And I thought we had quite detailed design docs. Great reference mate, I'm gonna use a lot of your stuff if you don't mind

planing is needed , design docs on the other hand are quite overrated.. in the 2 commericla projects i was involved in yet.. they have had ddocs but after a few month no one gave a #### to update them accordinlgy to the mass of changes that are going on during every developement.. so the teams spend more time into the actualy project then to keep the ddoc updated..

on the other hand u need planing but don't invest to much time in the ddoc cause except u make  a pacman clone alot of things will change..
best thing would be , open a forum and have for each brnache a subforum and discuss the stuff in there with ure team that way u have some sort of dynamic ddoc that is always changing but automatically reflects the latest point in developement through the posts..

my 2 € cents

I've fallen on my butt a few times when it comes to not planning things out good enough. This design doc template is IMO a great resource, and as Unikorn said... "I'm gonna use a lot of your stuff if you don't mind" ;)

Good thread!

Gotta love those Team rXn guys! ;)

Allright, I went through most of the design doc. Only thing I would change is to put the animation part seperately. We have a lot of new animations yet lots of them are general as well, so seperating it into a seperate chapter seems appropriate to me.

Mac, we are using forums and design documents at the same time, but since we got about 20 people in the team and everything is starting to get real messy, even though we have seperate forums for each part of the mod (modelling, coding, ...)

Apart from that, it is real hard for new people that join the team to figure out what exactly is going on. At this moment our design stuff is almost everywhere, and the design docs are seperated into different documents. Now I can cut-paste the stuff into this doc, and it'll have all the info.

Once that is done I gotta make sure that it stays updated ;-)

Excellent resource. Well done.

As well as a design doc, mod teams should also protect themselves from those inevitable little ego disputes that seem to crop up along the way. I think just about every mod team suffers those right?

Our uber coder "Commando" wrote up rules for contribution to the ToD team both from team members and from other contributors. These rules were then agreed on by our team and after they had their first 'baptism of fire', they were offered to the whole HL mod community.

I recommend that you guys go to the ToD teampage and scroll to the bottom to take a look. It's worth while to develop like rules for your own mods and you're free to use these rules as a guide for that. Rules such as this serve well as a base point should any arguments arrive.

I've seen to many teams suffer big setbacks because of the ego of a single person. Protect yourselves now.  

Lol, if they were identical in design and progress I'd wonder about team members playing the field if you know what I mean. ;) Maybe they're both working off the same design document but one team has to do it secretly.  

Yes, definitely the more organised would be better. I'm completely with you on this one Lifer as regards to having everything in one resource. Especially for large teams but even for small teams the doc can help to keep people focused.

As for recruiting, the forums and webpage only show of artwork but a complete design doc can tell you if the coders have full control of the situation as well. That's the greatest advantage that I can see. Mods aren't all just models and levels, true innovation requires more than just vision, it requires people who have a good grasp of what it takes to get the job done. Those people are rarely the art/design side of the team. (Don't flame me.... I'm a mapper too. You all know it's the truth!)

There is a consideration though about how much of a design doc you might want to be seen outside the team. Surely, you wouldn't send your complete design doc to just anyone who wanted to join and mod teams don't always have the resources to go through a design doc and produce a publicly releasable version every month. If you did go releasing your design doc, what happens if you bring in (for example) and AI coder and he/she says that what you've got in the design doc is unreasonable. Do you cut down and then try to explain it to the public?

It's a bit hard to get people over the net to sign NDA's and you'll never know much about that person until they join anyway right? The benefit inside the team is obvious but maybe that example is more suited to a face to face environment rather than over the net.

One more question; Do design docs ever include or include references to concept art?

I'm rewriting your stuff into webbased pages. (handwritten, no word-export)

Then it is easier to add images to it And I would definetely go for the team with the best organization ;-)