What I'm wondering is how complete your design documents typically are before beginning the implementation of a project? I'm talking about medium to very small projects with a very small team here where even fully fleshed out the entire document may only be a few dozen pages.
Do you start with a rough framework and start fleshing out the details at the same time implementation is starting?
Do you completely flesh out every section completely before any implementation is even started? If so, what percentage change have you seen after implementation starts?
If you have experience with one of the two scenarios I outlined, I'd love to hear your opinion on what issues going that particular route caused and what obstacles you feel it helped you avoid.
Answer
If the game idea is heavily based on some unusual gameplay concept, I prototype that right away from scratch, using a previous project as a template. 95% of the time this leads to realizing that it's not as fun as I imagined, and to make it fun would require more resources than it's worth.
If I'm working on another project in the meantime, I take my time, make a doodle to get an idea of what the prototype should look like (try not to get distracted by sketch art). Then I share it with friends, partly to see if they have any input, but mostly to make myself think of things that are not obvious right away (there are always tonnes of things, even for the smartest people thinking out the simplest ideas). After a couple hours like this, I'll jot down some key concepts that have to be in the architecture, literally ~20 words. Then I can build a prototype when I have time.
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