Hi, i am trying do a game multiplayer to 2 players in unity since last 2 months, my game is a boardgame really, i am a newcomer how designer, the project is far superior to my abilities. I know that I should start with a much smaller project to familiarize myself with the system, but this is really what i want to do.
With that said, it is my intention to pay to hire someone to take care of the project, so I can become familiar with the environment seeing how it was done, the mechanics of my game are the typical ones of the deck builder how Dominion, Hero Realms, Star Realms, Shards Of Infinity, Clank, âŚ
I want only the skeleton of the game, everything related to beautifying the project I hope to do it on my own. So my question is, how long do you think it would take you in hours to develop the skeleton of any of these games?
By âskeletonâ it sounds like you want a finished game using prototype level art, since troubleshooting and adding to someone elseâs multiplayer code is arguably more difficult than writing it yourself.
A good rule of thumb I suggest for estimating time for a multiplayer game is figure out how long it would take to complete a single player version of the game, then multiply that amount of time by 3 for the multiplayer version. Iâd be skeptical of anyone quoting anything less than a year.
I havenât played those games you mentioned but they seem to be deck-builder / card games.
Having simple mechanics of a card game can be done in a short period of time. This is basic mechanics such as player turns, drawing cards, deck builder, etc.
The parts that are hard to estimate are the different mechanics, interactions, game systems, etc that you use to turn these âcardsâ into a game. If you know all the mechanics and systems before hand, it would be easier to plan out and design your game so that they can interact with each other.
Adding on systems later on could prove challenging, even if your code and design is well structured.
And then yes, for multiplayer add more time unless you are familiar with that way of thinking already.
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So to answer your question⌠if your skeleton just consists of a basic deck builder / card game - there are already assets on the store for this if you just want to see how they are created and learn from it. Or you could hire someone and it wouldnât take too long either, maybe 4-6 weeks for a âpolishedâ skeleton (no content). But then if you want to add your mechanics and game systems⌠that is where your game may take a few years.
Thank you for answering, the truth i am very surprised with the answer, I have been using the prototype of a person who published his project similar to hearthstone and learning a lot about unity, I thought in weeks at most :(, so I have to rethink this.
I search for assets in store, but nothing for deck builder, people only thinking in hearthstone when do card game sadly.
If you hired someone who is very technically skilled, you will still have the bottleneck of being inexperienced yourself - this will slow down the project greatly and add hurdles to their development. To manage a project you need to have some sort of experience, otherwise it gets messy quickly.
I have actually worked on exactly something like this as contract work, for a client who was not entirely sure what they wanted or what is possible and had no technical/gamedev skills themself. It took about 8 weeks, but if the client had been more experienced or communicated better / wasted my time less by doing their research first and having a well thought out design etc, it would have taken probably about 4 weeks. But that was pretty fast for something like this, I think really 8 weeks is a good estimate all things considered.
Games take time to make More so if you are a beginner
In this case it is a little different, the game is perfectly defined, the mechanics are very very similar to the games mentioned above, what each type of card does is very well structured because the game has been physically tested many times, I have spent many hours in these 2 months, easily about 150 hours understanding the basic concepts of programming, luckily my brother is a computer expert(working actually) and I have been able to ask him and see how he works, I emulate him to a great extent, but he has reached a point where I cannot ask him everything.
Last two weeks I have started to make big stops in my attempts, not being able to do it by myself, but the days go by and I see myself that I am very clear that this is what I like, it is a hobby that I spend a lot of time on it, and I donât mind spending a lot of time learning when i have some kind of advance. Basically my intention after this is to continue using Unity for very similar projects.
In fact, today I thought to face the problem in another way, in Tabletop Simulator there are many scripted games written in Lua, I am going to buy it right now to see if I can see how they handle the games there, which is exactly what I am trying to emulate.
Prototypes are a different animal than what I think you were asking for. They implement core functionality without polish, and not much else. Basically you get a functional game (or even just a slice of the game), but that is far from getting a complete game. Just as an example, working part time on my first single player Steam game, it was in a playable state within a few weeks to a month. Getting to the polished completed game was an additional 7 months.
Iâm assuming from your original post that you need the code delivered to you to be at or near a polished completed state, with all the extra functionality youâd expect from a completed game, as well as all the testing and tracking down of bugs already done. All that extra work between when you go from a rough but functional game to a polished feature complete game is really where the majority of the work and time goes.
Joe is spot on, in my opinion and experience. Games like this can vary to, becareful of feature creep , that is an easy trap to fall into, which can cause you to extend your time and cause all sorts of fun new issues.
As Joe said, it sounds like what you really want is not a âprototypeâ but basically a game to be made for you. In which case what I quoted is vastly below the real cost and time. You would expect a full game to take 10+ months especially given that you sound extremely inexperienced in both game design and development. Nothing you have said in your most recent reply to me says otherwise - spending 150 hours is commendable but means nothing - you have literally said nothing that gives me hope that you really have a proper GDD etc, saying âIts similar to the games aboveâ is a big warning sign that you really have no idea what a proper game design is or have one put together. That issue will show its impact as developement goes on, more so with professionals involved who will expect something more than what it seems you are able to provide in terms of design and leading a project.
I think you should start contacting companies to do this for you, it does not sound like this is something you will be able to do on your own at your current skill level and it definately sounds like you are greatly underestimating the time, budget and expertise required for this (and most games).
Just FYI physically testing board games that are âsimilarâ is not a design, and will not show you even a fraction of the design + implementation issues involved with making a digital product. This is not a physical board game.
Why not try releasing something much simpler first without multiplayer so you can learn how to use the engine, and then slowly build up to a project like this? This just seems outside of your capable scope, sorry.
Your description of testing sounds pretty good to me. Iâd think a Unity coder could knock something out relatively quickly.
For one thing, you say youâve actually tested the game. If something gets +2 penetration vs. Demonics youâve worked out exactly how to tell it something is a Demonic, and whether a non-Demonic with Demonic armour counts, and youâve worked out the details of how penetration works (you know itâs before armour but after magic resist, and have tested in play for funny cases).
For another, mechanics similar to other games makes it easy to describe. âLike the energy system in Clash Royale but with ways to affect the regen rateâ is way better than a few pages of "cards require energy points, which vary for each card and⌠".
Then back to your playtesting, a typical project turns out to be not-much-fun at first. It takes lots of back-and-forth tweaking to balance it and make it entertaining. Doing that remotely with a contractor is slow and a huge pain. The poor coder is going to get 2 notes a day for minor tweaks and a new build â arg!!!. If youâve done most of that already â say youâve overhauled two sucky versions of Penetration and finally like the way it plays now â the revisions are down to a reasonable amount.
More so if you are a beginner 
