Blade, I know I said I wouldn't post too much in your next thread, and I'm sorry, but it has to be said: Fastlane is one of the few users who really deserve their "Senior Expert"-title, and he has spent years on game design. He knows what he is talking about. He is offering you, with his critique, and the following posts here, the once-in-a-lifetime-chance to directly learn from someone knowing his stuff. You can choose to ignore what he says, but that means that you'll have to learn it all by yourself. This takes months, if not years. Please, use this chance. If you think comments are getting personal (again?), then react professionally. Just ignore the flames, and pick their comments apart. But always be honest with you!

Your document isn't finished, I believe we have established as much. But thats not to say that its bad - that you cerated such a document is a good step up from the other thread, and you're now doing better than a billion other people, who stumble about in the editor. But the document needs to explain to me, someone who can't see in your head, what your game will look like. How will it play, what do I see on the screen, etc. Its often hard to put in words at first what it is that you want to create, you often only see a vision, but it's important to think that out - it means that you have to make a few decisions, and often, thats a hard thing to do, but a clear, complete and good outlined design document will help you immensely. Plus, its much easier to plan and see how long its going to take with it. Ideally, if only given your document, I (or someone not knowing HP) would be able to create EXACTLY the game you're having in your head right now. (Okay, so maybe not exactly, but you might keep that idea in your head for now)


I ask you again, please, please take this chance. It might hurt now, but believe me, when I posted my first awesome project here and people tore it apart, it hurt more, because I invested more time into it without planning. So take the Design document seriously. Changes can and will happen, but the better you plan and think it through, the smaller these needed changes will be, hopefully.

As far as the legality goes, we already discussed this, no? Just remember this. (You may now argue that this was commercial and your game will be freeware, but it'd be easy to argue that your game is illegal. That, of course, doesn't mean "lawsuit", but consider that you actually have the chance of bringing your OWN universe to life - isn't that a lot more exciting?)


Maybe we really should create a "I want to create a game - How do I start?"-thread, that could be stickied, with helpful posts about Design-Docment-creation, etc. I know I could use that every once in a while!


By which I mean: Fastlane, please create topics and posts like these.