   What about using Google Docs and Spreadsheets in the development process?
  After hundreds of design document pages, I'm beginning to look at ways to organize a development team.I'm going to need a forum, and a chat room for meetings.  As for the design document.. * Would have to be available online* Not be viewable to the public* Easy for me and selected members to make quick changesAt first I thought about getting a Wiki.  But now it seems like Google Docs is a simpler application.  It's easy to upload the word documents I already have.  Making changes seems pretty simple.So my questions are:* Have you ever used Google Docs in the development of a game or similar team project?* Do you think Google Docs would be good software to use to host a design document?* What other software applications do you think are useful when it comes to game development project management?Oh, and while I'm at it...* What is the easiest way to send, receive, and host large files online?   
  I just used Google Docs on my last game project. I found it very useful and easy to use with our game. We mostly used it for our backlog and buglist in the form of a spreadsheet. Everyone was able to make changes when needed and we could all make changes to the backlog when our sprints were over. I would say if you have a relatively small development team, Google is the way to go.In the past, I have used Microsoft Project to organize a backlog and schedule. I found that this was not nearly as useful for the entire team to access, but was much better for scheduling the parts of the project.   ;  I can only answer the third question. We needed something free, and Basecamp has been good, so far.http://projectpath.com/   ;  I'd suggest hosting your own instead of using basecamp. Try dotProject. The website is ugly, but the app is powerful as ****.Edit: My suggestion is good only if you have the wiki/doc part covered elsewhere. Otherwise, just use basecamp as it has an assignment manager (less powerful than dotproj) and a watered down wiki.   ;  Thanks for your help guys!After watching the tutorial videos, I was pretty jazzed about using Basecamp.  But it looks like it does actually cost something if you want to use webspace.Actually, on second thought, I'm kind of a minimalist and I'd feel better about managing the entire project through a personal forum.  But I'll still need at least 500 MB of webspace for the project.I guess I could use my own webspace - is there an easy way I can allow people to upload into my webspace without giving them my password and junk?   ;  Just be aware that Google and other online service providers may become a legal issue if you start storing company confidential or trade secret information on them.For non-secret stuff, it is a great tool for sharing documents.   ;  Our team is using PHPCollab, you will need your own server to host it on but it is amazingly simple and very organized.   ;  Another option that you might want to look into is Microsoft's Sharepoint (I know, Microsoft).   There are places that will host a sharepoint site for you.  It will cost money, since they are hosting.  Since we have to have Windows Server and use Office, a version of Sharepoint comes free with that.We've been able to migrate pretty much all of our development tracking and hosting of documents to Sharepoint.Like a lot of things it seems really vanilla when you start it up, but you can make it do a lot of different things if you hammer away at it.Feargus UrquhartCEOObsidian Entertainment, Inc.