Design Document

*The linked file at the end of this post is the current design document, detailing things like game-play mechanics, structure and story of the in-game world, character interaction, etc. It is very much liable to change.

It's amazing is how fast this much was generated, in only two hyperactive/manic meetings. Anyone who frequently attends GameDev can attest to the fact that we normally spend our time goofing off, so when we sat down and started hammering out details for the game, at the end of the day, we found ourselves fairly surprised.

Now there's barely any distinction between the Primary and Secondary Story designers, with the exception that the Primaries simply try to sort through the endless mountain of suggestions supplied by the Secondaries, and keep the game from sounding overly cliched. Everyone has contributed at least a little bit to the story, as well as to how the game should play out.

It's obvious that we as a club will not be reaching my initially proposed goal of four mini-games, nor will we finish this one game by the end of the semester, but as long as everyone has fun, and learns how to grow and organize ideas that can later be transformed into a game, then I'm happy. The purpose of the club, by the way, is not strictly the programming of games, but learning how they go from planning to implementation.


The file: game concepts.txt

DarkBASIC

This probably comes as no surprise to anyone who frequently browses the links at the right, but DarkBASIC Professional is now free for personal use (not commercial or educational though). For anyone who wants to take a more code-based approach to game design, but is too intimidated by the C-type languages and libraries that are widely available, this is a nice alternative to ease you into the methods of manipulating and managing game objects with code.


NOTE: The language used in DarkBASIC is, obviously, very similar to Basic, so if you're one of those people who firmly believe that learning Basic will inhibit your capacity to learn other programming languages, then maybe this isn't for you...

Project Roles

I'm just going to use this space to establish the official roles of the members of the group.

Lead Manager
Matthew Hydock

Lead Story/Conceptual Designers
Andrew Herring
Ben Cook

Secondary Story/Conceptual Designers
Allan Simmons
Garin Dangler
Matthew Hydock
Sean Fitzgerald
William Fisher

Lead Artist
Sean Fitzgerald

Secondary Artists
Andrew Herring

Lead Programmer
Matthew Hydock

Secondary Programmers
Garin Dangler
Matthew Miller
William Fisher

Music/SE
Ben Moser
Derek Robertson

This post will be edited as members decide what they can contribute to.