how long?

[jeffjones246]

ok, I'm a really big noob and downloaded the trial a few days ago. The one thing that I was wondering was, how long does the average game take you to make. I know that it can very well vary, but like a fairly simple game, and a noob like me.

Thanks

[jeffjones246]

ok like ahmmm...breakout with 20 level

[Diana Kennedy]

It depends also on your skills and how much tricky scripting you will use. I guess that a simple "shoot-em-up" game is pretty much made within an hour, if you have all sprites and graphics.

I draw all my graphics myself with complex animations. It takes me weeks, not to say months.

[irblinx]

How long is a piece of string?

The good thing about GE is that is vastly simplifies a lot of the tricky aspects of game programming but to make a really good game will still take time. So if you have a decent grasp of programming and a logical mind you can probably get the basics up and running inside a week or two, but then you could easily spend months finishing the game, testing, fixing problems, polishing and fine tuning.

For the very first game you make, you will obviously take some time figuring out the best way to do things and this will add considerably to the length of the project.

If you don't already have a grounding in C/C++/C# then I'd suggest that it would be a good idea to get hold of a beginners guide, this will ensure that you can really get the best out of the scripting engine

[Diana Kennedy]

The good thing about GE is that is vastly simplifies a lot of the tricky aspects of game programming but to make a really good game will still take time.

Making a *good* game is not effortless and will never be. This applies not only to games but pretty much to all creative projects. If you are not willing to work, to improve and to learn you will not achieve something that will gain attention. People who look for a software that make the games for them so that they just have to add their name as "author" to the ready product will always be disappointed.

[irblinx]

To take your Breakout idea as an example, the most difficult part in the first instance will be getting the physics of the ball correct. Once you have this and have spent a short while getting to grips with GE you could knock together a very playable breakout clone in a relatively short time, however consider whether you may then want to add any of the following options;

different qualities of brick (i.e. hit once to destroy, hit multiple times to destroy, indestructable)
power-ups (i.e. large bat, multi ball, sticky bat)
extra lives gained at a certain score
hi score table
save game/level unlock functions
in game music
different background graphics for each level

I'm sure you can think of many other things that you could include and each one will take time to implement.

One of the games I'm currently working on, a fairly standard shoot-em-up is a team effort with others doing the graphics which leaves me free to concentrate on the coding side, this obviously will save me a great deal of time however with a final goal of a commercial release I would be very surprised if we finish in under 6 months.

As Diana Kennedy points out, there is no substitue for hard work, what GE does is give you a great set of tools with which to make sure that your hard work produces good results. I'd certainly recommend going through all the tutorials and having a good look through this forum for any subjects you are interesting in implementing (for instance the ball physics).