CSCI 291: Game Development
Assignment 5 – Design Document
Due Thursday 2/28/13 Start of Class

Special Note:  On Thursday you will present your design documents to your fellow classmates.  This will be part of Project 2, therefore this is a paired assignment.

For this assignment you will be creating the Design Document for Project 2.  The Design Document needs to include a description of the game, objectives, rules, player interaction, assets, and an overview of similar games for reference.

 - The game description should be a high-level overview of the game (a couple paragraphs).
 - Game objectives, the point of the game from the player's perspective or what the player should experience.
 - Game rules or mechanics are a detailed description of how the game presents itself to the player and how it functions.  For example, this could be the 2d grid world of a dungeon crawler or the physics and collision detection of an action game
 - How the player is going to interact with the game, the user interface (keyboard, mouse, menus, etc.)
 - Level design if your game has levels (or equivalent)
 - Assets including artwork/sprites, sound effects, etc. (either the actual assets or detailed descriptions of them)
 - A comparison of this game to similar titles.  This section should be tailored toward helping inform a potential publisher or sponsor about the intent and potential market of the game.

Here are the rough requirements of Project 2 (more detail will be given later):
	The second project may build on the first project or it may be entirely new.  In addition to the elements of Project 1 it also needs to incorporate a simple Game Design Document as well as real-time gameplay, some kind of story, animated sprites, collision detection and/or rudimentary physics, sound, and a menu.

Sample Design Document (note that your document should be more in-depth than this):

Escape Out 2.0 Design Document
Created By Zakmgoor & Mumorris

Game Description
	You are the being Eo.  Trapped on an unfamiliar planet, you find yourself harried by the planet's aggressive inhabitants.  Your only chance for survival is to ESCAPE!  Along your journey your enemies, bent on your destruction, will grow more powerful.  In your quest, you may find items to aid you.  But perhaps, some journeys are futile...
	Escape Out is a simple arcade-style game of dodging enemies as they fall down the screen.  Players compete against themselves or others to achieve the highest score based on how long they survive.  The difficulty of Escape Out ramps up as the game progresses.  Escape Out has no win condition, only survival.

Game Objectives
	The objective of Escape Out is for the player(s) to dodge the enemies and survive for the longest time possible.  The longer a player survives, the higher the score they will achieve, placing them high on the scoreboard.  The player can further increase their score by collecting the items that drop along with the enemies.  This way Escape Out encourages both inter- and intra-personal competition.

Game Mechanics
	The player's score in Escape Out is based on the time elapsed in game.  The game ends when the player collides with an enemy.  As time progresses, the enemies will get continuously larger, increasing the difficulty of avoiding them.  The player is located at the bottom of the screen and can move in the horizontal directions.  The enemies appear in psuedo-random locations just beyond the top of the screen, and fall with psuedo-random speeds towards the bottom of the screen.  When an enemy passes the bottom of the screen, they will "respawn" at the top of the screen, increase in size, and repeat the procedure.
	The player collects bonus items to increase their score.  Collection occurs when the player collides with the bonuses.  The point increase from a bonus is a psuedo-random value.  The value of a bonus will be reflected by the "hotness" of the bonus' color.  A gray bonus will reduce the player's score by a set amount (dependent on time).  

Player Interaction
	Escape Out allows the player to control their character through the left and right arrow keys.  It has a simple menu from which a player may select "New Game", "High Scores", or "Escape Out" (exit).

Level Design
	Escape Out has no variation in levels, there is only a single play state.

Assets
Artwork:
	Player sprite frames:

	Enemy sprite frames:

	Bonuses:
	Bonuses will be glimmering diamonds of varying colors (including gray).

Sound Effects:
	There is a dissonant clunk when the player is destroyed by enemies, and a merry clamor when the player collects a bonus.  There sound effects played when the menu selection is made.  There is a rocking awesome chip-tune sound track played during the game and in the menus.

Comparison To Similar Games
	This game is similar to Asteroids in that the player must avoid colliding with entities.  It has similar gameplay elements to "basket catching" games like Catstorm.