Status Report

So... My computer pretty much broke down and I'm forced to bear with a much older laptop which isn't sufficient for developing 3D games.

I've been giving it a lot of thought but decided I should continue with a few 2D game articles so that's what I'm gonna do til I get enough savings to pull a meaner config together for development later. That's gonna take some time however as I just found a workplace for myself and wages are generally not that great in my country as I'd like them to be or as they are in many other places.

Anyways the big idea is to develop a random 2D Dungeon crawler with a cute little husky as the main character in some heroic knight armor or something. I love fantasy stuffs and my girlfriend loves puppies so that's 2 birds with one stone but first we are gonna take a look on how to generate a dungeon for ourselves.

GDD by Example

I've been thinking a lot what could be my very first game be that I'll share with you guys. I thought I may do something in 2D because the concepts are a bit easier to grasp there but truth to be told Unity is a 3D game engine at it's very core and this bites back a bit when you try to make a 2D game in it.

Also I just got a really great idea for a 2D game but it's kind of bigger in scale than the idea I'm going to share with you now and I thought I'll need more practice myself before jumping into that one. One of the very first advices I got from people on various forums when I first looked into becoming an indie gamedeveloper myself was the KISS principle.

Keep It Simple, Stupid.

So with all this in mind I present you with the Game Development Document of Kitten Rampage. This game will be an FPS survival game similar to Devil Daggers only without all the really creepy demons and skulls and whatnot. The basic idea actually came from my girlfriend because when I showed her some gameplay footage of Devil Daggers her very first reaction was "This game looks like someone's nightmare. I'm gonna have bad dreams about this for sure." so I figured I'm going to make something similar for her without all that creepiness.

Of course if you are developing a game you should aim for a much broader target audience and we will do so in the future but right now for my very first title I thought it's fitting to be something more personal project.

Anyways you can find the GDD on this link. It's also very simple in this moment and very short but as time progress I'm going to expand it because a GDD is always shaping as you come up with new ideas during the game development. I also wanted to place some pictures here and there but haven't got the time to make any so definetly going to make up for that in the future.

Game Design Document

What is the GDD?

The Game Design Document (GDD) is as it's name suggests a document containing all the necessary information about your game in development. It should be your first step to make one and note down any ideas you may have. It's ultimate goal is to help in the long run because the development time can really stretch out and things are way easier if you have a solid fundation to rely on.

A GDD can come handy in many situations. You may be part of a whole team or you may work solo but either way it's easier to convey your ideas to your teammates or to yourself later if you have written them down and whenever you come to a halt due to an unforseen gameplay or mechanics problem or a design decision then you can fall back to this document for the right direction to proceed.

What should my GDD contain?

There's no set format for a GDD so you may really just write down whatever you feel is important. However there are a few general information which should be an obvious part of your document:

• title
• genre
• target platform
• target audience
• description of gameplay

Keep in mind that a GDD is always evolving during the development process so it's alright if you won't have every little detail worked out in the very beginning. You can always expand your notes whenever you feel like it's needed but try to keep everything in an organised manner.

You shouldn't be afraid to draw images either for certain gameplay elements. This often helps to better explain the features to your teammates and it's perfectly alright if they're just stick figures for the time being.

I'm going to post a GDD for a game I have in mind and I'll definetly going to try and make in the upcoming months so stay tuned for that. I hope it will be a nice example and once I'll get to the end of my project I'll show you the final version of the GDD as well to see how much it changes during a development cycle.

Reconstruction

I've been a bit busy with the website and the design will be final this time.

There are still a few things lacking but I'm going to fill the gaps with content soon.

I'm just leaving this post here for now and start updating the site with development related posts next week.

We'll start with the very basics - a GDD (Game Design Document) for example as I haven't really made one for quite some time but it's really useful and any gamedevelopment cycle should start by making one of these rough sketches.