Heroes and Enemies

The next section of the design document deals with the characters that will be included in your game. Like the levels area of the document, the character section should basically fall into place if the game overview is meticulous.

There are two basic types of characters in most games: a hero and enemies. You can include details of the hero such as any background information or some rough sketches. These ideas will again help team members to understand what you are trying to accomplish. A list and description of animations should be included with every hero as well. Depending on their roles in the story, you can also include descriptive ideas of their intelligence levels and strength and basic information about how they react to the rest of the characters. Again, this information will be beneficial to the team when they are working with it.

Once you finish with the heroes, you need to create a specific section for enemies you will encounter. This could include anything that will attack a player. For instance, in an FPS, you might include a dinosaur; in a space combat game, you could include an asteroid. You can follow the same basic procedures as the characters, making sure to include similar details and sketches where appropriate. For reference, Figures 5.2 through 5.4 contain sketches of the raptor that we are using in our game project.

Figure 5.2: A rough sketch of a raptor.

Figure 5.3: The raptor with some color.

Figure 5.4: A 3D rendering of the raptor.

Lastly, you need to include information about the types of weapons the characters will have access to. You should include detailed descriptions of every weapon that can be accessed by either type of character. Sketches, such as in Figure 5.5, can be valuable for everyone on the team. You should create a list that contains the damage that the weapon will create, along with the type and amount of ammunition.

Figure 5.5: List of weapons and damages.

You’ll notice the very simplistic sketches in this example. You can make them as detailed or as simple as you need for your particular needs. Often, it’s more important to get them drawn than to worry about how great they look. You can always go back to them and clean them up later.