Design Docs...
by Mitovo · in General Discussion · 05/25/2014 (1:04 pm) · 2 replies
Greetings all,
So, I've decided to start getting the specifics for a game project I've been working on for some time now into an actual document format.
The challenge I'm facing now, though, is what software/approach to use.
My project is heavily story-driven, and there's a lot of inter-linking parts to it, so I'd like to make sure that someone can easily/readily access information about a term or concept they're not familiar with easily enough. Or otherwise access important info about the project overall.
Some of the options I've considered is a collection of "flat" documents (Word, Libre Office, etc), each dealing with a different aspect of the game. The problem with this is, is that they're "flat", and hence, aside from providing references to "such and such document, such and such section, such and such page", there's no real "dynamic" element to it. So, flat documents are at the very bottom of my list.
There's Wikis, which are much more "dynamic" in that information can be linked in-line, so someone can just click on a term or phrase they're not familiar with and get the information they need rather easily.
I've considered the possibility of creating a website with a software called NetObjects Fusion. It's a program I used for a time, wayyyyy back when I was doing web design, and, while I hated the code it created (the reason I stopped using it), I really liked its approach of creating a website from a flow-graph, with menus automatically generated, and links updated as pages are added, removed, moved to a different hierarchical branch, etc. Since it works off a "Master Template" system, I can also ensure consistency across the entire site.
There's also the possibility of something like Google Docs, or Zoho. I'm very "iffy" about something like that, though. Call me paranoid, but I just don't fully trust those solutions.
So, what approach do folks here use and/or recommend? What's been effective? What hasn't worked out so well, etc?
Thanks :)
So, I've decided to start getting the specifics for a game project I've been working on for some time now into an actual document format.
The challenge I'm facing now, though, is what software/approach to use.
My project is heavily story-driven, and there's a lot of inter-linking parts to it, so I'd like to make sure that someone can easily/readily access information about a term or concept they're not familiar with easily enough. Or otherwise access important info about the project overall.
Some of the options I've considered is a collection of "flat" documents (Word, Libre Office, etc), each dealing with a different aspect of the game. The problem with this is, is that they're "flat", and hence, aside from providing references to "such and such document, such and such section, such and such page", there's no real "dynamic" element to it. So, flat documents are at the very bottom of my list.
There's Wikis, which are much more "dynamic" in that information can be linked in-line, so someone can just click on a term or phrase they're not familiar with and get the information they need rather easily.
I've considered the possibility of creating a website with a software called NetObjects Fusion. It's a program I used for a time, wayyyyy back when I was doing web design, and, while I hated the code it created (the reason I stopped using it), I really liked its approach of creating a website from a flow-graph, with menus automatically generated, and links updated as pages are added, removed, moved to a different hierarchical branch, etc. Since it works off a "Master Template" system, I can also ensure consistency across the entire site.
There's also the possibility of something like Google Docs, or Zoho. I'm very "iffy" about something like that, though. Call me paranoid, but I just don't fully trust those solutions.
So, what approach do folks here use and/or recommend? What's been effective? What hasn't worked out so well, etc?
Thanks :)
About the author
#2
I hadn't thought of it in terms of "use whatever works" really - in the way you present it... different tools for different tasks, etc.
I've always looked at it as "everything must be in a single format"... which has probably been a large part of my problem heh.
Will definitely try looking at it from a less "rigid" angle, and see how that works out for me.
Thanks!
07/05/2014 (7:10 am)
Great response and some very cool insight, Netwyrm. Thanks!I hadn't thought of it in terms of "use whatever works" really - in the way you present it... different tools for different tasks, etc.
I've always looked at it as "everything must be in a single format"... which has probably been a large part of my problem heh.
Will definitely try looking at it from a less "rigid" angle, and see how that works out for me.
Thanks!
Torque Owner Netwyrm
Canopic Games
What I found worked for me was to use any program which seemed apt, but to always save everything to one folder, so it can be located again no matter what I called it or what I did it in. My design document is in Pages, random essays and proofing are in BBEdit, columnar ideas are sketched out in Numbers, and big whacks of permanent static data are in MySQL.
That's a stack that works for me because I do most administrative tasks on a Mac, most development on a PC, and an awful lot of in-betweening on an iPad. Plaintext goes back and forth really readily--almost everything I do reduces to plaintext, and then it can be used with everything on every platform. Numbers and Pages go back and forth transparently to Excel and Word if I need them.
I've yet to do anything I couldn't lay out on paper, yet, if that was what was to hand and was the most ready tool to get an idea across or preserve it for later use. Do you have an idea? Are you really clear on that idea?
If you can use Fusion without having to stop and think about it to express that idea without losing your focus, use that. If it takes a huge amount of effort to locate and change a footnote, don't.