How Many Lines of Code in a Commercial Game?
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The subject pretty much says it. How many lines of code, average in a commercail game?
Black & White did take approx. 2 million lines of code. To give you a little taste of what all went into the project, Lionhead Studios had 25 full-time developers, 3 contractors, a budget of approx. $5.7 million, it took 3 years, 1 month, and 10 days to complete. This is more than the average game today, but expect it to be the standard a in a few years.
Wow, that''s absolutely amazing...
Hehe, in the old IBM prog days, those developers would be rich, would have got paid by the K loc ;]
^_^DATO
Hehe, in the old IBM prog days, those developers would be rich, would have got paid by the K loc ;]
^_^DATO
I wouldn''t say 500,000 is average; that''s probably a bit on the high side. From my experience 150,000 to 200,000 is a bit closer to normal. Some projects breach the 300,000 barrier, but 500,000 is a rare case AFAIK.
It''s true that the games are getting more complicated so the LOC count will continue to go up over time, but by the same token the programmers are (hopefully) learning more so they can gradually figure out how to do more with less code. The two don''t necessarily cancel each other out entirely, but it does slow down the rate of LOC count increase. I suspect 2,000,000 LOC will be way above the norm for quite some time.
It''s true that the games are getting more complicated so the LOC count will continue to go up over time, but by the same token the programmers are (hopefully) learning more so they can gradually figure out how to do more with less code. The two don''t necessarily cancel each other out entirely, but it does slow down the rate of LOC count increase. I suspect 2,000,000 LOC will be way above the norm for quite some time.
quote:Original post by bullet182
Wow, that''s absolutely amazing...
Hehe, in the old IBM prog days, those developers would be rich, would have got paid by the K loc ;]
^_^DATO
You couldn''t make a game run fast on an old IBM pc if it was 500,000 lines, much less 2,000,000. If you could then you''d be a billionaire.
Black and White was really ahead of it''s time, IMO it would be even more fun on really fast computers of the future(3.0Ghz+) because then the ai could really take off. B&W''s ai is the taste of what''s coming.
If you read Game Developer Magazine''s "Game AI: State of the Industry" articles you''ll see that as processor time is freed due to things like HW T&L, good hardware sound/MIDI/DLS, and amazing processor speed increases, more time is given to AI. I would amagine that one day almost all of the processor is going to be physics and AI - all of the graphics and sound is offloaded onto hardware. Maybe one of the next big things is hardware physics - can you imagine what kind of games we''ll have then?
Here are the stats I''ve managed to dredge up on a couple newish games:
(Numbers taken from the developers themselves)
-Neophyte
- Death awaits you all with nasty, big, pointy teeth. -
Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force 1.000.000 lines of code 4.000 filesUnreal Tournament: 350.000 lines of codeAsheron''s Call: 2.000.000 lines of codeFallout Tactics: 300.000 lines of code 1500 filesVampire : The Masquerade - Redemption 350.000 lines of code (Numbers taken from the developers themselves)
-Neophyte
- Death awaits you all with nasty, big, pointy teeth. -
but how many are blank? 
I bet they use next line { indentation and lots of commenting compared to the others.
The old Sierra hint books used to say how many lines of code there were, and I think they had >1M but they also had about 70% blank
(that would''ve included the engine and the script though)
~~~
Cheers!
Brett Porter
PortaLib3D : A portable 3D game/demo libary for OpenGL
I bet they use next line { indentation and lots of commenting compared to the others.
The old Sierra hint books used to say how many lines of code there were, and I think they had >1M but they also had about 70% blank
(that would''ve included the engine and the script though)
~~~
Cheers!
Brett Porter
PortaLib3D : A portable 3D game/demo libary for OpenGL
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