (backstory is later)? What do players DO in the game? Don’t make this a detailed feature list, just hit the broad strokes.

Backstory:
Now for the storyline. This can be a paragraph or two, or as much as a page. Don’t detail the entire history; this is meant to be a summary of the major events that led up to the conflict the players will find themselves embroiled in.

Character Development:
This will probably have multiple sub-sections. You’ll want a section for races, if you have more than one, talking a bit about the benefits and drawbacks of each. You’ll want to do a short talk about classes, if you have them, or skills in the skill system if you prefer that route. You’ll want to talk about how the character is created, and how the character advances in the game.

Gameplay Systems:
Again, an area with multiple sub-sections that depend on the game. Is there combat? Then talk a bit about how that will work. Is there crafting? This is a good place to talk about how crafting will be implemented. Is there pvp? Permadeath? Player conquered buildings? Instanced dungeons? Boss mobs? Quests? Talk a bit about each piece of the gameplay, and how you plan to implement it. You don’t need to list every item here, or every quest. Just talk in generalities about how you plan to add these features.

World Details:
How many zones will you have? I’d recommend one paragraph of overview, talking about the entire game world, and then a sub-section for each zone talking about what that zone has in it, why that zone is important, and what players can expect to find and do there.

That’s it. That’s the basic design doc. You CAN, of course, add more. You can detail every quest, complete with all quest dialogue. You can list every item, with full stats for each. You can list every mob with stats. You can list every art and music asset you will need for the game. You can map out every zone, with a key that shows every major and minor location in each zone.

…and you probably don’t need to have any of that.

If you do feel the urge to add those things, of course, they can always be tacked on later as appendixes. They’re not the core of the design doc though. They’re not the meat, not the essential elements of design which will keep your game on track and moving forward in the planned direction during development. Keep It Simple. Get the basics down on paper (or on hard drive) and then flesh things out as you move along.

And now for an example:

Working Title: Brittania

Intro and Concept:
Brittania is a game of player vs player battle, set in the heroic era of 6th century Brittania. The Roman legions have left, the Saxons are invading, and everything is going to heck. The players can choose sides between the Romano-Briton people in the west, and the invading Saxons in the east. Gameplay focuses on the developing struggle between these two peoples for the control of the island of Brittania.

Backstory:
In the early fifth century the last of the Roman legions were recalled from Brittania to defend Rome against barbarian invasion. What was left was auxiliary troops and local musters. The Saxons were invited in to supplement these local armies in defense against the Picts and Irish. After a while, the Saxons rebelled and raided through the country around 450 CE, killing many and destroying much of what was left of the infrastructure. Still, the Romano-Brits rallied, and forced them back. For another two hundred years, an off and on war was waged between these two peoples. The game opens in the early 6th century, well into the struggle, during a period when neither side can really gain the upper hand.

Character Development:
Race – Players choose between Saxon and Romano-Briton ethnic groups. Because this game is so focused on pvp, there are no major differences between characters from these groups. The choice simply decides which side of the struggle the character will be on.
Class – Each side has a warrior, scout, and morale class. Warriors wear heavier armor and tend to hit harder. Scout classes have less armor, but are more prone to use ranged weapons, move faster, and sneak about. The morale classes from both sides as musicians, with low offensive capabilities but the ability to ‘heal’ by boosting the morale of the friendly characters around them, among other special powers.
The game will use a level-based system. Leveling will increase stats and grant new special abilities.

Gameplay Systems:
Combat – Combat in this game will use the default Realmcrafter combat script.
Crafting – Wood, stone, food, and metals can be harvested by players. Virtually all items in the game will be able to be crafted by players. Additionally, food can be cooked for special buffs. Wood and stone can be used to repair forts.
Quests – Questing will be a large part of the non-pvp zones, a good way for players to improve characters.
Player Conquered Buildings – The pvp zones will feature forts which can be ‘flipped’. Killing the guard captain in an enemy fort will generate a special drop that players can use to turn the building to their side. This will make new guard spawns appear of the faction which just conquered the fort. Ownership of each fort will be stored as a superglobal.

World Details:
The game will take place over a five zone spread of southern Brittania (England, today). The farthest west and east zones will be pve only. The middle three zones will be pve and pvp enabled. There will be three forts in each pvp zone. Portals to the neighboring zones will only be open if a faction controls at least two of the forts in that zone. So if the Saxons own two forts in the middle zone, they can move west to the next pvp zone. If the Britons take back one of those middle forts, then the portal closes and the Saxons can no longer move west until they take back another fort.

Zone 1 - Farthest west, the starting point of the Britons. This is a pve only zone, and features numerous quests and places to level up and get to know the game.
Zone 2 – The western pvp zone. There is a Briton camp on the west side, and three pvp forts. Leveling against pve in this area is middle level.
Zone 3 – The center pvp zone. Three pvp forts are here. PvE leveling here is high level. Harvesting here is also highest level; the best gear can only be made from materials harvested here.
Zone 4 – The eastern pvp zone. There is a Saxon camp on the east side of this zone, and three pvp forts. Leveling against PvE here is middle level.
Zone 5 – Farthest east, this is the Saxon Shore, where the main Saxon camps are and all new Saxon characters start. PvE only zone.

(This design doc took me 22 minutes to write from start to finish. I might add a bit more detail if I was entering this in the Realmcrafter contest that’s just starting up, but it’s enough to give you a good idea! It’s a barebones approach, and really needs more fleshing out, but what you’re looking for in a contest entry like this is really just the basics.)

Basically, they took the old site, dismantled or damaged every community-friendly feature they had in place, ripped out the old (yellow = friendly, warm, open) color scheme and plopped in a slick, black and white corporate color pattern.

Great for a sales site. Horrible for a community site.

I think we’re seeing a serious change in direction for GG exemplified by this new site. I have to assume that they understood color theory enough to know what the difference in feel between yellow and black is. Plopping the GG employee blogs on the “What’s New” page – and a handful of community blogs only visible if you scroll at the bottom – and removing EVERYTHING else that made clicking the old Community button such a one-stop-shop, was a horrible move.

But this seems to fit with the new GG mindset. They’re not interested in supporting hobby devs anymore. They’re not really interested in being a friendly community site anymore. They want the slick black corporate look, and just enough “community” features to throw a bone at the thousands of longstanding GG supporters who they are basically kicking to the curb.

Yeah, I’m getting angry about this. The more I post, the more I am, so I’m going to wrap it up here. Crying shame, when a bunch of clueless idiots step into what has been a wonderful, long-standing community and screw it up for everyone.

If you read closely, there are some interesting hints about what P.E. has in store, though!

But it sounds like GarageGames is deprecating TGE and TGEA in favor of a new, from scratch engine they’re calling Torque3D, or T3D.  Along with the new engine and new name, it looks like GG is shifting away from their previous stance – and client base – of mostly hobbyist devs, toward a much more intense focus on indie devs.  People who are actively making games and trying to make an indie-level business from that work.

So T3D is going to have a higher pricetag, and with it commeasurately higher expectations.  GG has always gotten away with rather ramshackle customer service because the community has largely been so helpful, and the software so cheap.  I wonder if the former will remain the same, if the latter changes…

I can see their point, though.  Having tens of thousands of Torque users doesn’t help GG market their product further, if 99.9% of those users release no products using the engine.  Much like the boat Realmcrafter is in – an engine needs a steady stream of quality releases to prosper.  RC is missing that, and it’s hurt how seriously the engine is taken as a result.  Torque at least has some releases, but nowhere near what GG would like to see, I think.

I expect we’ll see a lot of nurturing going on from GG toward those small companies they see as ‘serious’ enough to generate good new games.  That will be good for those people.  It remains to be seen if they are going to be able to accomplish that AND still retain the level of support they have always had for hobby devs, though.

Fallen way behind here, again!  Sorry about that.  I’ll try to keep up better in the future.

Saw an interesting blog article over on http://makeitbigingames.com/ today, about a new WordPress branch the author and his coworkers are building called “Onepress”.

Essentially, Onepress takes the WordPress blog system (already something I’m fond of!) and builds it into a CMS system, complete with PHPBB integration, widgit based structure, and enough other doodads that I’ve barely scraped the surface reading about it.

I’ve downloaded the free installation package and plan on playing around with it a bit.  It’s released under GPL, which is quite a gift to the WordPress community – check it out:

http://onepresscommunity.com/

Some of you may be wondering what the heck the new header is about, or the sig I am using on some forums now.  Shhhh!  It’s still a secret, but more news will be coming out about what I have planned for the “Excalibur Project” (it’s a codename, not a game name) soon!  A have quite a lot in store, in fact – this project is pretty exciting, and it’s fun to head into it with renewed energy.  Stay tuned!

I’d like to go on record as saying that anyone who made it this far has already won, regardless of what the judges rule over the next few weeks.  Accomplishing a game is a hard task.  It’s something a lot of us shoot for, and most of us fail to achieve.  I almost gave up several times myself, but managed to stay the course.

Looking back over the year, I thought it was worth listing a few key learning points:

1) There is no time like the present.
If I had to name a number one point, this is it.  I think most of us have been guilty at one time or another of putting off for tomorrow what we could be doing today.  There’s always a good reason, of course – if only you could get a coder/artist to join you, or look at that cool engine update/new engine coming out “soon”(TM).  Or whatever else we tell ourselves to validate ourselves.

The fact is, game making is hard work, and it’s work where you’re putting your ego on the line, and it’s work that there is no guarantee at all of a reward at the end.  There’s a certain level of hubris required to say “Yes, this IS worth me putting a thousand hours of my life (or more!) into.”  And so it’s a lot easier to daydream about making your game than to make it.

Stop daydreaming.  Stop waiting for the next engine…or whatever.  There is no time like the present.

2) Make the game your engine and skills can achieve.
Some engines are better at certain tasks than others.  Look at what your engine or codebase does well, and then look at where you think you can go from there given the skills you have available.  In my case, this meant working under some hefty constraints.  I’m not a coder, was working solo, and was hoping that the Gryphon codebase would mature in time.  It didn’t; as a result, I ended up pretty much starting from scratch this January using the Prairie Games Kit.  I almost just dropped out at that point, but I’m glad I didn’t – it’s been an interesting experience.

The PG Kit has some impressive constraints itself.  Essentially, it’s geared toward making an EQ clone – anything more than that requires a pretty substantial amount of work and experience with python.  Instead of adding extra coded features, I’ve opted instead to go the route (which you know if you’ve been reading my blog!) of a gamemastered play experience, where GMs read the activities in the world and add new content as “chapters” of the ongoing story in a manner which will ideally be more like a tabletop RPG game than a traditional MMO.

3) Always store backups of EVERYTHING.
Lost a ton of my art early this winter to a hard drive fiasco.  ALWAYS back up everything.  Multiple places, ideally.  ‘Nuff said.

4) Beware feature creep.
Not once, not twice, but at least four times I have caught myself allowing extra doodads to enter the design.  Keep it Simple has been the mantra allowing me to stay on track.  Get the core in – you can add extra features in later.

That won’t stop you from playing some other game and saying “oh, wouldn’t it be cool if…”    But I’ve manage to resist the urge.  I did a lot of blogging early on about “Simplest Game”, and it’s been an important concept.

I can’t stress how valuable a good design doc is, too.  Having material all written down is a huge benefit.  It operates like a lighthouse, and a quick re-read periodically of the entire document is a great tool for remembering the game you set out to make.  Otherwise, it has a tendency to change over time.  While some change is good, too much change can have you running in circles.

It’s been a long haul.

There’s only a very few of us left.  I see some amazing games still in the competition, and I’m glad to have had the opportunity to run with this pack for the last year.  It’s been challenging – staying the course, refusing to quit when things went sour or got frustrating.

I’m under no illusions that my little alpha is some amazing new leap forward in online RPGs.    But it’s a good start on what could be a fun game when it’s done.  And – it’s mine.

The signups for the alpha should be up on the http://www.roleofthehero.com website shortly.  Just a quick little form, and you’ll have an account set up for you there.  I look forward to seeing some of you join me in celebrating the opening of the alpha for The Roleplayer’s World – Role of the Hero.

This week I have finished adding all the armor items to the game. Crafting those items is planned – and the recipes are all written out. But that may or may not make it for May 1st.

I’ve greatly expanded on the feel of the world. I’ve added foliage all over the place to give some depth and realism to open snowy fields. The swamps have swamp grass rising out of the water and around trees on the hammocks. Tree planting has gone into style in a big way, with a lot more forestation.

In addition to the rats, there are now multiple spawns of grey wolves, winter wolves, and young ice spiders. Spawn areas of skeletons, various other ice spiders, and a few other critters are still in the works.

Added more buildings to the town area, and a ruin in the swamp. Really need more ruins around in a couple of places, but those, again, will need to be added later.

A few more screenshots!

Enough chatter – some screenshots!

Getting some new monsters in though. I have my rats spawning properly now, and walking around properly. They were running off to hang out with the wolves, because they shared waypoint groups with them, so the wolf waypoints were “summoning” the rats! Fixed. Added more rats so newbies have something to kill, too. Hopefully will get more done next week!