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Thread: Several Questions: Documentation; New event?

  1. #1

    Several Questions: Documentation; New event?

    Dear readers,

    first of all I was wondering, that event PGD Annual, is it 1 time in the year?
    If so, I would like to sign myself up for the year 2008 *You got a new team in this event!!!*

    And second, does anyone have any kind of documentation for me?
    I will explain it clearly:

    A documentation that is needed to make your plan, just like the article of JDarling.
    I would just like to have an example, maybe a very old project of you?
    If so, could you post here a link or contact me or whatever?

    Thanks in advance,

    Angelo.
    "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence."

  2. #2

    Several Questions: Documentation; New event?

    The project Plan should be something like this, right?

    http://www.streetglowgame.nl/documen...oject_plan.pdf
    "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence."

  3. #3
    Co-Founder / PGD Elder WILL's Avatar
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    Several Questions: Documentation; New event?

    Hi Angelo,

    To answer your first question, the PGD Annual is a yearly event, hence the name. Unfortunately the competition portion of the event has come and gone so you will have to wait for the registration announcement to come out which has usually been in the last few months of the year. However next year might be totally different.

    I know Dom (aka savage) though, he'll host another one.

    If you are interested in some of the games or information on past and current you can visit the Competitions section of the site. (Sorry no menu button yet, it's on my 'to do' list.)

    Or you can read all about both the PGD Annual and the history of the site in the current issue of Dev.Mag! I highly recommend giving it a read through.


    As for the project plan request for this year... we simply needed something to show for all the interested parties and to have something concrete to start everyone off on the right foot. A 'real' design document would be a bit more formal. However there is no one way to write one up.

    Jeremy's article does a good job of explaining what you need to outline a fully formal design document and a few other documents as well however not all of these are required all the time in all cases.
    Jason McMillen
    Pascal Game Development
    Co-Founder





  4. #4

    Several Questions: Documentation; New event?

    If your interest lies in competitions in general, there's a host of other competitions held by various gamedevelopment sites. For instanceGamedev.net has it's yearly Four Elements competition, which is usually held around this time.

  5. #5

    Several Questions: Documentation; New event?

    You can download the design doc for my entry this year at: http://www.eonclash.com/JumpStart/v4...sign%20Doc.doc

    The same format was used by quite a number of the teams, and some place I have another thread about the particular template that I created. Its not perfect, and as WILL said not everything is necessary, but it does cover most of what should be in small or hurried projects.

    Hopefully, some time soon I'll have time to start on articles 2 and 3. So stay tuned for more useless information about documentation and marketing practices

  6. #6

    Several Questions: Documentation; New event?

    Thanks jdarling, this was exactly what I was searching for.

    Ghehe, when I read your document, I'd guess you were from the USA.
    I took a look at the forum... and you are from the usa!!!

    I do not want to be rude, because in overall it is a good document, but it is a typical american document.
    Somehow Americans have the feeling to say things in 20 pages, what I would be able to say in 1 page.
    For example of course, and I don't mean this as an offense, but it's just funny that I can locate you while reading your document

    Take for example the documentation of UPS, how to write the xml script that auto-updates your order to UPS.
    There is a documentation for it with 120 pages!!!

    But again, thanks, these are the guidelines for me.
    "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence."

  7. #7

    Several Questions: Documentation; New event?

    I used JDarling's document and found it to be just the job. There were some parts which I deleted as overkill, but the rest of it was great.

    I didn't find anything "American" about it, I thought it was very professional.

    At my company, we have documentation standards which would make JDarling's document look like a postage stamp or childrens' bedtime story in comparison. Some of the are overkill IMHO, but there're all there for a reason, whether I understand this or not.

    When you're dealing with other parties, it doesn't hurt to explain yourself very clearly indeed from as many different points of view as possible because if there's a misunderstanding and the other party makes a mistake, it can be very costly.

    At first glance, it may appear that Games don't fall into this expensive corporate scenario, but that would be a very inaccurate assumption. Games require a lot more co-ordination and sharing of ideas than a lot of commercial projects.. If these ideas aren't communicated properly then mistakes are make which costs time, money and in some cases, the deadline and ultimately, the company.

  8. #8

    Several Questions: Documentation; New event?

    Yes, you are right Jason.

    But the thing you said, "overkill", that is typical American.
    Well, it's called like that at my place.

    Indeed, the document is very professional and I will be using it as a standard, with permission from JDarling of course?!

    And to clear up the words "typical American", I mean for example this:
    A table and after that a diagram.
    Another example: "Roman Numerals from 1 to 11 are".
    I think this is overkill, but hey, it's only my opinion

    The company I work for hasn't got loads of documents (its only web and a very very very tiny bit of application development tho), so maybe it's just that I am not used to it.
    Otherwise it could be the lack of professionality at my side.
    "What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence."

  9. #9

    Several Questions: Documentation; New event?

    Well, considering that there are probably more people here that aren't American than there are Americans, your statement is inaccurate. My code license is ~25 lines long and covers everything; the MPL or GPL are huge and written by lawyers all over the world.

    I'll be tactful and not classify the folks I see like you have done.

    If you want to do anything with game design or programing learn from the professionals that a game "bible" for your project is essential because everything is decided. There's no true disputation, questioning what goes where, or if something is really needed. The only question becomes "do we have the time/money to keep this feature?"

    I work in the software industry as well, and we work with a web interface embedded in a custom server. Let me tell you that not having clear documentation and an understandable guide to our developmental path is killing us. But no one wants to admit it, and I'm just the contractor guy.

    If you will make a serious game with a decent amount of content and programming to it and are working with others then you have no choice but to write a detailed design document. And detailed doesn't mean wordy or terse, it means detailed enough. I can imagine the action of a gun if you tell me it is lever action because I already know it, so leave out the worthless scrap and really describe things. Otherwise the team will flounder and you'll be lucky to get anything out the door at all.

  10. #10

    Several Questions: Documentation; New event?

    See, from my point of view its the Brits that overkill our documents . Recently a document that for one of our US customers would have been around 100 pages jumped to over 400 pages due to the level of detail that that client wanted within the document.

    Though, saying its a British thing is incorrect as well, its more of a corporate thing. The larger the company "wants to be" the more they bloat a document to make it look important. Large companies that know they are large typically want the smallest document they can get their hands on . MS is a perfect example, too many times I've been told "can we shorten this at all?"

    So, no offense taken on any comments. In fact, I did my best to get the doc down to the least amount of sections for the broadest audience I could. Thus it should be very customizable. There are sections that I (personally) feel should be in all design documents, while others will say that they aren't necessary.

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