How many hours does it take you to program a game?

I talked about this in a different thread. The reality is (at least for me) that if you make a game in a very short space of time (8 hours), then assuming it's even any good, you aren't going to be able to do the same thing every day, day in, day out for a whole year.

Personally speaking, as I mentioned above, I have long periods of time after completing a game in which I have no creative energy at all. I think even the most motivated developer couldn’t keep that up every day. Then of course you have to take into account coming up with the ideas which I'm pretty sure isn't included in the time taken, plus if you're talking sponsorship, sorting all that out can take anywhere between a few days and a few weeks.

So yes it's completely possible to make a game in 8 hours, that doesn't make you some sort of game producing machine though.

Ali

I'v made a few smal games that took me about 5-7 days each. On my current game I spent probably more then 400 hours on this far, if you count both graphics and programming (Been working on it for almost 7 month), and I still have like 3-4 month untill its finished.

I have to much fun playing around with graphics for my games, that takes up alot of time. So I think I would have a hard time making a game in just 8 hours

"(Been working on it for almost 7 month), and I still have like 3-4 month untill its finished."
...so I'm not the only one :)

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I have to much fun playing around with graphics for my games, that takes up alot of time. So I think I would have a hard time making a game in just 8 hours

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I do and re-do graphics many times, so I agree. That can take far longer than coding ( and usually it does take much longer ), but the 8 hour game was a foosball game. just chop off the arms of a soccer player model and render him from above with a slightly plastic looking material, then just change colors for different teams. The rest, I guess I could have bothered modeling the table or something like that, but it looked good to me, and with another 6-7 games to work on, I wasn't going to spend more time on it.

A bit offtopic, sorry, but how long does it take to do the game design and programming combined? I read that you code up to 8 games at a time MikeMD, does that include some recycling of game concepts? I can imagine that having older games lying around, you can more easily create a sequel then a new game. Also using a tried concept (like towerdefense, scrolling shooter) saves a lot of time on the creative end.

Something else that might add to the time needed. I prototype smaller elements before I code an actual game, to see if some concepts work/ are technicly possible. How much of this experimenting is involved in effecient programming? For the pros on these boards who really do this for a living, I guess every second must be used as effectivily as possible, so you'd want every experiment to produce code which can be directly used. Or do some people perhaps consider a game to be not only a game, but also an experiment for a sequel (next time I'll do it That way, but not now)?

Trolling for answers gentlemen.

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I read that you code up to 8 games at a time MikeMD, does that include some recycling of game concepts?

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I do mostly sports games, and usually aim for realism, so you follow the real game and try to do the best possible game graphically and with mechanism that will be used for shooting, kicking, whatever.

This is all when working on games for myself, not clients, so I don't need to follow any instructions.

Most of the time is spent on graphics and you get stuck game design wise at: "This doesn't seem right, how exactly do I make it work in the best possible way". This can be a simple lack of ideas or ideas which are difficult to implement for some reason. If I get stuck there I just move on to another game, and get back to it later. Saves time when you are following a real life game or an existing concept ( as you mentioned ), but you can still get stuck when you want to do things differently.

That vertical shooter of mine ( XLR ) has been hanging around since 2004 or 5. If you look at the game you'll see that width is 700px even though only about 450px or 500px is used for the actual game. That is supposed to open up and change perspective, so you have levels with views behind the ship or you crash and it turns into a guy on the ground running away and shooting his way out of being captured. One day I basically decided it was probably too much work for something that would most likely confuse our casual gaming crowd. But what's left is a vertical scrolling shooter that could be finished ( that is not a finished version on the site ) , behind the ship view, space shooter engine and a few other parts which could be games on their own.

Or maybe I'll change my mind and do it exactly as originally planned.

Anyway, I have to take care of a bunch of racing games, and some other stuff that has nothing to do with sports or racing.

To answer the original question about how long it takes to design and code and basically finsih the whole process. On games like that vertical shooter project or something like the hovercraft racing game. No clue, I lost track a long time ago. I will finally let the hovercrafts out this month, and whatever didn't make it into the game, will have to be done in the sequel ( for the past year I haven't even done anything new there, I just play it occasionally and think about what could be added and it always ends up being either nothing or something that isn't worth trying because I know it would kill the speed of the game and that is what it's all about ).

But the four games I mentioned at the start of this post were quick and those time-frames are accurate.

That's mighty impressive finishing a football game in 7-8 hours. Reckon I could maybe code a little Mario clone demo in that time.

YouTube is my biggest enemy. On my days off when I code I sit down and just glance at it and they'll be some goddamn FailBlog stuff on there, or some hot chick doing a make-up tutorial I've got to visually molest. Before you know it 2 hours have gone and I'm feeling a little bit less enthused about sitting on the PC for much longer. That or actual gaming consuming my hours. Metal Gear Online. Ryu Ga Gotoku 3. FallOut. Dead Space. Not to mention Tekken 6 down the game center. Games are a curse and a blessing at the same time.

An online game that has a username & password signup.

It will have that along with character creation out of a selection of about 10 different avatars to be. And in game it will have a multiuser chat with emoticons, english mature language filter (including the made up replacements like "shiz"), and a log of about 50 pages of chat history.

And the game will also include moveable avatars within a collide able area, and rooms for divisions of how many players are in one area.

And if I can overcome the huge amount of lag presented by onEnterFrame loop of images being created dynamically and sent over server and reformed as images on other clients, an ability to create webcam chat rooms like to refer them as image cams.

So how much time you think that will take.

Edit: The only things listed here that I haven't created individually is sending positions of objects over the server(shouldn't be hard), emoticons in a chat text, and a log of chat.

All of which shouldn't be too hard, maybe the emoticons a little because I downloaded the code the guy had for emoticons in as3 and I don't know how to seperate the actual placement part of code to an onEnterFrame loop in order to constantly find whats in a text.

After I figure it all out, I can just puzzle piece them all together too make the full project.

how long did it take you?

I'm not saying I'm done, I was asking how long do you think it will take.

i spend 1 to 5 weeks for a normal game. A easier one is 3 to 7 days

if it's a puzzle game is not going to take very long 1-2weeks, If it's an adventure game OMG it can take forever 6-12 Months.

2D Boy needed 2 years to finish World of Goo, and they made a masterpiece of a game.

mine gonna me an mmoag ( Massively multi-player online action game )

...How long have you been coding in Flash for?

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Originally Posted by Pazil

...How long have you been coding in Flash for?

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I've been learning for about 3 years

I win, 8 years here.
Are you sure you can pull that sort of game?

A long time. I spend alot of time on controls, though, and then I spend a silly amount of time correcting bugs that stem from typos, since I'm a moron.

I am obsessed with game development. I developed about 150 games and many of them are very easy to develop and play. I continue to develop games whatever the reviewers say. I take 1 day to 30 days to develop a game.
Shhh.... I am 70 years old.:shhh:

hohoho :) I thought i have many games .. 40 :)

My respect Eager Beaver !

PS: I hope i get to make games since i'm 80 years old then :D

This got me thinking, so I've had a bit of a count up, and including reskins and the game I'm working on now, I'm on [edit] 82 games since 2003, which works out around 15 a year, so more than a game a month for nearly 5 years.

No wonder I'm tired.

( And just to stroke my ego, 34 awards / finalist nominations, although nothing in the past couple of years )

Squize.