Hi guys. I work as a software engineer and have been wanting to get into game development for a while now. Firstly, I know that game development is not a quick process by any means, but I do have a few questions that I hope you all can help me with.
Say someone has all of the required assets (environments, character models, etc) and a programming background:
How long would it take a single person to create a basic solo game prototype with twitch combat using spells, melee, archery? How about a team of 3?
How about a multiplayer version of the same design? Solo and team of 3 as well.
I am talking bare bones . No equipment, no inventory, no loot; nothing but basic combat.
Obviously, a full game design takes a long time but I am looking for a quick win to keep morale up as we expand. My friends and I really fell in love with Darkfall Online (the original, not this DFUW ****), and we have been discussing what it would take to create something that resembles that game. With the options available to the public nowadays (Unreal Engine, Unity, etc), it seems actually feasible for a small group. The above mentioned combat would be the first piece, and over time we would try our hand at adding in additional mechanics and content.
I can’t really answer your question, I would however say you know your team’s capability better than I do. It’s best to assess what you have against what you want to achieve, you don’t even really need the assets to start out. If the programmer (which seems to be you) has never touched UE4 and the others haven’t learnt blueprints, then there’s a starting point, both are central to achieving anything in the engine behind the art that makes it look good. Only when you’re somewhat proficient with the engine and the supporting documentation, can you assess the likely timeline and this goes for all the engines available.
You may even need a shake out project to test the team on, it’s not THE game you want, it’s a project that achieves stated objectives in a short period and serves as a learning platform for when you do start on your first product. Think of it as your team’s “Hello, World!” project.
Of course if I was to attempt to answer your question the bracket could be 6 hours to 6 years. Only advice mate, but me and two other guys have come up with great ideas and not shipped anything because we didn’t plan.
Obviously they are super rushed, but they are playable, and some of them manage to have multiplayer, a nice art aesthetic, or interesting game-play, even within that strict time crunch. You could probably modify the shooter template and have spells/melee/archery within a day or two. It’s not going to be a polished or pretty vertical slice of the final product, but in my opinion, you should have a really rough prototype, then do a more polished vertical slice type prototype.
On the game jam stuff, remember those guys didn’t just download the engine a few days prior and go “right, I’m going to build this super awesome game and there’s gonna be sharks with frikkin laser beams”, chances are they have some experience and they’re able to churn out that stuff pretty quick because of it. If you’re at that stage, your very basic prototype (depending on your criteria, i.e. when do we check the box and say we’re done?) could be in a few days/weeks. On the other hand I’ve seen people measure success against products of game jams and drop out.
I came from another engine, there was still a learning curve despite core concepts being the same. To clarify I haven’t shipped any entertainment product, with UE or otherwise as I was in the “serious games” sector working for a very large organisation where we weren’t the core business for almost 10 years. I am working on a solo project in UE4 after a few throw away projects to learn the engine and was until recently still using the original blue default character, but any timeline I could give wouldn’t help as I have a full time job and two kids.
You’d probably be able to do it well inside of a month (avg a few hrs a day), depending on how quickly you learn. I’d put this on either situation for #1. The first week or so should be spent making little things and working to expand your knowledge in the areas you need to know the most. Lots of tuts, lots of documentation. If your other 2 are going to be programmers as well, then you’ll have to learn all this for each, in addition to how to work as a team. If the other 2 are artists, they will need to learn their respective areas (obviously). In any configuration, you should be up and running with a prototype inside of a month. Not necessarily a presentation prototype (investor meeting) and very likely extremely rough around the edges. As far as multiplayer goes: know that there is a very particular way of doing things which will allow them to work in multiplayer and you won’t be able to just get any structure working.
That’s all assuming you want something you can play in editor and it doesn’t have to be anywhere near perfect. Some of the other replies are geared towards a serious undertaking, but I think you’re just wanting to dive in and get something working (even if it’s not best practices and will never see release). If you’re wanting to go after a publisher or other funding options, 3 months is a good target- just note that it’s better to delay your initial contact until it’s polished. Either way, I’d say a team of beginners won’t see much benefit project-time wise from working together. At least not within the first month or so.
In terms of time scales, if you’re already familiar with the engine then you could throw together a collection of basic systems for a prototype very quickly, in days depending on how much time you can spare per day. Clever use of blueprints means you can tweak settings and configure your game with a few clicks of the mouse and playtest your game in the editor without having to recompile a thing.
Of course, turning a basic prototype into a full game is where the time is spent. You’ll no doubt be aware of the old adage that the final 5% of the project is the most time consuming as you turn a game that’s fun to play behind closed doors with your friends into a game that is ready to present to the wider world.
The art side is definitely the most time consuming, so try to be as efficient as possible and reuse assets where you can. When I worked with UDK I was able to get a basic first person tower defence game with multiplayer up and running in a couple of weeks, maybe 20 hours total effort, but the artist I had helping me took a month just to get the pistol model finished with animations, though to be fair he didn’t spend as much time on it as me.
Thanks for all of your input guys. I am going to do as suggested and play around with the engine for a bit and get a better understanding of how to use it. Maybe then I can get a better idea of the time requirements needed to do what I want.
Melee and archery are fairly simple BUT, spell system depends on how far you’re gonna go.
Let’s say you have a spell system where spell may or may not have area of effect, may or may not be status effects, said status effect may or may not dispell other status effects, be blocked by other spells and effects, and spells may affect target, projectile, might or might not be a ray, which might hit direclty or might bounce, it can summon creatures, objects, scales with player stats, and all of that should be configurable in editor without artist writing a single line of code or touching a blueprint.
If you do something like that, you can easily waste a month or more on the spell system alone.
Well same could be said really with melee and/or bow. How deep is your combat system? Melee doing contact damage, bow launching an arrow which does damage, and spells being homing projectiles is pretty simple. Having to manage bow tension and each bow having nuance, full swordplay, and such a spell system… well not so much.
Keep it simple and learn by making one or more small scope projects. That way, you won’t have to restart the main project every so often because you don’t like how you did things 3 weeks ago.
No, the same couldn’t be said about other combat systems. Those systems are inherently simpler than magic. Magic has potential for infinite complexity, while in case of melee/ranged combat… worst case scenario you’ll overload your animation team with large number of special attacks, and that’s about it.
Just take a look at some advanced tabletop magic system, like D&D, really.
