Quote:Original post by Theodore Fuhringer I'm pretty sure I read somewhere in an interview that it took over 400,000 man hours to develop TES: Morrowind. That would mean 33 people working 60 hour work weeks for 4 years.
Just FYI.
Sheesh, read what the guy is saying, folks. Morrowind was not created with a pre-made engine.
Actually the engine for Morrowind was "pre-made". Morrowind used the Gamebryo Engine and according to the Morrowind Wikipedia entry it took "100 man years" to develop. That's despite using a purchased, pre-made engine.
I'm just trying to point out that some realism needs to be considered when approaching a game of such magnitude.
well, morrowind was huge, I admit. There were a LOT of dungeons, NPCs, and side quests. If that were drastically reduced, how big a project would that leave the game? How much of the development time is spent in the side quests and the extra dungeons and such? What I'm looking for is something on that scale of world, items, monsters, and main quests. I'd be more specific but honestly I'm not much into figuring out the scope of the story yet to say how much I'm aiming at making.
Well JasRonq, now that I've hit you with the bad news, here's the good news. :)
If you place the entire gameworld by hand it will take you forever. However, if you use a few shortcuts, for intance: use a procedurally generated terrain, this will cut your development time down significantly. Also if you reuse art assets (Diablo 2 did this) by re-coloring or re-texturing the same model over and over you can cut down on your art needs as well. It's all about how you use your time.
You could even come up with a random quest generator for your optional side quests. That could also reduce your load.
Quote:Original post by Theodore Fuhringer Actually the engine for Morrowind was "pre-made". Morrowind used the Gamebryo Engine and according to the Morrowind Wikipedia entry it took "100 man years" to develop. That's despite using a purchased, pre-made engine.
I'm just trying to point out that some realism needs to be considered when approaching a game of such magnitude.
I stand corrected, but I wonder what took them so long if they used an engine?
Look at single person mods. Something like Minerva for Half Life 2. That's what a single, dedicated person (who knows what they want and how to do it) can accomplish with (mostly) pre made assets and engine.
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Quote:Original post by Theodore Fuhringer Actually the engine for Morrowind was "pre-made". Morrowind used the Gamebryo Engine and according to the Morrowind Wikipedia entry it took "100 man years" to develop. That's despite using a purchased, pre-made engine.
I'm just trying to point out that some realism needs to be considered when approaching a game of such magnitude.
I stand corrected, but I wonder what took them so long if they used an engine?
Quote from Wiki:
According to the team's reasonings, the endeavor took "close to 100 man-years to create". To accomplish this feat, Bethesda tripled their staff and spent their first year of development on The Elder Scrolls Construction Set, allowing the game staff to easily balance the game and to modify it in small increments rather than large.
You must remember, Morrowind takes place in a huge world.
Quote:Original post by Shlaklava If you have ever used the construction set for Morrowind than try making some large stuff in that (whole guilds and such) to get an idea of what they had to do to get the game working.
Seconded. The construction kit is what the game designers used to build the game, i.e. given the engine, artwork, music and sound, etc - the construction kit was the main tool used to create what was left.
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