How much time do you spend?

[staind2523]

Hey everyone,

I'm just curious as to how long you guys spend on your Flash projects. I know that obviously bigger ones take longer, but just throw some numbers at me. My only submission was rather simple and took a good 20 hours, so I'm wondering, am I slow, or does it REALLY take you that many hours to make something?

Looking forward to hearing your responses. Thanks for reading.

[14hourlunchbreak]

Yeah, it takes me about a day to do a quick 1 minute animation. Sometimes I procrastinate and it takes a LOT longer. Also it takes longer to make games because you have to draw everything and code it and blah blah blah.

[Blaze]

Been asked a lot...

Well, it depends. I've made quick projects like Ganondorf's Curse in around 6 hours working straight. :P For bigger projects... for example, It took Rammer and me around 1 full month working around 5 hours a day to finish Halloween Reprisal.

Asteroids, actually took NC and me around 2 hours tops. :D

/whore.

[staind2523]

Only a day to make a minute long animation? Mine was 58 seconds and it took around 20 hours...then again, it was my first. And I suppose it depends on how many hours of one day you're talking about :P

I don't get how Asteroids only took 2 hours...unless there was a lot of copying/pasting involved. Games seem too complex to be made in that amount of time.

The other two Flashes you posted are great...and the amount of time you put into it makes sense.

[Blaze]

At 9/18/08 07:07 PM, staind2523 wrote: I don't get how Asteroids only took 2 hours...unless there was a lot of copying/pasting involved. Games seem too complex to be made in that amount of time.

All I did was the drawings/animation; which if you see, is pretty minimal. And while I was at that, NC coded it. :)

The other two Flashes you posted are great...and the amount of time you put into it makes sense.

Thanks! :D

[AHumanBeing]

I am in the middle of my flash project. I've been working on it for approx. 5 months. The game is scheduled for completion in Jan. 2009. That will put me at like a 9 month project time. One of the major reasons it has taken me so long is that I have spent the first 5 months learning AS 2.0 and programming the game engine. Now I am moving on to graphics.

[Toast]

I don't measure in hours, but Birdballz was made in a week and JuicePlz (see profile) in two weeks and a half. I think even for the smallest projects you need to spend at least a week on it. Sure, you could code some quick dodger game in 30 minutes, but you always gotta polish things up and do all those little things that separate a working version of the game on ctrl+enter and a professional looking version on ng.com

[Voodoo]

Usually I take long breaks, or short spurts of animating. But usually it takes me a month or two for a decently long project.

[Knyszekanimated]

My last game took me only about a week and a half or so. But thats counting school, procrastination,
i. e. my life. But if you count up total hours, I'd say about 12-20. The hardest part for me is a week of thinking of a new game.

[jojor1215]

ok. my first game took like 6 hours and it was a dodger game. (first, lol). but i made a much better maze game and it took about the same time. (check profile.

[uyersuyer]

I'm not much of an artist, so when I work on a project it's usually AS-exclusive. Seeing as I lack the graphical prowess neccessary to polish a game, it usually stays unfinished and I don't submit it. But generally this process takes a few days, working in spurts ranging from an hour to six. Currently I'm working on a basic sniper engine and I'd say I've put in about two hours of work just getting the zooming, aiming, and pedestrian AI because I've had to look up so much new information.

As for animations... they take me for fucking ever. And I usually give up, honestly. Animation isn't my bag.

[JeffaMyEffa]

I'm not gonna lie, the last project I finished took me a pretty long time to complete...3 weeks...yikes. And I think the flash itself only runs about a minute and five seconds long. A good way to shave off some time on a flash project, of any length, is to write a script and then story board your shots out...lol which I did not do this last time around and that left me testing new ideas out directly in flash, trashing ideas, and/or just sitting, starring at my computer screen trying to figure out what I was going to do next. Its nice to have everything on paper first and work from a guide. Though that did take up a lot of time, my biggest time consumer on the last project was fixing my audio levels, and getting the voice overs to sound decent. But yeah, keep with flash bro and you'll get faster on each project you work on :D

[Shadowii2]

On my bigger projects:

When I used my old 2D-ish character models, about 2 weeks (+50 hours).

But nowdays that I use little 3D-ish models, they take a lot more (I have spent +30 hours on the models and still only halfway through!)

[liam]

Simple games can be done in a few hours, like blazes asteroids game.. but I suck at completing things :)

[akoRn]

Well, roughly about 1 and a half month for my latest submission, Frivolous Scrolls I: Ep.4 . But I only work about 4 hour per day, so that made it...

180 HOURS!!

Lol

[MrRandomist]

i've been ready a lot of peoples time to make a flash.
my projects are sometimes long and lately i've been making a lot of flash games...
my first was RR and that took me and my friend around 10 hours to do the engine (but we had only basic knowledge and we had some help) and finished the game in a week.
but my new projects have taken around 4-6 months.
and the project, i have just started is estimated around 10 months.
but the project called "the amazing bubble" is near 75% and has taken me around 5 months atleast!!!

[staind2523]

Wow. Okay. Thanks everyone for responding...I suppose a 20 hour project isn't so crazy :P

Anyways, while reading your responses I noticed the word "engine" popping up every so often...I have a fair idea of what a game engine is (Like the engine Counter-Strike uses and whatnot), but how do you "create" an engine in Flash? Is that just a coding thing? If it is, I should get into that. Coding is definitely more of my thing than drawing/animating.

[Blaze]

At 9/19/08 11:14 AM, staind2523 wrote: Anyways, while reading your responses I noticed the word "engine" popping up every so often...I have a fair idea of what a game engine is (Like the engine Counter-Strike uses and whatnot), but how do you "create" an engine in Flash? Is that just a coding thing? If it is, I should get into that. Coding is definitely more of my thing than drawing/animating.

I think there's not a real definition of an engine, at least the way we use it here. :P But by engine, most of us mean the basic programming of game. For example, "I made a platformer engine!" And all it is, is a few squares as platforms and a circle as main character, that can jump and move. That's a platforming engine, it doesn't have graphics either. :P But bleah.

[WolfAkela]

Depends. I made a Flash game with accurate Loco Roco animations. It's a game where you have to type questions and the answers, then you have the audience try to guess the word, where each letter gets revealed every X specified millisecond. Took a lot longer than expected since the generation of blank letterboxes was dynamic (depends on the answer), and that for some reason setInterval() was totally NOT being helpful.

Time it took? Around 8 hours. Half it if setInterval() wasn't being such a bitch and if I wasn't surfing the net half the time.

I have a fair idea of what a game engine is (Like the engine Counter-Strike uses and whatnot), but how do you "create" an engine in Flash? Is that just a coding thing?

Engine is basically how your game works. If you're working on a platformer, you have to make sure your player can jump around, interact with objects, stuff. For shooters, you have to be able to shoot, kill, reload, pick up items/ammo/guns, etc, depending on the game. An engine isn't an engine if it's written to be static from ground up; it has to be dynamic, so if you expand your game by adding extra stuff, you don't have to rewrite the whole thing.

[MrRandomist]

yes it is its a coding thing its basically just actionscript that you would use for a shoot-em up or and RPG but its something u made up(i think??)

[Lazyfeet]

At 9/18/08 06:44 PM, staind2523 wrote: Hey everyone,

I'm just curious as to how long you guys spend on your Flash projects. I know that obviously bigger ones take longer, but just throw some numbers at me. My only submission was rather simple and took a good 20 hours, so I'm wondering, am I slow, or does it REALLY take you that many hours to make something?

Looking forward to hearing your responses. Thanks for reading.

I generally make reasonably short flashes, however with CAHJ this took me 3 months, obviously not of working 24/7 however a good hour or two every other day.

Because I make much shorter flash they usually take between 3-6 hours? I'm a very slow worker.

[andy70707]

I used to think it only took like 1/2 an hour to make stuff and my "good" game took a "whole" day, but then I relized it takes ALOT longer. Now, I spend a good week on my projects, and the more complex ones about a month. I have been working on mage RPG (see sig) for almsot a year now and its still only about 10% done. I plan on finishing it by 9/9/09 :)

[staind2523]

Thanks for the additional answers about how long it takes you as well as the answers about engines...

So while coding, how would one ensure that they don't have to rewrite everything in order to add extra stuff? Because like a previous poster said, engines do just that for you...and I'd like to make sure that, in the future, I write it correctly and don't mess something up so that I have to start all over again. Is there an easy way to give me an example?

[Hoeloe]

I'm, at the moment, making some utterly epic scaled games which take over a year each. These are about console sized games, though, so they take a lot longer than flash games usually would.