SYNERGY: GAME DESIGN DOCUMENT AND PRESENTATION

           Finally, after many weeks of work, communicating with other members of the group, and desperately trying to design a consistent game to present to tutors as the final assignment of the year, the Game Design Document for my game idea 'Synergy' has been completed along with the Pitch Presentation.

With 17 pages, this slightly larger 'ten pager' design document covered the most common sections of the typical GDD document. With a game like Synergy, we found it quite the challenge fitting in all the details we wanted into the 15 pages we were set and restricted to, thus I believe we could of done a better job - the time limit did effect the document's quality.

It's worth nothing that both this and the presentation was a complete group effort, both in developing the document and presenting it to our university tutor. However, as a group, it was sensible to delegate the workload to get the document and presentation completed as efficiently as possible.

WHO DID WHAT IN THE DOCUMENT?

    I myself, developed the game's initial concepts, visual style of the game and therefore, both the document and presentation. Along with this, I wrote and developed the Front page, the Contents page, the Mechanics pages, the Enemies and Bosses pages, the Digital Strategy and Competition page and finally, the Chosen Engine page. It is also worth nothing that I set out the layout of David's pages to ensure the document was both consistent and completed on time - he wrote his own page information.

David wrote the content for the Story pages, the Character pages, the Gameplay Page and the Game Flow and Controls page - he was assigned the first section of Synergy's GDD. He did a great job and understood the game's concept fully.

Nicolas on the other hand was assigned the middle section. He wrote the content, developed the artwork and set out the page layouts for the Main Gameplay Concepts and Platform Specific Features page, the Game World page, and the Interface pages. Unfortunately, due to Nicolas being absent for the majority of the games low level design and brainstorming, he didn't really understand Synergy, which was real shame, and due to time constraints he himself had to develop the pages, resulting in a lack of consistency and flow. Regardless of this however, his artwork was amazing, it really gave the game an identity - without that, Synergy's GDD would of severely suffered. Thanks Nick!

Look at the document below!

COMMENTS AND CRITICISMS APPRECIATED!

SYNERGY: GDD - FRONT PAGE
by Christian Whelan

SYNERGY: GDD - CONTENTS 
by Christian Whelan

SYNERGY: GDD - STORY
by Christian Whelan and David Barker

SYNERGY: GDD - STORY (2)
by Christian Whelan and David Barker

SYNERGY: GDD - GAMEPLAY 
by Christian Whelan and David Barker

SYNERGY: GDD - GAME FLOW AND CONTROLS 
by Christian Whelan and David Barker

SYNERGY: GDD - CHARACTERS
by Christian Whelan and David Barker

SYNERGY: GDD - GAMEPLAY CONCEPTS AND PLATFORM
by Christian Whelan and Nicolas Piskorski

SYNERGY: GDD - GAME WORLD
by Christian Whelan and Nicolas Piskorski

SYNERGY: GDD - INTERFACE PAGE
by Christian Whelan and Nicolas Piskorski

SYNERGY: GDD - INTERFACE PAGE (2)
by Christian Whelan and Nicolas Piskorski

SYNERGY: GDD - THE MECHANICS PAGE
by Christian Whelan

SYNERGY: GDD - THE MECHANICS PAGE (2)
by Christian Whelan

SYNERGY: GDD - ENEMIES AND BOSSES
by Christian Whelan

SYNERGY: GDD - ENEMIES AND BOSSES (2)
by Christian Whelan

SYNERGY: GDD - DIGITAL STRATEGY AND COMPETITION
by Christian Whelan

SYNERGY: GDD - SELECTED GAME ENGINE
by Christian Whelan

WHO DID WHAT ON THE PRESENTATION

The presentation was also a group effort, and was vital aspect in presenting Synergy to our tutor - it had to be good!

Again, I myself developed the visual style and layout of the presentation, along with the slides that covered my pages. In addition, due to work load and time constraints, I also wrote in the information for David's slides which he dictated (so that he understood what he was reading). With my slides and David's done, it was down to Nick to finish his slides.

Nick competed his three slides on his own - fortunately, his slides were great! Being visually rich, the slides kind of spoke for themself, but again, it was the much needed identity Synergy needed. 

Considering the 10 minute time limit we had, and the scale of an idea Synergy is, we could have shortened the presentation down a little bit, but again, we didn't have time. Regardless, the presentation turned out fine (I think).

Have a look at the presentation below!

SYNERGY: PITCH PRESENTATION

    Looking back, although I love the game idea, I think I should gone with a  much simpler concept - one idea, one mechanic and game play built around that and only that. It would of been much simpler, as I bit off more than I could chew, which I believe is entirely to blame for the quality of the GDD. I like it, but it's not perfect by a long stretch. Fitting all this information in 15 pages and 15 slides was one of the hardest things I've done in a while.

   However, although it could be improved, I think we did a great job considering the size of the idea and the time and resources we had! Here's to hoping I get a first for this final assignment!

NEXT POST: YEAR CONCLUSION

GDD: UPDATES (DIGITAL STRATEGY / COMPETITION)

     So after completing the Pitch Presentation, I realised the Competition section of the GDD wasn't as credible as it could of been. So in an attempt to fix this, I did some sales research on the games and franchises that offer competition to Synergy. To my surpise, these games didn't sell that well internationally... weird, I loved Prototype and Infamous (Infamous maybe a little bit more... ok, a lot more).

Anyway, I updated the Competition page of the GDD to keep consistency between the GDD and Pitch Presentation. The updated page is below.

GDD: SYNERGY - COMPETITION PAGE UPDATE
by Christian Whelan

NEXT POST: UDK MAP: FINAL ADDITIONS

GDD: PITCH PRESENTATION

       Finally the pitch presentation for Synergy, our game idea, has been finished (besides Nicolas' parts). Me and David wrote it and I proof read it. We tried our best to get the slides down to a minimal, and I think we can present it effectively within the 15 minute time limit for sure, but the hard part was cutting down information that was already hard to cut down in the GDD, hense the 16 slides.

Anyway, mine and David's parts are finished, we just need to add in Nicolas' parts and develop speaker notes when we're all next in the same room (tomorrow). Have a look at it below!

SYNERGY: PITCH PRESENTATION

 

     The next task is to add Nicolas's pages into the GDD and his slides into the Pitch Presentation. Once that's done, it's a case of developing the speaker notes and presenting this bad boy.

Oh, and in a disucssion with Nick today, it turns out there are some inconsitencies between mine and David's sections in the GDD regarding the King Pins of Synergy (the bosses), so I'm going to have a look over them tonight and tweek a few details here and there - David doesn't mind.

NEXT POST: GDD: UPDATES (DIGITAL STRATEGY / COMPETITION)

GDD: PROGRESS 02/03/2013

         Today, me and David met in University to get the entire Game Design Document for Synergy, our Action Adventure RPG, completed. Although Nicolas's middle four pages are missing, me and David have realised the idea and documented it - we're really confident about Synergy.

   As for the missing pages, we don't really know, we've both added in aspects that 'should' be in his pages just as a fallback, but when it comes to the Pitch Presentation (which we're working on) we have a problem - we want the presentaiton to flow. Most importantly though, we just want Nick to understand Synergy as well as we do - we want consitstency and flow both in the GDD and presentation.

Anyhow, the pages me and David wrote are below. Once we wrote our information, I took it, put it into Photoshop, developed a visual style and devloped the pages as you see them below.

MY PAGE'S: Title Page, Contents Page, Mechanics, Enemies and Bosses, Digital Strategy and Competition and The Chosen Game Engine.

DAVID'S PAGES: Story, Gameplay, Game Flow, Controls and Characters.

MISSING PAGES: Main Gameplay Concepts, Platform Specific Features, Game World and Interface

COMMENTS AND CRITICISMS APPRECIATED

 

SYNERGY GDD - FRONT PAGE
by Christian Whelan

SYNERGY GDD - CONTENTS PAGE
by Christian Whelan

SYNERGY GDD - STORY (PAGE ONE)
by David Barker

SYNERGY GDD - STORY (PAGE TWO)
by David Barker

SYNERGY GDD - GAMEPLAY
by David Barker

SYNERGY GDD - GAME FLOW / CONTROLS
by David Barker

SYNERGY GDD - CHARACTERS
by David Barker

SYNERGY GDD - MECHANICS (PAGE ONE)
by Christian Whelan

SYNERGY GDD - MECHANICS (PAGE TWO)
by Christian Whelan

SYNERGY GDD - ENEMIES AND BOSSES (PAGE ONE)
by Christian Whelan

SYNERGY GDD - ENEMIES AND BOSSES (PAGE TWO)
by Christian Whelan- IN PROGRESS

SYNERGY GDD - DIGITAL STRATEGY / COMPETITION
by Christian Whelan

SYNERGY GDD - SELECTED GAME ENGINE
by Christian Whelan

 

      Regardless of the pages Nicolas has yet to complete, the document is closed to finsh. The only thing that needs to be completed is the second Enemies and Bosses page - it needs some character sketches.

 

Once this is done, the presentation could be completed (besides Niiolas's pages) - I'll get that done today and then fianlly, this GDD woul be completed.

NEXT POST: GDD: PITCH PRESENTATION

GDD: PROGRESS 28/03/2013 (FRONT PAGE / CONTENTS)

    Now that me, David and Nicolas have developed the ideas and polished them, I started developing the first pages of the GDD to plan the structure of the GDD whilst simultaneously nailing the consistent visual style. Now, this is a work in progress, so the name is not the name of the game, and the contents haven't been finished because I do not have David's or Nicolas's work, but I think it's turning out really nice so far!

I've messaged David and am yet to message Nicolas to request their work. I know David has his done (he texted me) but I have no idea how much progress Nicolas has made. I'll message him tomorrow. Anyway  have a look at them. 

 GDD FRONT PAGE - IN PROGRESS
by Christian Whelan

GDD CONTENTS PAGE - IN PROGRESS
By Christian Whelan

       Whilst working on my 5 pages, I've been pondering over some titles and a possible re-implementation of a game mechanic - synergy. Scrapped at the second meeting, I really think it brings the mechanics together and could potentially create some unique combat scenarios and player dynamics. I also think it would be a great name, I'm yet to discuss that with David or Nicolas but either way, I write it into the GDD to cover all ground for now.

NEXT POST: GDD - MASSIVE SETBACK

GDD: MEETING 26/03/2013

      Today, me, David and Nicolas had a chance to discuss the idea we had developed yesterday. After a good hour filling in Nicolas on the ideas to give him a good image of the game, we began to polish the ideas, ensuring all the details worked together, scrapping any ideas that didn't fit.

    In all, we now have the idea done! But most importantly, we began to delegate the work and develop a plan of action for this assignment- we wanted each person in the group to do the work they were most interested in so that we could get the GDD developed as efficiently as possible whilst ensuring everybody was passionate about there work.

    However, to me, it's incredibly important that the GDD is consistent, both in content and in visuals. So whilst developing my own pages for the GDD, I am to take everyone's work and organize it into a great looking design document. Hopefully, that's not too big of an undertaking considering the work for the other modules I have to complete.

    This is where micro deadlines are incredibly important  I'll get my work done and nail the visuals, but if David and Nicolas haven't got their work done by a time suitable for me, I simply won't have time to implement their work into the polished document. Regardless, the plan of action is below.

DAVID BARKER

• The Story
• Game play
• Game Flow
• Characters

NICOLAS PISKORSKI

• Controls
• Main Game play Concepts
• Game play
• Interface

ME

• Front Page
• Contents Page
• The Mechanics
• Enemies and Bosses
• Digital Strategy / Competition
• Selected Game Engine

     Yes, I do have the most workload, but I always like to set ambitious goals so that I can progress as both a student and a Game Designer. In addition, I love the practical side of games design, so developing the visual style of the GDD is important to me, I feel that itself can be a great way to communicate a theme, concept or individual idea. When it comes to the visuals, I'm going to go for some form blue palette, with a formal theme, whist implementing some form of natural imagery to evoke a totalitarian force in the future that deals with genetic evolution.

Hopefully it will turn out great! I'm going to get started now.

NEXT POST: GDD: PROGRESS 28/03/2013

GDD: MEETING 25/03/2013

      We had our first meeting today and it went brilliantly! Even though Nicolas couldn't make it, me and David managed to get the entire idea nailed on paper, and from it, I think we have a great game idea ready to be developed into a 15-16 page GDD. The downside however, is that because Nicolas wasn't there, he has pretty much no clue what the idea is.

    We contacted Nicolas and he said he's available tomorrow, so we're going to have another meeting them so that he's on the same page as us, and so that we can start developing this GDD. Hopefully we'll have t done within the week!

We still need some character names and details, but regardless, we have the concept down for each page of the GDD.

DAVID BARKER: GAME DESIGN BLOG

LINK

NICOLAS PISKORSKI: GAME DESIGN BLOG

LINK

NEXT POST: GDD: MEETING 26/03/2013

GDD: THEME AND BRAINSTORMING

      The final Game Design assignment of the year is finally here - work in groups of three to design a game and develop a game design document. I quickly paired with David and Nicolas (there blogs are below) to undertake this huge task but unfortunately  due to people not having any clear initial concepts, we were dictated our game's theme by the other teams (brilliant). My team (yet unnamed) has to work with a theme based around "Magic Spells". It's quiet vague, but we decided we didn't have to stick to the classic form of magic.

     With the idea of allowing ourselves a bit of freedom on this assignment, we started bouncing widely different ideas of each other. Nicolas went for classic fantasy, I used inspiration from an idea I had a couple of weeks ago, and David decided to strive for the less obvious "magic spells" variation. With these three in mind we came up with a great idea (we think) - Evolutionary Shapeshifting.

Our brainstorm ideas are below. I must note that at this stage, anything was agreed upon if it sounded fun, so the ideas on paper are quiet contradicting and in some cases, radical. 

MAGIC SPELLS - BRAINSTORMING NOTES

     We all agreed immediately that we want the player to have some form of shape shifting ability. I myself wanted these abilities to work together in synergy. The core concept however, was to ensure that the player feels like a one man army. After all, isn't that what you're supposed to do, make the player experience something they could never experience?

     So, the player would have multiple shape shifting forms, similar to prototype, but each form be radically different in it's theme, visuals and game play, rather than just having the obvious tank, solider, engineer and ranged classes (even though they would all in some way fit into those recognized categories). The twist is, these forms aren't independent of each other, you can string them together for different tactical advantages. If you have a winged formation and a fire formation, maybe you could use the wings after using fireballs to spread the fire around an area for added area damage (but less direct force).

The idea is a solid foundation, but I we need to flesh this out (obviously) and work out the cons. Anyway, we're all coming into university to get the idea down to a fine polish on Monday.

DAVID BARKER: GAME DESIGN BLOG

LINK

NICOLAS PISKORSKI: GAME DESIGN BLOG

LINK

NEXT POST: GDD: MEETING 25/03/2013