How long would it take to make something at the scale of Dragon Age Origins, if i already have all the assets (models, audio, arts etc.) and i'm using unreal engine? How long would the coding and uniting everything part take?

It really depends on the people doing the work and tons of specific details about the game that you haven't provided, but it's a fairly safe bet that the units will be "years."

I made all the enviroment models and character models, alongside sound. Does it still take years to code everything?

Does it still take years to code everything?

make something at the scale of Dragon Age Origins, if i already have all the assets (models, audio, arts etc.) and i'm using unreal engine?

Considering the game credits, subtracting out the artists I'd estimate about 400-600 work years.

Looking over the public information, November 2002-mid 2004 was a small concept team, mid 2004-spring 2007 was a moderate team, spring 2007-fall 2009 (final release) was full-on development, with work continuing on expansion packs and DLC for about a year after launch where the teams shrink considerably.

You don't win awards like Best Game of the Year from a huge number of awards shows and magazines and news outlets without enormous investments.

Now if you change your requirements, do not make something anywhere near that scale but make something of the same spirit of the game, with a much smaller feature set and much smaller story line and a less rich collection of features, and if you had an awesome original collection of assets, you could probably reduce it to something on the order of 5-10 work years. It would require serious feature-cutting to reach that, but it is something an individual or small team could conceivably implement.

make something at the scale of Dragon Age Origins, if i already have all the assets (models, audio, arts etc.) and i'm using unreal engine?

estimate about 400-600 work years.

Well, that's discouraging to say the least lol.

5-10 years is still a hell of a lot of time. Might die in that time period.

Well, that's discouraging to say the least lol.

5-10 years is still a hell of a lot of time. Might die in that time period.

Yes, you might. You might also die before you complete your next shopping trip, but you probably still plan menus and shopping lists.

The major AAA games coming out today frequently have budgets measured in hundreds of millions of dollars.

A single hobby game should not expect to compete directly, attempting to produce a feature-rich enormous world filled with unique content and highly interactive environments that appeal to the masses with little risk.

Instead, hobby games should focus on what they do best, small experimental ideas that are high risk but potentially (relatively) high reward.

Well, that's discouraging to say the least lol.

5-10 years is still a hell of a lot of time. Might die in that time period.

Yes, you might. You might also die before you complete your next shopping trip, but you probably still plan menus and shopping lists.

The major AAA games coming out today frequently have budgets measured in hundreds of millions of dollars.

A single hobby game should not expect to compete directly, attempting to produce a feature-rich enormous world filled with unique content and highly interactive environments that appeal to the masses with little risk.

Instead, hobby games should focus on what they do best, small experimental ideas that are high risk but potentially (relatively) high reward.

I'm sick actually. So, yeah...

How long would it take to make something at the scale of Dragon Age Origins, if i already have all the assets (models, audio, arts etc.) and i'm using unreal engine? How long would the coding and uniting everything part take?

A game isnt defined about its assets, assets may be exchanged that alteres the look of a game but didnt alter its feeling when playing it. So the more important questions you should ask yourself are

- How long would it take to adapt Unreal Engine to something that will support the needs of your game (Bioware has had its own Engine for that so think of 50% percent of the coders to maintaine the Engine)

- How long would you need to build a single world map chunk (placing all assets, interaction points, enemys/caharcters ...) and multiply that time with the size of the environment

- How long would you need to build a single storyline, write the dialog parts and choices and then multiply that with the number of characters in your game

As you could see, coding isnt the most time consuming part of such a game but 'building' the game on the barebone is, so lets assume you build a game 'like' Dragon Age in an environment of no more then 1km^2 environment with a limit of lets say 10 characters and 3 storylines even with a lot of coding expreience and any tools necessary to get the data from your mind conception into game binary interpreted form, you will still sit at least a month for some basic gameplay in your basic environment (full time job, 8 hours a day) until anything works as you expect it to work. And even than the AI might be realy stupid :wink:

If and even if you realy wish to build such a game, take your time, take a more advanced engine (I think unreal might not be the right choice because it is too general) and start by coding the basic gameplay (character designer, movement, physics) and test it in a small testing world of 100m^2. It might be(and will) look very unfinished at that time but thats ok, at this step you wont want it to look good but work on the code side.

After that you might buid basicly your environment to a state where you could interact with Doors, Characters, Items and expand your gameplay to do that (Picking Items into a logical inventory e.g. a list of IDs, 'using' objects like doors to have code on them that will do one single action when activated e.g. swing open/close, 'using' items on actions e.g. unlocking a door with a key).

Now expand your gameplay to a basic fighting system and load first animations like swing a sword for example. Physics get important here when you fall or a weapon hits a character, it will get an ammount of damage equal to a combat system you desire.

At this point start the design part, build your environment with assets and music, concept and design UI and choose a dialog/quest system.

When youre done implement the dialog/quest system and you are allmost done with the basic rpg. Anything that is left at this point are storylines and the game world

(Please anyone reading this keep in mind, that this is just a basic rpg game with general mechanics, not an AAA title :D )