Longest Amount of Time spent in making a game?

[skullcandy1366]

I'm just curious as to how long people have spent working on a game (That's Finished) and what's the shortest amount on time? I'm planning on spending about 3-4 months on mine.

 

[Shaz]

What we PLAN to spend on them, and what we ACTUALLY spend on them, are completely different figures. It depends on how much time per day you are able to work on your game, how big the game is, how good you are with the engine ... lots of stuff. Two different people could take exactly the same game and make it in vastly different amounts of time.


I would LIKE to make a game in 6 months, but I don't know if it'll ever happen.

 

[skullcandy1366]

Well, I mean how long you've actually spent on one.

 

[hian]

I've already spent about 6 months on my main project, and it's not even close to being finished. Parallaxing, and making your own soundtrack, pluss everything else will do that to the time you spend developing if you can't do it full time, and plan on making a game that lasts more than one or two hours.

Currently, the intro portion alone is looking to be around 1+ hour long, so my main project will probably have 20 hours+ of main storyline gameplay, and will probably take me between 1 or 2 years to finish, going by my current rate of progress.

I think things will speed along once all the basic characters, music, and maps are done. However, there is always the chance of a problem arising down the road, so certainly no less than a year til I finish.

 

[PixelLuchi]

Around 2.5 years on Enelysion. Roughly 1900 hours of blood, sweat and tears.

 

[kerbonklin]

I've been working for about 6 moths as well I think, but at a slow pace. I barely have any "actual" progress, but i've been mostly working on the base, systems, mechanics, scripts, some battles. Once I get up to mapping and cutscenes I feel it would be a breeze.

 

[Indinera]

Longest: 17 months

Shortest: 40 days

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

hours might be a better choice since we devote different amounts of time per day... I haven't yet finished a game that is good for release but I guess the most I've spend so far would be 6 months of working about 20 days per month, 5 hours a day, so that would be 4*20*5 = 400 hours... and maybe 3 hours or more of that is spent on scripting... not that the project is script heavy, I think it's just my urge to practice and test my limits when it comes to script related things... it's been like that even in my wc3 days...

 

[Indinera]

By hours probably 150h for shortest time.

 

[Matseb2611]

As mentioned above, it depends on a number of factors. For example if you plan to use mostly just the default RTP resources, then it will take a lot less time to make a game than a game of the same length that uses tonnes of custom resources and other edits.

Also another thing, at which point do you consider the project to have been started? When the idea first comes to us? When we start collecting the resources? When we start mapping, etc? And at which point is the project considered complete? For example once I've released the complete beta version with a polish and all, it depends on how fast I can get feedback before I make the necessary edits for the completed version.

My longest so far has been Incitement, which took about 6-7 months (for 8-10 hours of gameplay). Shortest would probably be my very first VXAce game which took about a month to make (4 hours of gameplay but consisted 99% of RTP resources).    

 

[Archeia]

I spent three years on two separate ambitious games and all of them died out on HD Crashes. ;~;

My second longest one was when I spent 3 months straight on one game, and it met the same fate. So far I hit the 6 months mark again. It is pretty worrisome how long some games take though.

The shortest one would be 25 hours. But that's mostly RTP.

 

[orochii]

For my completed games, whose are all short games, the first one was 3 days. The second one, maybe two months. The third one, two weeks.

For my actual project. I have been on it for years. So many years that I can't remember. But I think I've been with the main idea of it for like 7-8 years. It's a long project, and one that I've been putting all my effort on making it right (and learned a lot of stuff while working on it), so it has been constantly delayed several times and even remade from scratch.

Hoping to finish it in 2 years,

Orochii Zouveleki

 

[Solo]

For my actual project. I have been on it for years. So many years that I can't remember. But I think I've been with the main idea of it for like 7-8 years.

Ah, that's more like it.

Yeah, my game (with 99% original resources, exceptions being fogs and sound effects and other silly things like that) took seven years to make. Talk about blood, sweat, and tears!

The last year or so was more refining what had already been made, and playtesting just a bit more. But that still counts as time spent dedicated to my project. I hope everyone can feel the raw power of my suffering passion.

 

[Lorenze]

Shortest: 3 hours (for a crappy five minute game)

Longest: 1 month (for a 1 hour game)

Longest session: 37 hours with breaks inbetween

Right now, my current project is at the 6 month mark. Like everyone else has said, it depends

on a lot of factors. If I didn't have school and theater rehearsal, I probably would've gotten the game out by now.

 

[skullcandy1366]

Around 2.5 years on Enelysion. Roughly 1900 hours of blood, sweat and tears.

Wow. I could never have the time and passion to do something that would take me that long! Kudos to you man! I think some mainstream games have less effort than that put into them nowadays and

everything that's got realisitc graphics now is immediatly "Revolutionary". You sir, are amazing!

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

Well, mainstreams take shorter time because it's a full team working on it, work hours per day (at least 8)... a lot of kids nowadays base goodness on graphics...

 

[Berylstone]

I'm just curious as to how long people have spent working on a game (That's Finished) and what's the shortest amount on time? I'm planning on spending about 3-4 months on mine.

I spent years on my first game and didn't even finish it.  So if you can make a game in 3-4 months I will be impressed.

Hopefully my new game I'm working on won't take me as long.  Though I can tell you I've already put at least four months into it and I haven't even finished the first town lol

Making games is incredible time-consuming.  But it's satisfying work at least.  Especially if people wind up liking your game when you are done.

... a lot of kids nowadays base goodness on graphics...

This is a huge pet peeve of mine, and so true.  Games have suffered so much these days because this younger generation of gamers seem not to care at all about interesting gameplay.  They seem to just want something pretty to look at while they mindlessly run around pushing the "I WIN" button.

I do miss the old days when games offered more depth, strategy, choices and challenges.  I just cannot get into so many of these newer games.  I'm bored to tears after a few minutes and can't understand what is possibly here to like or why this or that game is so popular.

To me having good graphics is just a nice bonus.  But it takes a big back seat to the actual gameplay.

 

[skullcandy1366]

AGH!!!! Finally after 3 weeks of work, I've finally finished making a demo for my game called Shadowlancer!


--snip--


Please leave some constructive criticism on the Greenlight page or even just here and let me know how it is! This is my 1st game and it's REALLY rough but will be so much more polished than it is right now. I just wanted some feedback and share this post if you liked it!

 

[Celianna]

This is a huge pet peeve of mine, and so true.  Games have suffered so much these days because this younger generation of gamers seem not to care at all about interesting gameplay.  They seem to just want something pretty to look at while they mindlessly run around pushing the "I WIN" button.


I do miss the old days when games offered more depth, strategy, choices and challenges.  I just cannot get into so many of these newer games.  I'm bored to tears after a few minutes and can't understand what is possibly here to like or why this or that game is so popular.


To me having good graphics is just a nice bonus.  But it takes a big back seat to the actual gameplay.

Let's not hate on graphics just because you're peeved that people care about them nowadays. Because you know, graphics matter just as much. Why settle for anything less than good?
@skullcandy1366: this is not the place to pimp your game, so I'm removing those links. Advertize in your signature if you must, but don't use a thread for this.

 

[orochii]

Graphics are as important as anything else. I still give reason to a commentary said by someone I know from another forum, where he said that every aspect has to be equally developed. If you focus on graphics, the other aspects will appear to be suffering. If you focus on systematics, people will start to wonder "what if this thing had better graphics". Same with audio, and anything else. But yeah, graphics often is more about achieving an specific aesthetic. If all things follow this aesthetic, it should be fine. There is no good or bad graphics, there is just things that don't match up.

skullcandy, congratz for the demo. Still, how long is your game? Three weeks, and you're going for a greenlit? Anyway, just as someone would say, you can't judge a game for its development time .

Salut,

OZ