How do you supplement your game design document with diagrams?

1 Why use diagrams?

Diagrams are graphical representations of information that can help you illustrate complex concepts, relationships, systems, and flows in your game design. Diagrams can also help you organize your thoughts, identify gaps, and refine your design. By using diagrams, you can make your GDD more accessible, engaging, and informative for yourself and your team members, as well as potential stakeholders, publishers, and testers.

2 What types of diagrams to use?

When creating a GDD, you can use various diagrams to supplement your work. Concept art is one way to visually represent the artistic style, mood, and theme of your game. Wireframes can help you show the layout, navigation, and functionality of your game screens. Flowcharts are useful for mapping out the game loop, player's journey, branching narratives, and game states. Mind maps are great for brainstorming and structuring content like themes, genres, mechanics, features, and levels. Entity-relationship diagrams are helpful when designing, documenting, and implementing a game database - such as characters, items, quests, and achievements - as well as managing and querying data.

3 How to create diagrams?

Creating diagrams for your GDD can be done in a variety of ways. Pen and paper can be useful for quick and rough diagrams, as well as for collaborative and creative sessions. Digital tools, such as Photoshop, Illustrator, PowerPoint, Visio, Balsamiq, Lucidchart, and MindMeister, offer more features, options, and flexibility to create diagrams. Additionally, code languages like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML, and UML can be used to create more dynamic and interactive diagrams that are integrated with your game engine or framework. Such code can also help you automate or update your diagrams based on your game data or logic.

4 How to integrate diagrams?

Once you have created your diagrams, you need to integrate them with your GDD. Depending on the format and style of your GDD, there are various ways to do this. Embedding is a way to insert diagrams directly into your GDD as images or objects, which can make it more visual, coherent, and readable. However, this can also make your GDD more bulky, slow, and hard to update. Referencing is a way to refer to diagrams in your GDD by using names, numbers, or links. This can make your GDD more concise, modular, and easy to update. But it can also make it less integrated, consistent, and accessible. A hybrid approach combines embedding and referencing in order to balance the advantages and disadvantages of both methods. This allows you to customize your GDD according to your needs and preferences. For example, you can embed some key or small diagrams in your GDD while referencing some secondary or large diagrams.

5 How to improve diagrams?

Creating and integrating diagrams is not enough to make them effective and useful for your game design document. To improve your diagrams, use clear and consistent labels, symbols, and colors to make them easy to understand. Additionally, choose appropriate types, styles, and formats that match your purpose and audience. Keep elements simple and minimal to avoid clutter and confusion. To check accuracy, clarity, and usability of diagrams, use feedback and testing. Finally, revisions and updates should be done to keep diagrams aligned with game design changes and progress.

Diagrams are powerful tools that can supplement your game design document and enhance your game design process. By using diagrams correctly and wisely, you can effectively communicate your game vision, scope, features, and mechanics.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?