How long does it take you?

[ciel]

Since I take forever, i was wondering how long everybody else took...

I jump around before actually getting to work so it takes me more than 5 months i would say. I do other stuff and don't touch it for months.

My game isn't that long either, i would think. 30 min-hour or so. (I'm going to add on stuff to it though)

How long does it take you and how long is your game???

[ShiraiJunichi]

I've worked on several projects for quite a while now, and I'm finally making some real progress, and I expect to see a release soon. I started this game maybe a month before NaNoRenO, and I expect the game to only be about 20 minutes.
I think how long it takes depends on a whole lot of factors. How motivated you are, how much free time you have, if you have any team mates, etc.
Perhaps a number that would be more useful is the number of man hours it takes. I guestimate that my current project has maybe 30 man hours. That's a very rough estimate. And this excludes a lot of time wasted, when I tried to work on it, but ended up not making any progress.

[lordcloudx]

I guess that most of my games are somewhere around 10-20 minutes. takes me about two to three weeks for each game when I'm in the "rhythm"

[kara24601]

I feel really really bad about not completing any projects. It seems like everytime I get motivated to do something , a new version of Ren'Py comes up and I rarely get around to doing anything...Right now , all of my "current" / old art is on my old computer and I've been busy with other stuff so I have no projects on my new computer and tons of unfinished projects ( not just ren'ai related stuff ) on my old one. If I ever do get something finished , I guess you could count me amongst the "takes forever to finish something" group of creators.

I try to do all the work myself and have lots of free time
but I have many interests , multitask , depending on how I feel...sleep alot , ect. Then when I am working on something I struggle with character names , which would be the best way to present the basic idea , the coding ( I *hate* coding ..even it's "easy" to do or supposed to be easy to do ) , ect. Even when I know exactly what I'm going to name everybody and what the basic idea is , I can have a hard time of it. Of course , it's very tempting to take tons of breaks and piddle around.

I think another part of it , is that I'm too ambitious with my projects , even ones that I initially set out to be "short" games , I keep adding stuff in. I want to show off as much as possible even with a first game or "small" project. Then I get sidetracked and it all goes downhill from there....

[monele]

I'm too ambitious too... but I hope it'll pay off .

I think I've been working 2 months or so on the game now, on and off. At first it was mostly on weekends (a whole afternoon+night spent on the game). Now I tend to work a bit (1 or 2 hours) every evening, and still work the weekends. But to do so I prevent myself from playing any other game longer than 1 hour. I watch animes or TV to stay sane ^^;.

So far the game intro has four paths (with slight variations in each). Times go like this :
Intro : 3'48
Path A : 10'27~
Path B : 11'52 (unfinished)
Path C : 7'43 (unfinished)
Path D : 7'43 (unfinished)

But yes, A & B share scenes, as do C & D (actually they are identical so far ^^). It's just to show the length of one playthrough.

The total of each unique scene is 36'46. And yes, I'm not done with the intro yet @_@;. Too ambitious I tell you ^^;

[mikey]

I'd say the average for a 20-40 minute game is 4-6 months. Some games you can do faster, some slower. A 20-minute game, it's possible to do that in 1-2 months.

This may seem like much, but it's the average and takes into consideration the facts that people don't work on their games at times, get distracted, have to rework things, have a block, technical problems and work with others through e-mail, all of which takes longer.

Longer times aren't uncommon, I think G!MB took something like a year to make, Gakuen Redux was released in summer 2005, but serious work began in fall 2004, with concepts and tests starting in early 2004 (story written in 2001). With staff troubles, your game can really take a long time to complete, Metropolitan Blues for instance. It's not finished until it's finished - Tales Of Lemma 2 was very near completion (BL estimated 3 weeks to go), before things took a bad turn for the project, and so on, and so on. Not to mention unfinished projects, still alive, having been around for some years. So there are all kind of stories about the individual projects.

I'll give you my rough numbers, rounded up:
Black Pencil - 2 months
River Trap - 6 months
Kaori - 3 weeks
Marry Me Misato - 2 days
Milk Swim - 2 months
Transfer Teacher - 1 month
Gakuen Redux - 9 months
Idol/TYPE - 2 months
Secretary Of Death - 2 weeks

[papillon]

Abigail, being insanely short, was done in a week.

Summer Schoolgirls I had originally *expected* to take a month or two, but ended up taking at least six, partially due to delays with the artwork.

Fatal Hearts has been going on for.... is it six months now?... and still doesn't have even *one* path complete, though it's getting close. Runtime on the most-complete path is something like two and a half hours by now... And even when the story finishes up there will be at least a couple months delay to get artwork.

[rioka]

Lessee... For me:

Amgine Park - 2 months. Most of the time was spent on making the colored backgrounds, everything original.

Garden Society: Kykuit - 1 month. I think everything went quicker because the game was in b&w and the backgrounds were photo's. That shaved off quite a bit.

Blind Love - ...Going on 4 months now. Backgrounds in color, characters in color, plus waiting for new renditions of the music is the main time-factor in this case. Also, I wasn't satisfied with the outline I did prior to the start of NaNoRenO so that took some of the time due to revisions... :\

[Mokenju]

I've finished my first game in 6 days (20 minutes/ending) but I worked with the script most of that time ( art is very basic, the backgrounds are photographs ) and I have plenty of free time this week...

I'd need more time for a more complex ( and better ) game...

[PyTom]

Moonlight Walks was made in almost exactly a month.

mikey sells himself short a bit. IIRC, one of the two weeks it took to make SoD was taken up by me making menus and packaging it.

[Alessio]

Fifteen months. Er. But I do have a lot of hobbies, a lot of work, and a wonderful wife. :)

[mikey]

mikey sells himself short a bit. IIRC, one of the two weeks it took to make SoD was taken up by me making menus and packaging it.

From my point of view, you shouldn't really think this way. It would take me ages to make a thing like that if I were to do it alone, and it is really one of those things that make the difference - I'd wait another 2 weeks for that. So, I do say "my games", but it actually means "ATP's games". Never forget.

Fifteen months.

Although I suppose that since it was such a long dev time, it most probably has changed and got redesigned over time - that takes up a huge amount of time.

Er. But I do have a lot of hobbies, a lot of work, and a wonderful wife.

Having a wonderful wife isn't a valid drawback, it's a very unfair advantage ^_^

[papillon]

Having a spouse is not a drawback. Particularly if the spouse has artistic talents.

Starting a *new* relationship while trying to make a game, now, *that* would be distracting.

[Alessio]

You're both right, of course, at least in terms of moral support. No artistical support though, that remains mikey's privilege. :)

Starting a *new* relationship while trying to make a game, now, *that* would be distracting. :)

How can you say such a thing! Talking about Ren'ai, starting a new relationship could give you that first-person perspective that is invaluable for the game! :))))

[rioka]

Yeah, you could even use real-time events to inspire your work.
Of course... you may be too distracted to focus on making your game. XD