Design Documents

Al Lowe

Over the years I've had many requests from newcomers to the gamedesign field to share what I know about adventure game design. So here's a rough lesson for those who want to spend some time studying: you can see the actual game design document for some of my games. (I would share the designs for the other games, but I can't seem to find them in a format readable by today's word processors.)
At some point during the development process, I stopped updating the design document as changes were made and we just made the changes directly into the code.
You won't find any dialogue here. I always waited to create that directly in Sierra's "Message Editor," an in-house editor that allowed me to edit game text, conversations, descriptions, etc. while the game was being programmed. It was a wonderfully interactive way to create dialog.

-- Al Lowe

Leisure Suit Larry 5: Passionate Patti Does a Little Undercover Work (1991)