Engine + Graphics = Everything?

News & General Discussion
1

After much discussion with other developers, it is quite unanimous between them and even from what I’ve read before on these forums.

The majority of development time is made creating the engine, and then the graphics.

What do all of these developers and forum members claim in common?

That if you have all of the graphics ready, and the game engine ready, then you are 99% complete with your game.
I have heard soooo many people say this, that I believe it. Although, of course, I believe it anyway since programming isn’t that hard :stuck_out_tongue: LOL. I’d say it’s more like 90%, or maybe even 80%, but still…yea.

One of the developers (a team of two, actually) created their first MMORPG in 3 months. The third (myself) created the graphics for it, and that took 1-2 months, but was at the same time as the programmers. The entire MMORPG, from scratch (including engine creation) took 3 months to get in beta. The graphics are quite simple (2D topdown world tiles) but needless to say, 3 months = MMORPG. I can’t imagine how quickly they could have made it using Unity3D. I tend to talk with talented developers and programmers, who are generally intelligent people (at least mathematically). However, they all say the same thing, entirely absent of influence.

Graphics + Engine = 99% Complete.

Obviously they don’t literally mean 99% but it was the most common saying among several different developers. Some said “You’re basically done with everything.” or “You’re pretty much complete.” Percentages varied in individual developer who gave a percentage, from 90%-99% (one even said 93%! LOL!)

What do you think? Hogwash or Hogwarts? (Lies or Magic)?

2

I suppose that depends on how separate your engine and game code are, and on what unique features your game has.

3

Perhaps if we were more lenient on our art assets, we could focus more on game code, such as better AI! :slight_smile:

4

Although graphics aren’t everything, they do take up over 90% of the time, budget, and resources. They are also incredibly important to our shallow customers.

What a shame…really… “If Only…”

5

Well engine is what everything runs on, important.
Graphics is what everyone sees, very important.
Code is something most people won’t see or feel, so you usually can cut some corners here and there. Especially with today’s games with first day patches, poorly done ports and such, the code is rather sloppy.

6

People use the term engine really liberally. There is no absolute distinction between engine and game code, it’s just a line you can draw in the sand. You could create an engine that only needed to be fed assets (models, animations, sounds, levels) and configuration files for it to work. Or you could take something general (like Unity with no packages) and build a whole heap of game code until you have something working.

7

Yeah I’m pretty much going to say the same thing as everyone else, but coding the engine and coding the game blend into each other so much that there isn’t really a defined distinction, unless you are working with a pre-authored engine like Unity, in which case all the engine stuff is done (unless you modify the source code) and the only thing you do is game programming.

8

I’m assuming that by “engine” you mean the overall rules that make your game work as opposed to something like Unity. Example: Portal’s “engine”, in this context, is not just Source, but the ability to make portals, and the things that go through them.

In that case, you forgot a major component of games: Level design. This won’t affect all games, but if your game has levels (even maps), you’ll probably spend more time designing those than any other part of your game.

9

Besides Asset Creation, Animation, any graphical work, or engine building (Whcih would mean use of an engine like Unity3D or HeroEngine, as opposed to building it yourself) then…

What is the next hardest / most time consuming part?

Level Design? Playtesting? Programming? Multiplayer? Polish? Making a website for it? Advertising?

10

It really, really depends on the project. Some games have an incredibly simple kernel idea with a lot of potential where the rules for that idea can be enforced through level design rather than being hard-coded into the game. For a game like this, I’d say level design. Other games have incredibly simple levels, but very complex rules and ideas being expressed in those levels - for games like this, I’d say programming.

There is no hard and fast “this is what I spend ‘x%’ of my resources on for every project” rule. Also, around any indie forum you’ll get a large variance in replies simply because people tend not to track their own time nearly as well as time they are paying for. I work as a designer/programmer - if I am paying someone, it’s almost unilaterally for art time. However, we also have plenty of designer/artist running around with the exact opposite.

Personally, I’ve never heard anyone I trust say “Graphics + Engine = 99% complete.” That sounds to me like someone is really stretching the definition of engine to include a lot of gameplay code that is normally in a category entirely of it’s own. (For example, working with Unity I consider 99% of what I do programming to be gameplay code, not Engine code).

Even then though, most indie projects I’ve seen and worked on for paying clients have a very, very iterative process before they actually hit the open market. Usually it has worked like this for me:

1: Client has idea they would like to develop.
2: Client hires artist to develop initial batch of art assets.
3: Client hires programmer to develop initial mockup of gameplay code.

4: Artist delivers assets, which are then delivered to programmer. Programmer pumps out version 1.0 of the initial design.

5: All parties playtest extensively. Collect feedback on initial build.

6: Artist makes modifications to the assets as requested. Programmer squashes bugs and makes design changes as requested.

7: While (not ready to ship) goto 5:

8: Ship!

Depending on the game, the “dogfooding” while-loop could easily take just as long, or longer than the initial setup of the game. Obviously some clients know exactly what they want from the on-set, or the design simply does not have much room for alterations, and this process is significantly shorter. Again, every project/product is just very, very different.

Heck, sometimes my “programming” contract involves just as much level rigging in Unity as it does actual programming (if the level design is complex but the game design is not).

11

Obviously that depends a lot on the game itself. “Multiplayer” can be an incredibly complicated affair for an MMO or even an FPS, but is quite simple for a turn-based or simple 2D game. “Programming” is really too broad of a term. I use procedural programming to design my landscapes (aka level design), I use programming in my animations/rigging as well. Programming really pops up everywhere (including of course making a website for your game and even potentially advertising it).

To give you a more definitive answer though I would have to in all honesty say “polish” is actually the most time consuming. Concepts are easy… sometimes programming that concept can be easy too, but getting it to work flawlessly and intuitively for the end-user is extremely time consuming.

There is a general rule to software development that goes something like this :
90% of the work will take 10% of the time, 10% of the work will take 90% of the time.

It’s frustrating but true.

12

work is work. the hard part is whatever you find most time consuming to do, for me… difficulty is simply time. There’s nothing difficult in the world, only how much time you have to spend on it.

13

My questions are purposefully vague in definition to allow for freedom to those who want to answer. I always prefer this method to get a broad scope of opinions on many different topics. Awesome! And thanks everyone so far for sharing.

I agree entirely, polish is 100% of my work outside of graphics work. And graphics work? Animation. WIthin Animation? POLISH! LOL!

Almost everything I do takes a few minutes at max to setup, yet polish takes hours minimum. Often a full day at the very least for even a simple task. I’ll provide some examples.

  1. Logo for a Game. Idea? 30 minutes total, estimate. Time in photoshop to create the assets? 30 minutes, max. Time to polish the logo, redo any assets, tweak, and constantly change the logo until perfect? A full day (up to and over 8 hours). I spent about 8 hours designing the logo for my game, only to end up with… website graphics. No logo! Oi!

  2. Creating graphics, such as a building or sprites.
    Time it takes to load the character, outfit them? < 10 minutes.
    Time it takes to make an interesting, logical, artistic character whose clothing and items seem to fit their personality? 1-3 hours, depending, but usually just 1 hour per character design. This would be the polish, which is 6x to 18x longer.
    Time it takes to animate that character with animations ive already purchased, contracted, or made? <10 minutes.
    Time it takes to polish those animations, make sure the angle is right at every major rotation, adjust the animations if retargetted, etc.? Not surprised if it takes 4-8 hours per animation. 8-12 just to get a single animation 100% polished and ready to implement into the game.

  3. Upgrading Skill. After a week of hardwork, I realize everything ive done was done in a way that isn’t efficient enough and can or SHOULD or perhaps even NEEDS to be redone in a better way. Back to the drawing board because of my lack of experience!

14

This to me is really frustrating as well. Because I am usually striving to down something new (to me) then I end up doing it inefficiently the first time. Then down the road I realize “this would be a lot easier if I had done it completely differently”. At that point you have to judge whether it’s worth your time to do it again. Usually the second time through will be faster, and maybe the result will be easier to work with…

However, sometimes I find that you can go down a rabbit-hole when it comes to polish. For example: Aside from programming and 3d stuff I also compose electronic music. Often I will start off with a basic song, and then work on it for weeks, “polishing” it. Then I will go back and listen to the original, the one that was closest to the artistic inspiration, with the least polish. Often the original is just better, although maybe a little bit rough around the edges. The ideal finished product lies somewhere between raw and refined.

Now with code you can’t really argue that sloppiness or rawness is really better in any way. However I often experience this phenomenon where I THINK I have discovered a better way of doing something, and then when I go to implement it I realize my original idea was better because it just worked, whereas the new idealized version has all sorts of new problems.

The old adage goes: “If it aint broke, don’t fix it.” We should all remember this!

15

True, true. Game is sold according to screenshots on the website, nothing else matters. This is reason, why nowdays almost each game company fakes in-game screenshots in 3ds max, photoshop…It went so far, that they are publishing screens from non existing engines and game scenes. I know few insiders, so this is no crap, but sad reality. But customers got what they want.

16

I think it’s true that a lot of time sadly is spend on art and programming. I personally would like to make smaller games that have a far superior design then a large game which already has been done a dozen times. If you would spend more time on thinking about gameplay and writing a design document then on art code you would probably end up with a very well designed game but it will be smaller. People by nature are the feature creeps that make the features creep. So that mean that a lot of programming has to be done programming mainfesto and a lot of art has to be added art manifesto
This build large games with a lot of content. I personally feel that smaller games with interesting mechanics are more enjoyable.

just my 2 cents

17

Of course it’s not everything. There is also love, friendship, success, happiness, sadness, loneliness.

Oh wait…

18

Both manifestos are amusing. Note how the programmer’s one features a html table and is generally laid out a complete mess with no padding for the top image, and the art one is neatly laid out with colour and white space. I thought that was fairly amusing. Both are 100% full of sh*t though. As most manifestos are.

The real answer is work :stuck_out_tongue:

19

I think you forgot one of the biggest parts, design. You design the game, iterate it again, and again, and again etc etc. So if you ask me design is one of the most important aspects.

20

I honestly think design is the most important aspect. Good design leads to good programming and good programming can be updated and of course art can easily be updated. When I say “design”, I mean it. I don’t mean design as in “OMFG, you’ll have all these guns and then these enemies are gonna…like…come AT YOU.” Game design and software engineering should be tightly coordinated so the coding and assets go into place easily.