#71381 - Nave Adair - Sun Feb 12, 2006 7:19 am
I'm looking for a programmer for "Through Eternity: Tactics," a game my friend Nathan and I have been planning for a long time. I've been writing a lot of backstory and planning details for a while, and he's been choosing the best spriting style.
While this was originally going to be for the computer, our programmer bailed on us, and we decided to try moving it the the GBA, because I've been into GBA development lately. I decided I'd try on this forum, since I thought there might be someone willing here.
This will be a 'fun' project, not a paid one, which might turn a lot of people off, but hopefully someone is interested.
You can find a page on the story here. I'll add more over time.
This is the sprite style we like most at the moment. (Note: Nathan is working on a nice mock-up scene at the moment, I'll change this to that when he finishes it.
Anyone interested? I'll be adding more over time.
#71467 - sgeos - Mon Feb 13, 2006 1:29 am
A "fun RPG project" won't get finished. An RPG takes 60 to 300+ man months to complete. Assuming no art, if you can complete the whole thing without changing your spec midway AND you already have your tools made, you should be able to complete it in 20 to 40 man months.
A "for fun" team won't stay interested for that long.
-Brendan
#71486 - tepples - Mon Feb 13, 2006 4:15 am
PROTIP: You might be able to get it done if you scale back your project. Make one chapter that takes an hour to play, and then release your editing tools.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#71499 - Nave Adair - Mon Feb 13, 2006 4:59 am
I'm not too sure on GBA development, but I know that before this, our programmer made a small RPG system, and gave me the source so that I could make all the levels. It only took him two-three months, and now in my free time I sometimes make another level.
Anyway, I know it won't get finished, but I wanted to try anyway :P
#71503 - tepples - Mon Feb 13, 2006 5:12 am
Make it so that it reads all data including scripts from a data file, with no modification of the source code needed for a total conversion, and you've got yourself something to pacify the people who have been clamoring for a handheld alternative to RPG Maker.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#71504 - gauauu - Mon Feb 13, 2006 5:33 am
That's the entertaining thing about the whole deal. You've got tons of people who will sink tons of time into making rpg's if you just give them the tools.
Then you get people like us who make the game engines, but nothing ever gets finished, because making the content is so boring.
I think we need some sort of exchange program between gbadev and those rpgMaker sites :)
#71505 - sajiimori - Mon Feb 13, 2006 5:45 am
Depending on the design, developing the first hour of gameplay could mean an hour worth of content and a whole game worth of code. Most games I've played demonstrate the majority of the game's features within an hour.
#71506 - tepples - Mon Feb 13, 2006 5:55 am
But does content or code dominate development time?
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#71523 - gladius - Mon Feb 13, 2006 8:18 am
| Quote: |
| But does content or code dominate development time? |
For the GBA? It's pretty even in my experience, with maybe a 3/2 artist/coder team. For 3D AAA games it's Connnnnteeennntt. But that's only because the modeller, 3D library, physics engine and sound engine have probably already been developed and you don't need to count their development cost.
I know for the games I worked on, the first game we did I spent a ton of time working on the level/sprite editor as well as the game code. Then later on, they mostly only required the occasional feature or bug fix so the game code got correspondingly more attention.
The later games also got larger/better content as the artists started really hitting their stride with the custom tools and were able to churn things out crazy fast.
#71620 - sajiimori - Mon Feb 13, 2006 7:45 pm
Art will typically require more man-hours, but it is also easier to parallelize. To get art done faster, it's often possible to just "throw in" another artist, but doing the same for a team of coders can cause a lot of overhead.