Stage 1.

   1.Understand the Medium and its Dynamic Forms
   2.Understand the Market
          One way of coming up with an idea is market research
          There are plenty of cool ideas but not all of them end up as finished products.
          Who is the audience?
          How to differentiate our game with others in the market place?
          What is the competition?
          Can we incrementally "add-on" features? Other levels, scenes, stories?
          Can we port this to other environments?
          What do you expect the life-span to be before improvedversions come in?
   3.Brainstorming and Creating Ideas ("Leave your judgements outside before you walk in. Two types of brainstorming. Creating new products,
     embellishing existing products)
          Spelling the constraints before brainstorming
               We have 6 months time
               We have $100,000 budget
               The game lasts no more than 20 minutes
               The game must sell for less than $20
          Spelling the constraintsafter the brain storming.
   4.Evaluating new Ideas (Do not write too much code in the beginning. Only write code to demo your ideas)
   5.Assemble your ideas into different formats (take an existing game and disect it and reassemble it in diffrent ways)

Stage 2.

Design Treatment

Start the design on paper. Transform your thoughts, notes, words and doodles intoa detailed description. This description should be confined to the
idea so marketing and management people can understand

     Keep the tretament short and simple
     Show the beginning, the middle and the end. Not all the detailks
     Keep it at an overview level
     Example of a Development Treatment is given below.
     Game Story line: The year is 2020. A major nuclear war destroyed many things. Austarlia has been divided into three segments:A penal
     colony, badlands containing policed mutatants and a free zone where a group of outcasts are reestablishing a democratic colony. It is up tot he
     player to escape to the free zone.
     Game Look and Feel: The game features 3d Graphics which scroll toward the player. The player is represented by a tyhird person polygon
     figure controlled with a joystick. The fater you run and avoid obstacles, the better your chances of survival are. The player runs through a
     continuous stream of towns, forest, brush while mutants, securityguards and other fringe groups attack them. You can use weapons you pick up,
     watre and food for survival and a series of martial arts moves, flips and somersaults.
     Example of a short Technical Spec: This is a new 3-D game with animated 3D backgrounds. There are roughy 50 scenes, each with about 3
     vies. The scenes will be rendered with 3D Studio Maxx. We will useIBM development platform and later portit to Mac. The development
     language shall be C++, using several API's. We expect the development time to be 12 months.

Detailing the Plot Line

Identify what constitutes the end of the game. The player has to achieve something. (Reach a destination, become a supreme ruler, accumulate so
much of wealth, points, etc.). Start from the end and work backwards.
 
 
 
 

Design Document

Script/Storyboard/Prototype