Development time

[JSparks]

Hi! I've just bought RPG Maker VX Ace for $20 thanks to the Steam sale and I've given myself a goal. A goal to break even on my purchase through game sales. I've tinkered with previous (and less honestly obtained) versions of RPG Maker before, but have never finished a full project. I'd just like to enquire, out of curiosity, how long does it take to make a say... 20+ hour game using RTP sprites and maybe a bit of scripting? If I wanted it to be commercial ready, what is a fair estimate for a time window? I'm guessing between 6 months to a year, and of course the all important "only after it's done" release date. But an average time would help me set my goals.

So as I said, what's the average time it takes to complete a mostly vanilla RTP game that's 20+ hours? Thanks! 

 

[Shaz]

Yes, you could make a 20+ hour game in 6-12 months. It depends though on how much time you spend on it each day/week, and how much trouble you have due to unfamiliarity of the engine.

 

[Indinera]

I'd say 1-3 months even.

It took me 1 month to make Moonchild. But of course I knew the maker (XP) very well.

 

[Andar]

So as I said, what's the average time it takes to complete a mostly vanilla RTP game that's 20+ hours? Thanks! 

It depends on your familiarity with the engine and your personal knowledge and skills.

And that's why I usually give the advice to make a non-commercial project for learning the engine first.

If you take about a month to learn the engine and how to make a project, then your skills and development will speed up so much that the second project will be finished much faster.

And that doesn't even consider the fact that you should have a good feel of what can and can't be done with the engine before you start planning a commercial release - the learning project will help here.

Follow the link in my signature, I've explained that (and a lot more) in that tutorial.

 

[Alexander Amnell]

I second what Andar said, I've never even tried to make a commercial project but my first project was way to ambitious and failed because of it... (and my second as well.) You should have a pretty good idea of everything you can do with the engine, and what you are going to be doing, before starting a serious project. Otherwise there is just so much reworking and discovering better ways and you can get discouraged when you realize that you've wasted time on something that really needs to be redone.

 

[Berylstone]

Hi! I've just bought RPG Maker VX Ace for $20 thanks to the Steam sale and I've given myself a goal. A goal to break even on my purchase through game sales. I've tinkered with previous (and less honestly obtained) versions of RPG Maker before, but have never finished a full project. I'd just like to enquire, out of curiosity, how long does it take to make a say... 20+ hour game using RTP sprites and maybe a bit of scripting? If I wanted it to be commercial ready, what is a fair estimate for a time window? I'm guessing between 6 months to a year, and of course the all important "only after it's done" release date. But an average time would help me set my goals.

So as I said, what's the average time it takes to complete a mostly vanilla RTP game that's 20+ hours? Thanks! 

I would say it depends on the depth of your game and the amount of variables you have to account for in your game systems.  Also, I feel I should point out the amount of hours it takes to play a game is not always synonymous with the amount of time it takes you to create it.

But like others have said, if you keep things simple and already know how to use the program than 6 months is feasible I think.  If you are new to this program though and starting from scratch it might take you some months just to simply learn how to use the program itself.  And that's not even counting making your actual game.  So it will most likely be a very time-consuming process for you if this is your first RPG Maker program.

 

[XinChao]

I personal recommend you start out with small simple project to get familiar with the engine and get some public feedback before set out for huge commercial project.

You don't really want start out with huge project and get discourage in middle and then quit. The larger project the more time consume, become tedious and cron jobs for some people.  Like other have mentioned it really depends on depth of your game.

 

[JSparks]

I personal recommend you start out with small simple project to get familiar with the engine and get some public feedback before set out for huge commercial project.

You don't really want start out with huge project and get discourage in middle and then quit. The larger project the more time consume, become tedious and cron jobs for some people.  Like other have mentioned it really depends on depth of your game.

Without a doubt, I'm thinking up concepts for small stuff right now. I've spent a long time with RPG Maker and know it quite well but not well enough to satisfy myself. I was just looking for reference on what an average time window would be when I get to starting the first commercial project.

Even if I was confident enough to start it, I think customers would be more willing to buy a game from the person who brought them something they enjoyed for free than "Jessica's First RPG"

 

[Shaz]

They will buy if you provide a demo, they play it, and they enjoy it. Whether it's your first or not.


How many potential customers would know it's "Jessica's First RPG"? Likely not very many, if you don't tell them.


How many games are out there that are just bad, despite the fact that the developer has released other games before?

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

yeah, good screenies, descriptions and a nice demo will help a lot... if you already have the storyline and general plans then making it will be faster...

 

[Ed19]

I created 6 hours game for 6 months. The development includes a several sidequests, mini-games, and polished storyline.

I also did not use a lot of scrips, the battle system is purely front battle system so I can speed up my development.

However, I had enough time on that day, unlike now i am too busy.. perhaps it's about how much time you have.

20 hours gameplay is a little bit risky for the starter.. so I suggest creating a simple game might be good.

 

[orochii]

If you use RTP on all aspects (scripts included), it takes the amount of time you do the content, which is little, compared to what you need to do if you choose to make a more customized gameplay (need of testing JUST the systems, bugfixing, etc), make custom graphical assets (make this,and that, and that, (and that)^9999 ), make music (maybe if I learned some musical composition theory I could even take this into account...).

Making a single scene can take you a full day. The mapping, the event creation, the battle planning if any. Ah, and of course! The story planning! How can I forget such an important part! Important thing to take into account though, is the "false gametime", where your player is just going from A to B, or fighting against hordes of irrelevant mobs. Or grinding. These things can make your total gametime to grow as fast as yeast does to bread.

If you design your systematics, I advise taking as LONG as possible testing. Not only looking for bugs, but testing if the end result is "fun", "enjoyable", or whatever (best if you get some guinea pigs ;D).

If you make all graphical assets, this thing will take stupidly LONG. In which time you will think so much stuff your head will start to lose some screws true story.

And music, I don't know, I maek only unarmonious random keyboard bashings. It takes like 3 secondz!1

Making a game has too many factors that is a little impossible to be certain or even approximate to this kind of stuff.

Let's gamble and say 6 months, that's my bet,

Orochii Zouveleki

 

[Kes]

In your post you suggested 6 months to a year.  If you want to produce a 20+ hour game (even allowing for extensive use of RTP and not many scripts) I think it will be nearer the year end of the estimate.

Why?  You have only "tinkered" with Maker before, and it sounds like it was only previous versions.  Ace is very different from previous versions, so there is a lot to learn if the game is to be good enough to sustain that length of play time.  For example, that may well include interesting and varied sidequests, which may need you to work out how to event decent puzzles.  They are not done in 30 minutes.  Even play testing a game that long requires masses of time if you are going to pick up all bugs, inconsistencies of story line, all variations needed if players do things in a different order to what you did when you played it etc. etc.  Obviously it will also depend heavily on how much time you can put in on a regular basis, but even so, I would be surprised if a commercial quality game of 20+ hours could be produced as a first game in 6 months if you are working solo.

 

[Ed19]

I usually don't test the game until I reach a certain degree (usually 45min to 1 hour gameplay), I also use a fast-test script to reduce testing time, and I also minimize the use \. or \.\.\. in message because it's so annoying and waste of time.

It proves to be good enough. Well, that's my style anyway.   

 

[Kes]

Fast test scripts do not (as far as I know) deal with balancing issues, passability errors, dialogue that doesn't work quite as you hoped, switches that don't do what you hoped because the player did something in a way you didn't think of when you first created that sequence (unless you plan to make it fully linear) and so on. Yes, they can be useful, but you still have to put in a huge amount of time play testing. It shows when the dev hasn't done this. And for a 20 he game some of those aspects increase exponentially.

 

[Ed19]

That's being said. Play-test is still necessary, but I only want to speed up my developing process. in the end when If the game's fully developed, I'll play again from the very beginning with no fast script.