The Deal With Sabotage

Sabotage is a good example of a corrupted mod. Sabotage was poorly documented from the start which shows no definite professionalism. To create a fantastic well planned game, you obviously need tons of documentation on every detail you can imagine. If the slightest thing is missing and undocumented. The Game or Mod will fall apart within a matter of months. For Sabotage it took us near 2 years to realize how unorganized we were after we were struck  by a team member leaving us because of it. This member is now back on the team and will be working with us on our Indie Game. A slight example of a "basic" design document would be.


 "Engine: SOURCE
Developer: Biomass Productions
Start Date:Nov 2008
End Date:---
Estimated Price: FREE
Genre: Story Driven First Person Shooter

Story:

Main character is important to the combine and has lost his memory.
The combine go after the main character, but the main character doesn't know they don't want to kill him.
Main character fights alongside rebels for a period of time and becomes sympathized with them.
Combine finally capture him and knock him out. Wakes up restrained and a human character sided
with the combine explains the whole reason for the Combine invading Earth and the reason why
the other alien races don't like the Combine. The human also reveals how desperate the Combine are to
achieve their mission and how they want him to take part in a last ditch attempt to crush the resistance.
Resistance leaders are captured and they try to persuade the main character back to their cause,
and are very convincing, enough that the player wants to turn on the combine, but the human combine
interrupts them and kills them and thanks the main character for a job well done.
It is left to the player to decide whether or not he just sealed humanity's fate or done a great deed."


Then within a Design Document, You'll most likely have a very very detailed outline. The outline provided is NOT detailed enough! This is one reason why our mod has taken so long to develop. 

"sab_map_1

Player is discussing the rebel plan around a map. He escapes a metropolice break in, Runs through a canal into the sewer. He navigates through the sewer "This is where npc_lightstalk is introduced". As the player navigates through sewers he is pursued by metro police until he reaches a certain sector of the sewers. Which then proceeds to sab_map_2

sab_map_2

The player soon enters a corridor with built up alien mesh/goo. Many light stalks populate the area "almost like the caves in episode 2 with grubbiez." The player is able to kill these. We could have some sort of puzzle with leeches, and use electricity to kill them? Think up something :3. The player will make his way through multiple areas of the sewer then to lead up to a manhole." And so on..


Another very important thing that is GREATLY appreciated and NEEDED is Concept Art. Concept art is a drawing or painting of the general idea of a Game Environment or how an asset may look.

Original Sketch:


an Idea of what it will kinda be like textured and ingame:

-----Design by uuk

Conclusion:
A good conclusion to this small post would be, that planning a game is one of the most important things you can do to help your idea survive!


Hopefully this post was useful to any aspiring Game Developers!