Well, I’m 13. I used to program in C# and now I’m in the game design business. I used to work in UDK. I hated it because scripting was horrible and time consuming. But, I thought up this idea for a game. It’s sorta like Fallout 3. It’s about a man who rents this sleeping chamber that will keep him and his family alive throughout a war. The only problem is, the programming wasn’t tested. So, his wife and daughters chambers opened WWAAAYYYY earlier then his and he needs to find them.
Well, lets get to the question… I’m horrible at judging how long things take me. I plan it to be an army of one (me). I can model, texture, program, write, and put it all together. Modeling takes 1 to 2 days, working all day and that includes texturing. Most other things are done along the way (they take weeks).
So, has anyone ever attempted something like this? How long did it take you? How long do you think it will take me?
All I have done are a few props, and three levels in writing.
Well, if it’s really like Fallout 3 in size complexity… then, uhm, wild guess… 200 years to finish?
Large games nowadays are made by hundred-man teams during a year or two. So that’s several hundred man-years worth of work by highly experienced professionals. And they aren’t exactly slacking off and wasting the time; those games are indeed that complex to make.
Depends on the kind of game. Are you still talking about Fallout 3 kind of game? In that case, I think the hardest part is how the hell to manage all those 100 people working on it, so that work gets done efficiently effectively everyone is as happy as realistically possible. Teams of that size are no small feat to control.
The brunt work of creating a game like Fallout 3 is in my mind no doubt the art side of it.
In the earlier days a lot of amazing cutting-edge games and mods were made by just one guy working alone from his basement. This is not really possible anymore because todays high res models, textures and animations just take too long to create.
The Aliens TC was an epic mod in its time and Black Mesa source looks to be an epic mod today. The BMS team is about 50 times larger than the one guy who made the Aliens mod and still they have surely worked 5-10 times longer, and are still working on it, to finish it.
What’s hard depends entirely on what you’re good at.
You can model, texture, program, write, and put it all together, but at 13 years of age you can’t do any of that anywhere close to the level needed for a game like Fallout 3. Also you need to be able to create sounds effects, compose music, do voice acting, create animations at an expert level as well as a bunch of other things to create something like Fallout 3.
And creating a model does not take 1-2 days. Most guys will tell you the time needed to create a fully textured next-gen character will take anything from a week to a month. And this doesn’t even include animating.
Trying to create something like Fallout 3 by yourself is delusional. You better start off smaller, way smaller, tiny even.
Managing a team of 100 isn’t that difficult, but it does take structure. Team dynamics make their first big change in the ~40-55 range, which is where small companies struggle most to adjust to the differences. 100 professionals are also quite different to manage from 100 teens (in a retail or fast food setting for example).
The shift I’ve found is mindset in who ever is leading the current charge, you simply can’t maintain larger staffs in a completely flat structure. It’s fine to call yourself CEO, but you won’t really feel the difference in role between that and front line (staff) manager, or even middle management until you pass a certain threshold (which does vary by company culture, staff, and some other factors).
(no offense to anyone here) but I’ve found artists to require smaller team sizes (ie, you need more managers with smaller staffs) than pure developers. Now, that said, as with all professionals, that changes as you have more experienced staff. Artists with 5+ yrs experience, have usually gotten over the differences between creating “their art” and creating “art for someone else”, same with developers, just seems coders burn that out of their systems around 3-4 yrs.
@CreativeCoding - I would say the hardest part of what you are proposing is planning (and not getting distracted by some of the published attitudes of some studios). What I mean is, … hmm how to put it? Ok, let me use an analogy, in business IT there are several maturity models (I like CMMI, but there are very good alternatives). Some companies run very well at a maturity level of [edit - I relooked at CMMI, and the level I meant was 1] 1), usually those that are successful become so because they are running on the raw talent of the people working there. Many, many, game studios operate this way (as far as I’ve been able to glean from their own reports (read some post-mortums in the game dev magazines).
Raw talent is fantastic, but not predictable. If you want to take on a large multi-year project you need something more. Planning. (yes the bane of all developers, artists, etc…). If you do plan well and start making some real progress, others will be eager to join your project, but too many fail (mostly by trying to bite off way too much, and not having any realistic plan for getting there).
The unfortunate reality is that those of us who are working in one man teams(me included!) tend to have this idea that we can complete large projects that in reality do require huge teams of people and many years of effort. I think I read once that the average game design team with 50-100 people ends up completing around 200years of individual work.
Now as disheartening as that is, we should cheer up. Remember the days of the first half life, Doom, Counter Strike, Goldeneye? Those games are much easier to complete now as most of the time spent on making them were getting it work on the limited hardware and creating their own tools to make their game. Now today we have this fancy Unity which does all the brunt work of the whole game engine and physics. So us one man team people out there should try to keep things a little more simple, and say go for a little less wow and a little more fun and I think we can make just as many hit games as the big guys.
So, if you want to do a fallout 3 style game, go for it. Just remember to not go overboard with the amount of custom lands and objects and whatever else they have alot of in that game(never played it). I would say only attempt to make 1/4 of what is in Fallout 3.
This is something I will need to keep in mind for my FPS project. I am saddened that I will be unable to complete all the features I want and only about a fourth of the number of levels, but if I plan it out well enough, I can reuse the environments for different levels and still have a good game.
Also, who says good game art requires a lot of time? I actually amaze myself at my level of work I can complete and I make models as fast as possible. I guess that boils down to how good of an artist you are.
EDIT: Oh yeah, an ETA for such a game? I would give yourself a realistic time frame of 5 years of dedicated work. At least that’s how much I will need to complete my FPS project, or at least to get halfway done with it :roll:. Having a life and things going on constantly really cramp my game designer aspirations
I’m not so sure finishing it is accurate enough of a description. For me the hardest part about making a game is deciding precisely on everything that will be in it. I find it very hard to make decisions on what to include/exclude in my project. I have too many ideas and dream too big for my own good!
In my experience at console studios, the hardest part about making a game is keeping the people who don’t know what they’re doing from fucking up the game.
The next hardest thing is “finishing” as mentioned above, but I’d like to elaborate on that. The most fun part of making a large game is at the beginning, you make a lot of progress and everything is fun and new. The hard part is doing all of the execution tasks once the vision is defined. Like, deciding what the enemies are going to be? That’s fun. Implementing the first enemy? pretty fun, implementing the 100th enemy? Oh god, when are we going to be finished?
If you’re working by yourself I think the hardest thing would be to keep up your morale and productivity. You don’t have a boss threatening you with a deadline, so self discipline is necessary, and you don’t have team members to inspire and motivate you either. Luckily you’re the only person who can fuck up your game at that point, so you only have to stop yourself.
Oh, but to answer the original question: how do you estimate the amount of time it will take you?
Make a vertical slice of the game: think of it as a proof of concept or prototype with 1 enemy, 1 level (or section of a level), etc.
Keep track of how long it took you to create each element
multiply the time spent on each element by the number of elements - so if it took you 2 days to do the modeling, texturing, and rigging of an enemy, and you plan on having 20 enemies, then you know the art for your enemies will take you 40 days. If the enemy AI took another 2 days, then add another 40 days to your total. Keep going until you’ve accounted for all of the elements.
Look at your total… now start to think about ways to reduce this total time by reusing assets, code, simplifying the design, etc.
Most guys will tell you the time needed to create a fully textured next-gen character will take anything from a week to a month. And this doesn’t even include animating.
