Hey everyone,

I've been a C++/DirectX guy for quite a few years, but it's just taking me a lot longer to get a working demo of my first indie game venture than I thought it *should* take (both personally and from scanning these forums).

How was everyone's progress during their first title? Is it normally a bit long while you "figure it out" for the first time?

I don't want to give up, but my progress is rather slow and I'm getting frustrated..:(

thanks for letting me vent.

Well, yeah, it's tough. If it wasn't you'd see a much higher ratio of started games to finished ones.

Finishing a game a LOT harder than most people think. Once the fun phase is over and the real work begins, the weak begin getting culled from the herd.

All I can say is that if you truly believe in what you're doing and you are able to keep your eye on the prize, you'll make it.

"Making games is hard."

thanks EpicBoy,

I just think that my progress is slower than even among "normal" indie (part-time) developers working on their first title.

I'm struggling with networking (DirectPlay8) and am tempted to just chuck multiplayer all together and focus on just a solid single player design.

Venting aside, how long (on average) did it take most of you to finish your first commercial game? 3 months or so? Or are we talking 6 months?

(And let me know if you had worked on it fulltime or part-time like I am, where I can only do roughly 8 hours a week on it).

thanks!

Katsu - my first title has been in development for just about 3 years now.. ;)

I've been working on Derelict for over a year, mostly part time. And that was probably 16-20 hours a week. If you're only doing 8, be prepared for it to take a long time, unless you're doing something simple.

Hi wazoo,

Don't give up!

My first game (Track Trouble) took about 6 months, and its not even very complicated. I was determined to write another one, and the second time around it only took me 3 months to put something together (Groop). I would say these two games are about as easy as it gets.. no 3D stuff, no networking, not even any AI!

Things do get easier if you stick at it. I look back now at how I coded some things in my first game and I can't believe how overly-complicated I made it for myself. Its really important to finish that first project, even if it doesn't sell! At the moment I'm involved with contract work that has nothing to do with games, but one of the reasons I got the job is that my employer was really impressed that I could COMPLETE a project involving graphic design and C code all by myself.

As a general rule...

90% of the project will take 90% of the estimated time, and the last 10% of a project will take another 90% of the time! :-\ (At least for me). This is especially true, I think, if you're doing everything by yourself. I had no problem with the coding, but I got frustrated doing the art, because I'm certainly no artist

Work out ways of encouraging yourself. I get inspired when I see other Indies released simple games that do well. I get excited when I go to a book store and browse through the books on game programming. I get excited when I talk to my friends about games and game programming. If you take the time to let your friends and family know what you're doing, they can often encourage you when you're feeling down. I found that sharing my progress with others really helped me to complete both games in the end.

Also, remember to enjoy the process! Isn't that why you're writing a game anyway?

Artifact (http://www.samugames.com/artifact/) took right at 3 years to go from original concept to 1.0 release. That was with 4 people working part-time on it.

Our new Paintball Net project started in 2002...and is still about as far along as it was at the end of 2002 (which is, actually, pretty far along). On the upside, it's in the process of getting moving again.

"Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans." --The Beatles (I think)

During Artifact's development process, we were updating the origintal Paintball Net, moving into new houses, taking new jobs, having new babies, and on and on. The new Paintball Net project has fallen victim to housefires, book contracts, new jobs, crises of faith, focusing on survival, ad nauseum.

On top of that, sometimes things just take a lot longer to do than originally thought.

It took 14 full-time months (clocking 60-80 hours most weeks, or about 250-350 hours per month), spread across 1999, 2000, and 2001 to complete The Journal (http://www.davidrm.com/thejournal/) v3. Though it was a complete re-design and re-write, I optimistically thought it would take me only 3-6 months to get that done.

While I was able to accurately estimate the 6 months it took me to write The Indie Game Development Survival Guide (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1584502142/ref=nosim/davidrmsoftwa-20), when I tackled a novel for the first time last year, I was way off (and still working on that, actually).

When you estimate correctly: celebrate like there's no tomorrow. Because who knows how long the next project will take you? :)

-David

Well let's see...I've been working on Freakin now...the main.cpp file lists a start date of 28-11-2002. Since then I've moved to another continent, quit my job, renamed the game, and briefly flirted with writing an RTS. In total I'd say I've been working full time on this game for about 10 months.

Think about it: Babies are made in less time than this.

The thing I really didn't expect was the ammount of time that would be lost to
a) Testing features that don't make the final cut
b) Personal motivation problems & other real life issues
c) Finding artist(s) who work in my price range

I think it's funny that the first version of the game was running in a hair under 4 hours. Everything since then has been about making it look right, play fun, and the UI. Now I think I can call the code done so I'm writing a linux port while the artists finish up the content. I think a lot of the work, in the end, has gone into systems that will be reused over and over, so the time spent on this title has been worth it. having said that, I'm sure that two years from now I will look back and say "If I knew now what I knew then, this could have been so much easier..."

Testing features that don't make the final cut


I havn't finished my game, but this already taken 70% of all the time

I think this is one of the reasons a clear vision. I could spend the next forever trying different powerups, different features to make the game more fun. At the end of the day I have to remind myself of what this game is and what it is not, and then draw a line at that point.

Having said that, some of my original ideas are just never gonna work. They take away from the experience, aren't cost effective to implement, or turn out to be lame. The stuff that's too expensive goes into the "next version" todo list, and the rest becomes an interesting annectdote to share with my nerdier friends.

But to return to the subject of the original poster, yes, it does feel like it takes forever. I keep saying "just a little bit more time, everything looks like it's done" and then I find something else - meeting the minimum spec, funny hardware configs, xplatform porting issues, making a professional looking webpage, handling (what I hope will be a lot of) purchases, the list goes on and on. Thank god that most of it is a do-once-and-the-worst-is-over.

There are days when I have to tell myself: It may be tough now, but soon I won't be an all-talk-no-walk, coulda-been-a-contender indie game virgin. When that happens, on that GLORIOUS, sun filled day when I hold the first check in my sweaty, trembling hands I will be a thousand meters tall! Women will blush. Strong men will ask to shake my hand. Food will taste better than it has in years! Why, you ask? Because I will be a man who doesn't merely believe he can do anything. I will be a man who made a choice, then went and did it.

Thanks for the words of confidence guys. :)

I guess I'm still figuring out the "real-time" vs "projected" project time. :)

I'm really really hoping that within the next few years I can put together enough projects to help me go Indi full-time, and this is part of the frustration I'm feeling now.

Hopefully the "next" game will take a fraction of the time, as I'm hoping I can recognize the pitfalls to avoid from this project.

And I know what you guys mean about the "upheaval" life stuff. Just had my 2nd boy 3 months ago now, so it's been a bit tricky trying to squeeze in development time when I want to spend quality family time with my wife/sons... ;)

But I reassure myself that at least I'm in a position where I *CAN* spend quality time with them. Had I (more forcefully) pursued a career in a "pro" game dev house, then I doubt I'd see them much.

My faith is restored! :)

and am tempted to just chuck multiplayer all together and focus on just a solid single player design.

The version 1.0 release of my game had no multi-player, even though I was planning to add it in the future. This worked out well, since it was an easier target to hit and it let me find and kill some bugs without the added complexity. And it also gives a clear main feature for version 2. So I would recommend this approach (if it can work for your game).

My first and current shareware game project, a 3D connect 4 (http://www.rototostudio.com/smartlines), was started more than 2 years ago... However I have decided to sell it and started working more seriously on it only 11 months ago.

I also used a big chunk of code from another (now canceled) project, so it's a bit difficult to estimate the time spent precisely. According to my history file, I spent 175 days programming the game (mostly _less_ than 8 hours per day).

I certainly didn't think it would take me that much time when I started the project :).

BTW I think I'm going to do the same as Sillysoft WRT multiplayer!

Normally, that's what I would do to. :)

It's just that my design is centered around having multiplayer.

Since I'm spending so much time on this project, I'm hoping I can just re-use the majority of the networking code for the next one, so that I don't have to slog through it again..:(

One of my games will definitely be a "single-player only" game. I just need to spend time thinking about a fun design, that doesn't involve massive AI. :)

The version 1.0 release of my game had no multi-player, even though I was planning to add it in the future. This worked out well, since it was an easier target to hit and it let me find and kill some bugs without the added complexity. And it also gives a clear main feature for version 2. So I would recommend this approach (if it can work for your game).

I have about 8 shipped, retail games with my name on them. (Well, okay, one doesn't mention my name anywhere as far as I know... they didn't DO that... but I worked on it nonetheless). I spent six years of my career as a professional game developer. So I'm pretty embarassed about how much longer Void War has taken over what I originally planned... I should be much better at estimating time to completion.

A *BIG* part of the problem was feature creep. I'm usually pretty good about avoiding feature creep, but in Void War's case, it actually needed a lot more than my original design called for. I started on the project as more of a hobby to keep my game programming skills sharp - I don't think Void War would have very viable commercially with the original design. Now, I'm not sure it's going to sell 4x more with the 4x more time we've put into it, but I think it will.

Another aspect of my failed estimate was the extra effort required for a PC game as opposed to console. Yes, I've shipped PC games before... but I guess I kind of forget how much extra effort is required on the PC over a console. Consoles are MUCH easier.

Thirdly - I ended up with a team rather than leaving it as a crappy solo effort. This is a Good Thing - the quality (and size) of the game has gone way up as a result. But I've discovered that managing a whole project takes a bigger chunk out of my time than I figured from my previous experience as just a programming lead on smaller projects.

Fourth - there's a lot of work that I'm used to the publisher doing FOR us that we have to do for ourselves. Way more than I expected. There's an awful lot of things you have to do to get your game ready to be sold that I never had to worry about before. Between that and managing the game development team, I'm finding half of my time is getting sucked away from coding.

Fifth - all those new things (managing, starting a business, getting the game ready to sell) take something of a learning curve which I've had to get over. HOPEFULLY all of those will be easier next time around, though I don't think I'm anywhere near the top of the curve yet.

And sixth - we're an all part-time team, so all kinds of unpredictable things tend to come up that influence the amount of time we can devote to working on the game. When the day job goes into crunch mode, work on the game slows to a trickle. Not much that you can do about that, other than just trying to do a great job of managing your time and effort at the job that pays the bills.

I hate making excuses - but I do try to analyze things and see where I can improve.

I'm sorry if this is a bit off-topic, but I saw this at Romero's forum earlier today, 7 years... ;)

"We're confident that DNF will be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, game of 1998. And this confidence is not misplaced." - Scott Miller, 1997

"Duke Nukem Forever is a 1999 game and we think that timeframe matches very well with what we have planned for the game." - George Broussard, 1998

"Trust us, Duke Nukem Forever will rock when it comes out next year." - Joe Siegler, 1999

"When it's done in 2001." - 2000 Christmas card

"DNF will come out before Unreal 2." - George Broussard, 2001

"If DNF is not out in 2001, something's very wrong." - George Broussard, 2001

"DNF will come out before Doom 3." - George Broussard, 2002

Fourth - there's a lot of work that I'm used to the publisher doing FOR us that we have to do for ourselves. Way more than I expected. There's an awful lot of things you have to do to get your game ready to be sold that I never had to worry about before. Between that and managing the game development team, I'm finding half of my time is getting sucked away from coding.


Any details on exactly what type of tasks you have to deal with? I also hope to have my first commercial game completed this summer (and so therefore it might be ready by this winter), and I would love to know what kind of details the publisher would normally handle.

The publisher would normally handle everything that would happen between the point of finishing developing the game and the point of the player holding a copy of the game in his hands. (Also, during development of the game, the publisher usually takes care of the testing.)

Publisher should also handle customer contact after the sale...returns, credit card processing, customer service, technical support, etc.

imho it's usually worth the money to form your own little publishing company and handle things like the QA for the publisher who is handling distribution. That way you get a bigger percentage of the profits AND you avoid delays like "oh nintendo approved the latest version but the guy who handles your case was on vacation for two months so it sat on his desk hey sorry about that."

Isn't it amazing how many people here have almost the same story?

My current game, which will be the first that I'll finish and release, started out as a little entry into a game programming contest that I figured to spend a month on. At that point I already had a graphics engine and a basic framework to build off of using my previous game efforts. That was almost exactly 1.5 years ago. I thought at various times that I'd definitely be finished by March 2003, or end of Summer 2003, or Christmas 2003...

Anyway, I think I may have averaged 20 hours a week on it since then. So that's 1600 hours and counting. I'm hoping to be releasing in a month. Then, who knows how much work will be left.

But yes, that day of release will be a happy, scary, glorious day!

And my second game darn well better go much, much faster :)