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I've been developing a text-based PHP/MySQL RPG Game Engine since early December last year, and have been wondering how much time is spent by others, either professionals or hobbyists, on making the underlying foundation of the game (its engine) - NOT its content, but just the engine.
With regards to the complexity of the game engine, it is about as complex as KOL's or Earth 2025 or Torn.
If anyone would like to answer, I'd appreciate it if you told me how much time was spent (in months, work-hours, any criteria you can afford to give) and how many were working on it. Any additional details would be nice, too!
Thanks in advance!
As a hobby it took me maybe 6 months to finish a game engine, definitely a lot of it was research for best things to do. But maybe no more than 10 - 15 hours a week (before starting I did already have experience with game development in another language) and I definitely had help every now and then from some friends. I would guess it would take less time if you put more time into it and if you have more experience, but this is what it was for me :) Hope that helps.
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I have 5 apps that I want to make right now, but creating them one by one seems inefficient. It seems like a better idea to make them all at approximately the same time in order to share segments of code where applicable. What are your thoughts on the most productive way to create a long list of moderately complex apps? For comparison, let's put them all on the difficulty level of a familiar & simple app - SnapChat.
Even though it sounds more efficient this sounds like a surefire way to either at best waste time or at worst (and most likely) get a lot of half written apps that never get to production. Unless this is a white label app where instead of 5 separate apps there is one app with 5 different skins you will likely never finish one of them let alone five. A 'simple app' like Snapchat still requires a lot of development time and testing, user adoption studies, and most of all focus of your effort.
Based on your question you have a good deal to learn about the development process. That is fine, you can do it, but focus on the best idea and put all your effort into that. It will take a lot more time and work than you expect and you will be happy you aren't worried about four other projects.
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On a recent project, with roughly 6,000 hours of development, a little over 1,000 hours has gone towards "debugging"/"fixes"... does this sound to be acceptable, high or low??
I also understand that this is a rather dynamic question, while also requesting a rather simply answer, however, I'm just looking for a rough estimate/average based on past project experiences : )
Grateful for any and all input~!!
Pressman (2000) gives 30-40% as the total amount of project time for integration, testing an debugging, so your figures look a little low - but it depends on how you calculate it!
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We have standard issue tracking system (home grown for internal use only) and plan to add planing capabilities as all task have all necessary data to make estimation.
So each task have:
more or less accurate estimated time
accurate spent time
more or less accurate percentage completeness
accurate beginning/schedule date
task owner
Also we have scheduled version which is a group of tasks.
We don't know how to ask to question:
how many hours we must spend to release end
according to tasks time data and version schedule date?
or:
do we finish version to specified schedule?
PS Seems that percentage completeness is less accurate and we decide to drop it...
Estimation is trickier than it looks. For example, when people are asked to give time estimates, they generally systematically underestimate (it's called "optimism bias").
My best suggestion is that you should get a book on the topic and read it. McConnell's Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art is a good place to start.
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I hope this is not a vague/broad/subjective question. If it is, please close it.
Anyway, at several programming competitions (like Google's Code Jam, Facebook's Hacker Cup and so on), by the time I've successfully understood a problem and have an inkling of how to approach it, I see that half the questions are already solved by many people.
My question is, how do these people get so good? Is it pure genius? Is it experience? Is it the ability to think really fast? How would you suggest I improve my skills? I would say I'm a competent programmer. I can eventually solve some of those questions.
Additionally, whenever I inspect the code of winners, I see a LOT of macros being used. This implies to me that they sort of have a template (like #define for loops to some abbreviated version) which they use to program faster. Does this make a significant difference?
The thing is, you're competing against people who've spent massive amounts of time mastering their skill to compete in these competitions. You're unlikely to catch up any time soon, but...
How do these people get so good?
Have the theoretical knowledge to solve the problems and practice, practice, practice.
Is it pure genius?
It can be, but practice can to a reasonable extent make up for it.
Is it experience?
Yes.
Is it the ability to think really fast?
Not really. Practice allows you to approach the problem correctly and skip insignificant details in the problem statement.
How would you suggest I improve my skills?
Get the theoretical knowledge and practice.
Do macros make a significant difference?
It may cut 10% off of your time, but probably not much more.
Statistically speaking, any programming competition with a large enough audience will attract super-talents who can churn out nice and elegant code at super-speed. It's like running the marathon. Running it in 4 hours is really good, even if the world record is around 2 hours. Don't worry about it.
Focus on code quality and elegance instead, instead of being able to churn out code at super-speed. Practise, have fun, and don't look too much at how fast other people are working.
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In our projects we are often asked to give ball park estimates for activities. My question does it really help in taking decisions based on the estimate.
Yes as pointed out above.
No if the client later says "Oh, but that's much more than the X days you initially estimated"
You need to be careful in explaining and agreeing on what "ballpark" really means
Yes .. it can help to give rough estimates to the client but later on these estimates can show upto +/- 50% variation.
But it can help to gauge the size of the project and roughly manday efforts
Something to add to the existing responses.
Pros:
Helpful for a teamleader to assess
the number of resources needed for a
set of activities.
Useful to assess
whether a task would fit in a pre
defined timeline
Cons:
Very rough estimate
Need to be very careful while sharing with the customer.
I often use these ballpark estimates to give a quick price quote to a client, when based on models such as WMFP or COCOMO-II they can also help me make an unbiased assessment.