[quote name='mekk_pilot' timestamp='1342363679' post='4959268']How many man-hours would it take your typical hobbyist programmer to create a working bridge application

Three months.

Edit: sorry, I misread the question. I was talking about an experienced professional programmer (working full time), not a "typical hobbyist." Hobbyist would take longer (more man-hours).
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Full-time? You're saying it would take a professional programmer nearly 500 hours to program a game of bridge?

[quote name='mekk_pilot']
1. do programmers usually make 3 times what designers make?
2. You're saying it would take a professional programmer nearly 500 hours to program a game of bridge?
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1. You can look up designer and programmer salaries. Just Google the 2011 game industry salary survey.

2. I'm not going to do math for you. I said it takes a professional programmer 3 months working full-time to make a small game. Why do you ask; is that hard to believe? These timeframes are easy enough to research by reading some postmortems on gamasutra.

I think it all falls down to bringing something to the table.
Myself, I'm a reluctant programmer, a non-artist, but I have experience in design and project management.
That said, these two look bad on the indie scene, as they may wrongfully rhyme with: guy with ideas that intends to be a tyrant.
The truth behind these words should rather be: guy that can listen to his team, list ideas, assemble them in a comprehensible way weighting pros and cons of each idea in comparison to the whole, all the while being a facilitator to the team that takes any tasks he can so that others can focus on what they do best.
I'm also the guy putting the money in, which sorta helps too.

In other words, its possible to break in as an indie designer if you're willing to get down deep with the team and make their job easier, not just being the go-to-ideas-guy.
You have to make this project yours, and if its really yours (spending money kinda help to get that feeling but is not necessary) you'll see yourself doing stuff you would not have imagined.

Now I know a few will recommend that you bring something else to the table (learn programming or art) but truth be told, if you have the same aptitudes as me, this isn't necessarily the way to go. I know logic, I'm ok coding, but trully, compared to a real developer, I'm nothing, and if I would try to help him, I would only get in the way. Instead, I've decided that I would be the scripting guy. This is a programming level I'm more confident with and a place I can actually help rather than be a nuisance.

Just find your own "I can do this too" field of expertise and do everything you can.

BTW, I asked my friend about bridge; this was his response:

lol, 300-500 hrs to program bridge. Maybe if you were making a entire engine (graphics, sound, I/O) from scratch for release onto the XBox 360 or something.

A good programmer could do it in an hour.



This goes to show that those that cannot do, post on forums. (also, teach) People that do build games spend time building games and going to conferences.
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BTW, I asked my friend about bridge; this was his response:

lol, 300-500 hrs to program bridge. Maybe if you were making a entire engine (graphics, sound, I/O) from scratch for release onto the XBox 360 or something.

A good programmer could do it in an hour.



This goes to show that those that cannot do, post on forums. (also, teach) People that do build games spend time building games and going to conferences.

[/quote]

Please take a moment to look at Tom's resume: http://www.sloperama.com/business/resume.htm

BTW, I asked my friend about bridge; this was his response:

lol, 300-500 hrs to program bridge. Maybe if you were making a entire engine (graphics, sound, I/O) from scratch for release onto the XBox 360 or something.

A good programmer could do it in an hour.



This goes to show that those that cannot do, post on forums. (also, teach) People that do build games spend time building games and going to conferences.

[/quote]

You don't make a commercial quality game in an hour, allthough i do agree that 300-500 hours seems excessive it is important to remember that the main thing that separates good games from bad is the level of polish, not the quality of the initial design. (or even the quality of the final polished design allthough it is fairly common for games that are rushed out early to contain minor design flaws that were considered too expensive to rework (i've never seen a commercial game with a truly bad design))

There are tons of poker games out there for example, some are far better than others despite all of them using the exact same game design, For a good bridge game as an example you need at the very least:

Good AI or a rock solid, scalable matchmaking solution. (Neither is trivial to implement, you need atleast one, preferably both of them)
Good clean artwork (You don't need alot of it but you do need it, copyright applies to most existing card art).
Stat tracking, (in this day and age any competetive card game has to have this).
Add stuff here..

You can quite easily hit a few hundred hours on a bridge game if you want to make it sellable. (To be able to sell it you need to make it better than the free offerings)

BTW, I asked my friend about bridge; this was his response:


Quote


lol, 300-500 hrs to program bridge. Maybe if you were making a entire engine (graphics, sound, I/O) from scratch for release onto the XBox 360 or something.

A good programmer could do it in an hour.



This goes to show that those that cannot do, post on forums. (also, teach) People that do build games spend time building games and going to conferences.

That tells me a LOT about your friend...But seriously, I'm with Tom here.

BTW, I asked my friend about bridge; this was his response:

lol, 300-500 hrs to program bridge. Maybe if you were making a entire engine (graphics, sound, I/O) from scratch for release onto the XBox 360 or something.

A good programmer could do it in an hour.



This goes to show that those that cannot do, post on forums. (also, teach) People that do build games spend time building games and going to conferences.

[/quote]

woa... what's the problem then?
Let's do it this way.. I'll pay his hour and your hour and get 40% split on the game.... profit.

Seriously, it is clear that the idea of working, polished game that could be sold to somebody is not something you and your friend seem to agree. But pls do run the math, if it'd take 1 hour to make a working game, then the typical programmer could release what? 176 games per month?

Seriously.. if your friend can pull it off he is a moron for not doing it already, otherwise he is a moron for writing these things.. either way.. you know how this is going to end dont you? ;)

and I didn't take comp sci in college, therefore programming would be something totally elective.

I didn't take comp sci in college either. Yet I wrote several games in BASIC, Adobe Flash and Javascript.

1. Game programming isn't hard. You could pick it up in just a few days if you're indeed hardworking. Check out Adobe Flash (lots of tutorials online) for example.

2. Once you start making games, you will start to realize that game design is not just writing a "great idea" down on paper. It is an iterative process involving programming, art direction, and storytelling.

3. A game's design is deeply intertwined with its programming. You should not completely separate "programmer" from "game designer". The game designer might have programmers helping him but he must a good understanding of what the code is doing.

Why don't you and your friend make a small simple game first to get some experience?

My friend did some hired gun programming on a triple A title, so he knows what he's talking about.

He is adamantly refusing to "do it for me." He wants me to learn.

I don't know how long it took him, but the same day I asked him about bridge, he put up a Jscript skeleton of the game, that has maybe 25% functionality (though it uses text, not graphics). There's no AI, it's multiplayer.

Probably he meant you could do multiplayer bridge in Jscript in an hour, but I don't know, I'm not him.

I think I'm going to get my feet wet at ffhacktics hacking FFT. I've gotten the message loud and clear.