Time Consuming Options

[katasu]

How long does it take to make a game with RPG Maker? I was just wondering if it's just me or everybody. It's taken me two plus hours to get just a few maps created and a bit of game made. five makes and 5 minutes of gameplay in two hours. I think that's just me being slow. Also I've just got a tiny smidgit of the database set up lol. How long does it usually take you to finish a game, and what part consumes most of your time?

[X-M-O]

If you have all of the ideas in your mind and on paper (digitally or otherwise), it usually doesn't take as long. However, most people change their ideas constantly, implement new ideas, or simply take advice from someone, which ends up taking up more time due to having to change things around or by adding things.

Many people don't have a clear idea as to where they want to go with the story, and that takes some time to get it the way they want it.

Sometimes technical issues get in the way, or simply the lack of a specific skill (scripting, writing, drawing, spriting, etc.), causes a person to spend a lot of extra time learning the skill or finding someone to do it the way they want it to appear/exist in their game.

Some people don't have a lot of time to really devote to their game, so they spend less than a few hours each week/month working on the game, which usually means it never gets finished or it is finished many years later.

Then there are collaborative works, which sometimes are faster in terms of the content being created, but slower in the design/implementation process (unless a person with good leadership skills is pushing the project along). If more people are working on a project as a collaborative work (meaning that they aren't hired for a specific piece of the project), then any disagreement(s) in how the game looks/plays/reads/etc. will take time for the team to flesh out the details and eventually agree on what to do (sometimes that process alone can take several days of brainstorming).


I've seen games created in less than a few hours and end up being decent, and I've seen games that have been created over the course of six months and be almost as decent as those created in a few hours.
Some games are made for competitions, or other events, and can be created in a few hours/days/weeks and be quite good.

It really depends on the person or team making the game, and the reason behind the game being made.
If there is a deadline (such as in an event or competition) then completion may be forced early, but if there is no deadline then completion might be prolonged simply because there is no need to finish it tomorrow.



Any process can be time-consuming, it all depends on how devoted you are to the project. Even without all the skills necessary to complete the project exactly as you imagined it, there is always a way to complete it. (Lots of resources, people to be hired, etc.) =]

[Lato]

Events! Events make up the real gameplay of your game, I spend about a half hour making one event and when I test it out its about 3-5 min of actual gameplay! So yeah it's not a fast process. I do custom graphics for my games and while these do take a bit of time they are no where near as time consuming as eventing. Mapping take a good while to but it just really comes down to what your skill set is.

[zacheatscrackers]

Normally, it takes me around 6 months since I try to pack as much content in as possible while keeping the main story mode a reasonable length. Battles normally aren't that time-consuming unless they're significant to the story, but the events usually require most of my attention since, obviously, events are essential to the game actually... you know, progressing.

[Rast]

My games tend to take forever, and probably won't be finished due to me wanting them to be perfect. I usually spend an hour or so a day(sometimes only a few hours a week) working on mine, as I'm pretty busy most of the time.

If you have all of the ideas in your mind and on paper (digitally or otherwise), it usually doesn't take as long. However, most people change their ideas constantly, implement new ideas, or simply take advice from someone, which ends up taking up more time due to having to change things around or by adding things.

That about sums it up for me. I had everything worked out on paper, but I couldn't stick to it because I always found better ways to do something, or an idea that seemed better. I also recoded the class/character creation system around 5 times.

Originally it only had 3 party members with gender and race. I had 1 character per race/gender combination per party member(around 18 different characters). It was horribly inefficient, but I wasn't too experienced with event systems at that time. Then I changed it to 1 character per race(for each member), using classes for gender, resulting in around 9 characters. Still horrible and badly done. Took a break from the project, came back a year later and realized how bad it was and recoded as efficiently as possible, eventually upgrading it to 4 party members. 4 characters, a handful of classes and simply changing graphics and adding skills after character creation. All these changes alone took up a large chunk of time.

Honestly, though, I'll take as much time as I feel I need to make it.

[zacheatscrackers]

Honestly, though, I'll take as much time as I feel I need to make it.

That partially sums it up for me too.

[rewells]

My first (and only, so far) complete project took about four months and I'm guessing around 500 hours total to make 3-4 hours of gameplay. If I had to recreate it from scratch, it would probably take half as long because I learned how to do things more efficiently as I went on. The most time -consuming thing for me really was researching and learning how to use RM (I also researched things like geography to help with map making and mythology to get story ideas). The general rule I follow is that if I'm doing something that I've never done before (for example, I'm learning to make puzzles now), it's going to take twice as long as I think it will. I ALWAYS draw or write my ideas before I even start tinkering with RM. The approach I use is to have a perfect picture in my mind of what I want and then break down into steps how to make it work in RM.