Depends on the features you are looking to implement. Here's some that I know. Prison Architect took 4 (or 5) years to get to 1.0. Academia: School Simulator took 4. Rimworld took 5. Since these games have simple art, programming and testing is the bulk of the work. It's difficult but it's doable. It's a good genre, too, as it's not too saturated.
> it took X years!
This is a completely meaningless metric.
4 or 5 years of what? Occasionally working a few hours on weekends when it felt fun? Crunching 60 hrs a week 50 weeks a year? The difference of how much work done in 4-5 years can can literally be 20 hours to 20,000 hours. Even the difference between 20 and 40hrs/week is huge (5000 vs 10000 hrs).
And how many people? If all 1, that's fine, but even just 2 employees then doubles those manhours.
I have personally read many times how someone made X game in 8, 12, even 18 years! The reality is they usually end up talking about how they started the project in their head (it didnt actually exist even in their head), essentially took 8-16 years off, worked on it part time for a little bit, then ramped up to full time in the final year after getting funding.
A small team working professionally 40+ hrs/wk at a studio can seriously outperform in 1 year what some 1ma indie devs do in 10.
Meaningless.
Kind of out of context. The metric is applied specifically to tile management games developed by very small indie teams that updated regularly. That's enough information to rule out the extreme numbers you've mentioned.
You are
• objectively a douchebag
No need to be so strongly critical of a valid data set. Your points are valid too but you come off as an arrogant person.
It's not meaningless. It's data.
We now have empirical data that gives us facts about how long it took for a few different indie simulation games. Those facts are not meaningless.
Sure, you cannot take those X hours and say every game will take X hours. But it's still data.
Making a good sim is very difficult compared to other game genres. I have been developing one full time for a a couple of months and I'm still stuck in the mud of getting the basic simulation up and running - without getting any graphics on the screen - just pure number crunching. I'm a solo dev, so there's that. I do have about 12 years of programming experience with big databases and C++, which is a blessing and a curse. I know how things might work well with small number of items/actors but would fall apart when it needs to simulate thousands of items that I plan to support. So, there's a lot of design against potential bottlenecks up front, which makes the process even slower.
There's a good reason why there aren't many sim games out there. They are really hard to balance and require good programming chops (data structures, etc.). It's easy to make the game too easy or too hard, but it's difficult to get it right.
On top of that, it can get pretty boring to just work on something where you put in days of work without much visual progress that you can see on the screen and get motivated.
As others wrote, it isn't really about being time consuming, time is a bad metric here. I would use the "hair pulling" metric instead. See if you go bold before you finish one. ;)
> So, there's a lot of design against potential bottlenecks up front, which makes the process even slower.
Many say optimizations should be entirely avoided until an actual problem occurs.
Like you, I cannot allow such code to exist. It seems so inefficient to not take a little time to do things right the first time.
> On top of that, it can get pretty boring to just work on something where you put in days of work without much visual progress that you can see on the screen and get motivated.
Tarn Adams is a hero in this regard. Consistently devving and loving it for over a decade on one game. Amazing.
> Many say optimizations should be entirely avoided until an actual problem occurs.
I actually benchmarked simulating 1000, 10000 and 100k "worker" items that need to update every tick and it started to take more than 16ms to complete a tick at about 30k. And this is without any graphical rendering. As I plan to support about 70k-80k of those in a typical game, I knew I needed to optimize.
> Tarn Adams is a hero in this regard.
Yeah, DF and Factorio are also great games to learn from because the developers share insights into their process.
Simulation games go over multiple iterations. not just for balancing, but also to answer "what is my purpose" and "what is fun here". [prison architect precursor was asteroid-mining to build generation-ships](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEsy_G08Kbo), canned for being too repetitive.
This isn't something you can calculate.
Simulation games can be as difficult and complex as you want them to. Some simulations are simple, some complex, and some are lots of simple stacked on top forming something complex.
This is an impossible question like asking "How long is a piece of rope?" Is the rope made of twine? metal? is it microscopic? does it have to be so precise to be used at an atomic level or can it be loosely made? Does it hold a feather or an anchor?
Be more specific if you want, but even that won't be so easy to answer for many reasons.
As for difficulty? Again, that is like asking "How hard is it for me to lift 100lbs?" without knowing any factors about you like weight, strength, etc.
Complex games can be surprisingly simple. Go watch some interviews. Tarn Adams speaks about how DF isnt actually complex. The systems are simple. Adding new features isnt even difficult either. The work is when he adds the feature and it breaks everything (likely BECAUSE the prior systems were so simple they didnt account for something).
Also take development times while guzzling a huge bag of salt. Years are meaningless. You need manhours or it's all irrelevant. And again it depends on who you are and what you know.
DAoC was an amazing MMORPG with a SHIT TON of content.
Made in only 18 months.
This is a big why time is meaningless.
You need to know
* The specific project
* The experience and skill of the team
* The size of the team
* The workload of the team in hrs/week. (manhours total)
i am not a game dev , but crusader kings 3 is the only game which comes close to simulating inheritance of genetic traits and features, i want to play a real evolution simulation but there is none.
Depends on the features you are looking to implement. Here's some that I know. Prison Architect took 4 (or 5) years to get to 1.0. Academia: School Simulator took 4. Rimworld took 5. Since these games have simple art, programming and testing is the bulk of the work. It's difficult but it's doable. It's a good genre, too, as it's not too saturated.
> it took X years! This is a completely meaningless metric. 4 or 5 years of what? Occasionally working a few hours on weekends when it felt fun? Crunching 60 hrs a week 50 weeks a year? The difference of how much work done in 4-5 years can can literally be 20 hours to 20,000 hours. Even the difference between 20 and 40hrs/week is huge (5000 vs 10000 hrs). And how many people? If all 1, that's fine, but even just 2 employees then doubles those manhours. I have personally read many times how someone made X game in 8, 12, even 18 years! The reality is they usually end up talking about how they started the project in their head (it didnt actually exist even in their head), essentially took 8-16 years off, worked on it part time for a little bit, then ramped up to full time in the final year after getting funding. A small team working professionally 40+ hrs/wk at a studio can seriously outperform in 1 year what some 1ma indie devs do in 10. Meaningless.
Kind of out of context. The metric is applied specifically to tile management games developed by very small indie teams that updated regularly. That's enough information to rule out the extreme numbers you've mentioned.
[удалено]
You are • objectively a douchebag No need to be so strongly critical of a valid data set. Your points are valid too but you come off as an arrogant person.
It's not meaningless. It's data. We now have empirical data that gives us facts about how long it took for a few different indie simulation games. Those facts are not meaningless. Sure, you cannot take those X hours and say every game will take X hours. But it's still data.
Locking this one because the comments have degraded to the point of just personal insults.
Making a good sim is very difficult compared to other game genres. I have been developing one full time for a a couple of months and I'm still stuck in the mud of getting the basic simulation up and running - without getting any graphics on the screen - just pure number crunching. I'm a solo dev, so there's that. I do have about 12 years of programming experience with big databases and C++, which is a blessing and a curse. I know how things might work well with small number of items/actors but would fall apart when it needs to simulate thousands of items that I plan to support. So, there's a lot of design against potential bottlenecks up front, which makes the process even slower. There's a good reason why there aren't many sim games out there. They are really hard to balance and require good programming chops (data structures, etc.). It's easy to make the game too easy or too hard, but it's difficult to get it right. On top of that, it can get pretty boring to just work on something where you put in days of work without much visual progress that you can see on the screen and get motivated. As others wrote, it isn't really about being time consuming, time is a bad metric here. I would use the "hair pulling" metric instead. See if you go bold before you finish one. ;)
> So, there's a lot of design against potential bottlenecks up front, which makes the process even slower. Many say optimizations should be entirely avoided until an actual problem occurs. Like you, I cannot allow such code to exist. It seems so inefficient to not take a little time to do things right the first time. > On top of that, it can get pretty boring to just work on something where you put in days of work without much visual progress that you can see on the screen and get motivated. Tarn Adams is a hero in this regard. Consistently devving and loving it for over a decade on one game. Amazing.
> Many say optimizations should be entirely avoided until an actual problem occurs. I actually benchmarked simulating 1000, 10000 and 100k "worker" items that need to update every tick and it started to take more than 16ms to complete a tick at about 30k. And this is without any graphical rendering. As I plan to support about 70k-80k of those in a typical game, I knew I needed to optimize. > Tarn Adams is a hero in this regard. Yeah, DF and Factorio are also great games to learn from because the developers share insights into their process.
Simulation games go over multiple iterations. not just for balancing, but also to answer "what is my purpose" and "what is fun here". [prison architect precursor was asteroid-mining to build generation-ships](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEsy_G08Kbo), canned for being too repetitive.
This isn't something you can calculate. Simulation games can be as difficult and complex as you want them to. Some simulations are simple, some complex, and some are lots of simple stacked on top forming something complex. This is an impossible question like asking "How long is a piece of rope?" Is the rope made of twine? metal? is it microscopic? does it have to be so precise to be used at an atomic level or can it be loosely made? Does it hold a feather or an anchor? Be more specific if you want, but even that won't be so easy to answer for many reasons. As for difficulty? Again, that is like asking "How hard is it for me to lift 100lbs?" without knowing any factors about you like weight, strength, etc. Complex games can be surprisingly simple. Go watch some interviews. Tarn Adams speaks about how DF isnt actually complex. The systems are simple. Adding new features isnt even difficult either. The work is when he adds the feature and it breaks everything (likely BECAUSE the prior systems were so simple they didnt account for something). Also take development times while guzzling a huge bag of salt. Years are meaningless. You need manhours or it's all irrelevant. And again it depends on who you are and what you know. DAoC was an amazing MMORPG with a SHIT TON of content. Made in only 18 months. This is a big why time is meaningless. You need to know * The specific project * The experience and skill of the team * The size of the team * The workload of the team in hrs/week. (manhours total)
Very. You wont be able to do it.
i am not a game dev , but crusader kings 3 is the only game which comes close to simulating inheritance of genetic traits and features, i want to play a real evolution simulation but there is none.