For starters, I will give some background. I have some programming experience from working on various game mods, 3d modeling experience, and a lot of Unreal Engine experience from an ancient game called Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield. Of course, my UE experience is likely not nearly as complicated as the full engine editor available today.
I have a small project I am working on in Unity. I am trying to be realistic about what I can build as a one-man team, for now, I have a small forest area with a lake and eventually will add a small village.
Lets say I want to create a playable area that is roughly the size of a town in Skyrim. I want to have some functional character classes, a basic inventory system, real-time combat (melee + ranged), and 1+ enemies to fight. As for 3D modeling and animations, aside from a player character, assume I am using assets I find online. If I want to put all of that into a small functional area, how long would you estimate it would take for someone like me?
I just do this as a hobby, but I would like to have something playable within a year. I am not sure if that is realistic or not. Any input will be appreciated!
You might be able to do it within a year, but from what you’ve said we can’t really tell.
For starters, how many hours a day/week/month are you putting in over that year? The “year” doesn’t mean much without knowing that.
Secondly, what’s your programming experience? You’ve said it’s with mods but, again, that doesn’t really tell us a lot. What kind of code are you used to writing, in what languages? Can you solve new problems or do you just tweak existing stuff?
You’ve mentioned a lot of RPG mechanics there - classes, inventory (which implies items which you can find/use), combat, and enemies (which implies health and AI). That’s probably the big time consuming stuff for you.
If you’re using all pre-existing assets and essentially just writing all of the mechanics, you should definitely be able to get it done within a year, depending on your programming skill level and the time you’re willing to put in (as angrypenguin mentioned).
I built “Descend” (see my signature) in about 14 months which contains most of the elements you’re talking about, and that was my second Unity game (the first being the extremely simple “Loon”). I worked 1-2 hours a night, maybe 3 nights a week, and would put in maybe 8-10 hours total over weekends.
Thank you for your input all! I have experience with Lua, C#, Java, and HTML. For Java, I implemented all sorts of fun stuff into a game called Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption. I implemented embracing/diablerie, Lasombra’s lacking of reflection onto player-characters, a vicissitude discipline that included morphing a base model into various shapes. For C#, I have written some simple programs (like Pong), nothing too fancy.
I found some really useful video tutorials on YouTube that also pretty much hold your hand when it comes to building the basic mechanics of an RPG. Despite that, I was just not sure I was being realistic. Time-wise, I would say I could put 2-12 hours per week into the project. My schedule varies a lot, being in grad school.
I would use an RPG framework, but I would also like to learn from building the project as well. It’s a nice suggestion though!
Consider ORK Framework. It has all the standard RPG features and a very active community where you can ask questions. I don’t get any kickbacks from the developer; I just think it’s a good framework.
Yes, I came across that framework before. It has a lot of features, but I don’t want to invest any money in this project until I can be sure I can create something playable… even if it only involves breaking jars, picking up a sword or bow, and killing a goblin in a small village near a lake. That would be satisfying enough for me!
