Perihelion":3cngkvz3 said:
Honestly, that doesn't sound like something you can finish in nine months, although it depends a lot on scope.
- How many environments, and how long are you planning to spend on each one? What kind of style are they in? Are you making them from scratch? How complex do you want them to be? I'm not familiar with the game you cited.
- How many character models? Ditto to above.
- How many character portraits + expressions? Are you drawing them yourself?
- How good do you want the story to be? How many drafts are you willing to do?
- What percentage of the game is going to be gameplay versus story?
- What tech are you using? How much time do you plan to spend programming the game?
For comparison, I originally planned my game to take around three months. I cut the gameplay, but it's still looking more like six months now. I've outsourced all the programming, the character art, the event graphics, the music, and the GUI design and have left mostly backgrounds and writing + getting it into the engine with polish/SFX/whatever + managerial things for myself. It's still a ton of work. Granted, I have a full-time job, but I work on the game probably 20-40 hours a week. My biggest problem is too many environments (I'm going to need 14, plus variations on some), but even so, I'm doing prerendered BGs with models found on the internet and it's still a ton of work.
So my advice is to plan your game to take an hour and to be completable in three months. Engineers are notoriously bad at estimations.
I am terrible with estimations; when I say something will take 1 week it ends up being 1 day and when I say 1 month it ends up being 1 week. I'm pretty much infamous for my highly pessimistic outlook on projects.
If you don't mind I'll try to work out these bullet points here. This kind of Q&A interrogation is exactly what I need to inject some sensible thought into this crazy idea.
How many environments...
With the tools I have it takes me about half an hour to scrub up an orange mapped environment. I'd be doing this for all environments required. As for how many environments? In my head I imagine 5, but I highly doubt I'll only stick to 5, I'll probably end up doing 15.
The style will be incredibly basic; map detail level is Duke Nukem 3D, but the texture work I'm going to keep low-frequency. I will rely on the engine to do lighting so I don't have to worry about that extra layer of work.
I definitely predict that most of the time spent doing the environments will creating props to fill them with, which will be done last of all.
How many character models...
My plan is to make a mannequin model for all background characters; white, faceless, genderless people, for just standing around in the background. I might even omit background people entirely as most visual novels don't include them.
The story NPCs I'd build modular, static models for them (at the most, key-frame animated). Quake III style, so legs, torso and waist separated so I can mix-and-match. Any defining features I'd do in the same way with props; so a character with a skirt would have a static skirt mesh added to their mannequin, or a character with a hat.
I also plan on avoiding the UV stage by mapping their textures in screen-space, which will eliminate the need to texture the actual models.
Their faces will be multi-framed 2D.
The number of characters depends on how many story threads I end up writing.
How many character portraits...
This is where I think I will struggle most. I am best with drawing poses and clothing, so I'll probably end up making various template poses and dressing them up. I'd likely move the faces to be dynamic similar to Live2D, so a generic eye and mouth system can be used. I'm definitely thinking of this from the viewpoint that I'd be the only one doing these things so I need to make it as easy, yet effective, as possible.
How good do you want the story to be...
I've gone through about 2 draft iterations already on the story, both iterations are from last year so I'll likely iterate on it a few more times. My plan is, yet again, to simplify massively and make it as modular as possible. The main meaty story will only be at the start and end of the game, the events that occur between the start and the end I'm making modular and barely related to the overarching story. I'm more interested in character relationships than story, so that's where I am going to focus on.
It's not at all a deep and complex story, it's a story about how the situation that the player is in affects the people around them.
The majority of the writing will definitely be spent developing the individual threads for the characters. Keeping them modular means I don't have to worry about linking them back to the start, I just need to make sure the game can pull the threads together at the end. It also gives me the freedom to cut an entire section of story, including the character involved, without having to reshuffle all the characters to fill spaces.
What percentage of the game is going to be gameplay versus story...
The game-play will be incredibly bare. The choices the player makes will likely be based on what they did at a certain time or what item is in their inventory. I want to avoid complex mechanics, I don't feel a game like this needs complexity. I may do puzzles, but I doubt it. The dialogue and characters will be front and centre.
What tech are you using...
Whatever is most friendly with the type of resources I have planned. I don't want to spend more time wrestling with the technology to fit my content production pipeline than producing content.
I might just load up Irrlicht/Ogre and plug in Lua and go from there. That would take a few days.
Thank you a lot for helping me with this
