Can anyone tell me how much time a average Trading Card Game would take to get developed in Unity3d (for windows, ios and android) ?
And on average how much Unity3d developer/freelancers charge per hour ?
The game would be turn based multiplayer. Example games being hearthstone (not as heavy), Yu Gi Oh, MTG, Pokemon, etc.
Well MTG would take an eternity because there are so many rules. No idea about the others, never played them.
About rules, lets ditch complex and environment effects and keep them basic on, attack, defense, KO, 3 skills (specific single or multiple target damage or effect) and such.
Any idea how many hours approx. it would take and what should be a fair price paid to a developer per hour for that
The vagueness of this question is so profound, Jedi’s on the other side of the universe just felt a disturbance in the force. How many hits will it take to kill the final boss in an RPG? How many licks to the center of a tootsie pop? How much money does it cost to build a car?
What is needed is specifics. How many cards? What kind of graphics are we talking about, solitaire? What’s interesting is that once you start getting into the specifics for designing your own game, researching what info is needed for a proper time estimation, you’ll practically answer your own question.
So now you know, and…
Pretty sure there won’t be a upper limit on cards but each player would have 40 in a deck while dueling, since cards will be based on classes, don’t think card number should affect it as long as their class is programmed
The graphics itself would be done separately, so this is all about the code part.
My only concern is this, if I save $3000 for this project and try to post it on freelancer, I will get bids from $2000 to $5000, now since I dont have any vague idea how much time it will take approx for this project, I can’t know a fair/ideal price for it to spend ± on that. I just to know that $xxxx budget I need to have to get this done. I want to know if $3000 would be good enough or would need to save more, just don’t want it to spend $3k and then project gets just half done.
Perhaps, I can ask the question in more specific way, how much should it cost to clone any of these games:-
MTG
Yu Gi Oh
Pokemon TCG
Hearthstone
If you want someone to give even semi-close estimate you need to write all required features in some document starting from card properties (which you already said partly). Then UI requirements cause all those tweens, particles and part of experience. If you cant do even this its already fail. If you want to do it easy then screenshot/video tag each view of the existing game and describe which features you want
Cloning all Hearthstone functionality is over $10k alone if you want card game engine with card editor handed out for you
Just so you know, someone in my consultancy team gets charged out at $2700 per day. So your $3000 would get one of my guys for just over a day. I doubt a day is enough to clone one of the games that you mention. Obviously my guys are Western-based, Unity experts, and charged at a rate to keep the demand for them restricted.
So, assuming you had a requirements document, I guess a scripter would need to spend a couple of days reading that and understanding what you want, a few days building systems, and then maybe 10 days implementing the game play. So, as a minimum you’d want to budget for 15 days, three weeks. It’s not clear where the artwork will come from, what devices the game actually needs to run on, who does the QA and review of what’s been development. If you are using a new team, or a team in a different country which speaks a different language, you’d want to budget for scrapping everything and starting again.
I don’t want to disappoint, but what you’ve shared here is too vague for me to think you’re going to be successful. I’m sure you’ll get teams who offer, and at a price point you want to spend, but you’re going to be very stressed running this.
Do yourself a favor. Try to learn how to make games with Unity. It doesn’t have to be complex games, it just needs to be completed games. At the very least you’ll have a grasp of the processes involved in making a game.
Trying to clone one of those games would be considerably more than $3,000. Especially if you go into the project without a fully laid out plan for it.
i don’t know for sure, but personally i’d hazard a guess that the 2D artwork would be, by far, the most expensive and time consuming part of developing a TCG
$90 + Time to customise to requriements - Unity Asset Store - The Best Assets for Game Making
You have 3 major components, the game/client development, the art and the and the server development. Not to mention the architecture of the project overall. As Nanako pointed out the art/content is huge chunk of the budget/time, at least for anything of a decent quality.
The thing is, there are tons of TCGs. Since you are paying to have one built, if you go cheap it will just be another one of the several hundreds out there that no one plays. You are going to need to pony up a lot to get any kind of return. Honestly, anyone willing to do it for 3k (or even 5k) doesn’t have the ability to do passable job. That doesn’t even get into the art or backend. Heck, I probably charge at least 3k just to write the TDD.
There is a big difference between an indie/hobbyist tackling a project like this for their own project, and contracting someone to build it. If you are going put money into it, you are going to need to get money out. 5k won’t build you a TCG that will be of a quality enough to make money. You are looking a couple of hundred thousand easy. You could look at kits and such, but really they are all pretty simplistic, and of course are the same kits every other low end project uses, so unless you are really spending a ton on (or have artists that can produce) exceptional quality art work, it is just really going to be throwing money away.
having worked for this kind of game in the last company i went in japan…where those game are numerous, well one of the project was like 9 month timeframe for a core team of 9 people, where you got server , client, art , planner , designer type of people.
Some art where also made in other company branch as well.
So thats usually not small and simple game to do and take lot of time and different skill set.
I don’t want to clone a game as it is or want flashy stuff, my main aim right now would be more of a prototype to show card dueling and multiplayer. No need for card editor, but would need a deck builder.
Well, its a given top devs would charge top price, I am not looking for a hifi team or the game to be that big itself, I am pretty sure a mid-level unity dev should be able to work on it, I have all the logic and rules and am a app dev myself (php/objc), and have my own team of artists. So a minimal MVP/prototype would be my goal.
Unfortunately I do not want to do this till next year, right now I have my hands full by freelancing and other stuff and I am more indulged in php/objc, I know C# is also OOP based so it won’t be that hard to learn, but I believe if I take 3 months to learn it all, I can probably get the game developed by then itself.
Artwork and graphics part I can take care of as I have a contacts with talented artists from east (and west), being a otaku, so that won’t be a problem
Already have that purchased like 6 months ago, but the asset is still not “stable” and finished to actually make use of, I tried to ask the author himself what he would charge to customize it but he has his hands full.
Artwork has already been taken care of, server part for central database and multiplayer and the actual game client is what I would need.
My goal is for a MVP/prototype to show how the duels and multiplayer would work and to show a small demo of the game
I actually plan to crowfund this for its proper full fledged development
“Well, its a given top devs would charge top price, I am not looking for a hifi team or the game to be that big itself, I am pretty sure a mid-level unity dev should be able to work on it, I have all the logic and rules and am a app dev myself (php/objc), and have my own team of artists. So a minimal MVP/prototype would be my goal.”
What is a “mid-level unity developer”? I ask only for my own edification.
Not a actual term, but its what I would call someone who is post beginner-level and looking to freelancer to put his learnings into practical use. Might not have been able to put what I have in mind to words exactly, but someone between amateur and professional
How long is a piece of string?
This is a bit of a non-topic, it sounds like you lack experience on projects, length of time can depend on developer skill and experience, this goes the same for the amount they charge.