how quick can you develop your game?

[NoPiessadface]

title

 

[PoptartPresident]

The length of my games are long enough to where it takes me a while to make a few maps with meaningful content lol

 

[ShadowDragon]

mechanics 1-4 days each, so it will be unique,
maps, VERY slow, as I'm bad in it + it needs to be good looking.

besides those, tons of testing to see if the mechanic is working, which
also goes most of the time into it.

I rather take it a bit slower as I try to polish things in the process as well,
as giving my best for a good quality to play them

it's not the time you spend to make, but also quality of the game itself
but for a uber short game, 2-3 days probably, but for my side game and main,
much, much more ^^

 

[thesteven]

Depends.

A garbage game that uses only default graphics I can make in day.

But a really good game can take years.

It's not even so much about knowing the engine. If you want to make a really good game you need to make all the graphical content for it which can consist of thousands of different sprite sheets for tiles and battlers and NPCs and particles. That'll take hundreds of hours by itself and all without even messing with the engine side of things.

If you're setting out to make a good game you really can't think about the time. You need to do baby steps and just focus on one thing at a time and keep your perseverance. If you think too much about how long everything is going to take you it will kill your motivation.

 

[dennis_the_tennis]

I started my game at the beginning of the pandemic and just released it this month, so that's about 3 years from start to finish as a solo dev with a decent amount of custom assets. Steam says I've spent about 4500 hours in Maker, but about half of those are other abandoned projects. Add the time spent making musical/graphical assets and doing things like posting on forums like this to advertise, and I'd say I spent about 3000 hours total. That's a lot of work! At least it was fun!

Of course you can justify a lot less work if it's not a commercial project, or if your game is on the shorter side.

 

[CleanWater]

It really depends.

In my case, I have mastered the engine, but my time is really scarce. Besides that, the weather here doesn't collaborate in certain times of the year (which means I must turn my PC OFF on the free time I could spent at making my games).

So, for a short game that I could take only a week or month working at it may end taking three or more months for me to finish. When it comes to bigger projects, it's even worse.

 

[ATT_Turan]

Aside from everything being relative (different games are different lengths, so obviously take different amounts of time to make), nothing in your poll means anything as it has no measurements of time.

What is "very quick?" Is it a day? Is it a year? What is slow? Two years? A week?

 

[Indinera]

10 days for 6h commercial game.
45 days for 15h.

 

[Lunacero]

Started a new side project a month ago. I don't have much spare time but I managed to get all the ground work done + an hour or so of gameplay. Since it's a shorter game, I estimate a few more months of a development and I'll be done. A larger project has taken me a couple years but that's after several long breaks.

 

[PeachyGlitch]

It took me about 300 hours (a little less) to make a 2-hour prototype for the first videogame I've ever made, using RM for the first time, without knowing how to program, without making the music, but making my own art. With work on the side and everything else, it took me a year.

It depends a lot on how much of the game you make yourself and how much you take from already made material.

 

[Former_Sky]

Slow. Everything I make takes a long time to make. I'm not used to the maker itself and I haven't much time to actually work on it. Even if I know how to use rpg maker, making a lot of content takes time. Probably the thing I hate most about making games.

My nickname should be Slug.

 

[Kes]

I think the poll is asking the wrong questions. Take the first option
"Very quick as I have mastered this engine"
That makes it sound like this is the only thing that's needed. It's possible to have mastered the engine and still take a long time to make a game because of its complexity, the sheer amount of dialogue in it, the need/wish to hunt around for non-default graphics and music etc. etc.

And as ATT_Turan has pointed out, quick/slow (all other options) need to be defined to have any meaning at all in a poll.

 

[Vati]

Depends on how you go about it, I suppose. If you just use default assets or not, is also going to be a major factor.

I tried to challenge myself this year and managed to make short 5 hour game in one year, from january to december. But I also made most of the graphics myself, which took a crazy amount of time.

 

[kaukusaki]

after tinkering for a decade, i can say 6 weeks for an 8 hr game with all custom everything. and that's crazy fast. if you're not trying to give yourself a heart attack/stroke, then on average "fast" is 2 years if your title not rotting in dev hell, and you're designing *all* the things yourself (given the skill). I also know the ins/outs of the engine, and i use templates and randomizers for everything (graphics, music). I also have a master SRD (system reference document) for my games so i don't have to think that hard about classes, values, etc. lastly, i have a group of beta testers that will tell me what i over looked. and i have a team of debuggers to fine tune the spaghetti code that's cryptically commented on.

i know not everyone has a stable of coder monkeys at home and are single people so they'll be at their passion project for years (like i am lol). also not everyone wears all the hats like i do nor have the capabilities of automating their hats (i had to, as my health was suffering).

now that i'm retired from my other jobs, and i basically have nothing else to do, i can fully devote time to it. here's to (finally!) a timely release!

 

[knightron]

I begun making a new town the other day. Was working on it at a nice steady pace today until I realised that I wanted outside public benches/chairs in an area. I have them in my assets but only front and back facing. I had to make new side ones in GIMP. That took me an hour.
I would consider my progress as slow, but if I were bad at computers then I'd have not been able to tackle that obstacle. I think someone that's bad at computers may even make a game quicker because they know their limitations and don't bother creating or fixing small graphical details like that.
Just wanted to beat that dead horse a little more and explain why I thought the poll was off. I didn't vote.

 

[nbgamemaker]

typically around 6 months to a year.