@Awoken Yes of course you can't give me a "correct" answer has to how long it takes or cost and so on, because it varies vastly and on how easy I learn stuff and how smart/stupid I am and if I was a new John Carmack or not and how lucky I get. So when I ask, I of course just expect people to answer with their own skillset, experience and knowledge on the subject in mind and not as if they know who I am (an like i think most people would normally expect when they get an answer). It can take, what only took 100 people to do, a 1000 people to do in the same time period if it was 100 pros vs 1000 amatures. But you can never answer with that, cause that is an impossibility. You just have to answer with if it was you in my shoes, with how long it took you to learn and your experience, how long would it take to do what I want to do? That is all I am really asking here with my questions

as to 

1 hour ago, Awoken said:

You provide a lot of background info and a long read to convince yourself and others that you're going to do it and you would really like someone around here to say 'Yeah bilbo92, totally doable in a short amount of time, just take a look see here"

You are completely off, I even said I kinda expect this very very unpolished prototype would take between 3-5 years and between 5 people, so I basicly know that this is neither an easy project nor one I will finish fast. I want to make one of the teambased games, my side project the next 5 years at the Univeristy and my motivation to keep going, and that is also why I only expect the bare minimum of the game and even then I don't know if that would be realistic (which is why I made this very post). I even mention if I had to do a game like any of the 3 titles on my own it would probably not even ship before I die, so nope, in all fairness I do think I from the very start that I have been very realistic about the level of difficulty and that it is going to be a both time consuming project and a big mouthful. But as I said it's something I do because I do have the motivation for it, and it would be stupid to do a lot of "small" games first that I have no motivation for, because that will definitely not help me.
 

1 hour ago, Awoken said:

Second, you'll have to forgive everyone for not being able to answer your question.  You even mention in your post that the vast majority of people aren't going to read your whole post ( it's a doosy ), myself included.  So I'll have to apologise but on the outset my 'impression' is that you're a motivated individual who has little experience programming.

And I mentioned this for the very reason that I wanted to avoid the type of people who just reads the title and then give an answer, without knowing what I actually ask for, before they answer. And the reason I made this doosy long post, is I wanted to do give the best possible option to give me an answer to my questions, well knowing what I want and try to do. However, without having to go back and forth in a 100 pages dialogue/debate before what get to the point what it is I actually try to accomplish. Clearly I failed, since all focused on the parts I wanted them to look aside from.

 

1 hour ago, Awoken said:

As such you have little, dare I say zero ability to answer you're own question

And you are right on point here, which is why I posted in here, in the hope that one developer here was bored a friday night and thought this post sounded fun for them to answer  Because I'm not trying to hide that I am completely clueless and new to both coding and gamedevelopment, but I have also made that very clear!

Let's say I want to make a 6v6 online game that is just 1 white big squared platform, where each player could choose 1 out of 21 differently coloured cubes, with each colour having all the abilities one of the 21 heroes of Overwatch have. Would creating that game be a 1 months, 1 year, 10 year og 100 year job for one of you, if you had to make it? It is like that I am asking. And yes I am sorry I can't go down in a more technical level, as I am as you point out a newb, that is also why I try to explain it to the best of my ability what it is I try and want to do  
 

10 minutes ago, bilbo92 said:

Let's say I want to make a 6v6 online game that is just 1 white big squared platform, where each player could choose 1 out of 21 differently coloured cubes, with each colour having all the abilities one of the 21 heroes of Overwatch have. Would creating that game be a 1 months, 1 year, 10 year og 100 year job for one of you, if you had to make it?

This doesn't matter because anyone else here or @Awoken's skills, abilities, and industry experience has no bearing on your ability to make the same project in the same time frame.

You keep bringing up time but you don't even have a clue how to gage your own ability in a programming and/or development capacity, so how should we? Like I suggested in my other post, pick up something like C# and Unity and actually put in some blood, sweat, and tears to find out. Is there a reason you haven't started yet?

49 minutes ago, Rutin said:

This doesn't matter because anyone else here or @Awoken's skills, abilities, and industry experience has no bearing on your ability to make the same project in the same time frame.

You keep bringing up time but you don't even have a clue how to gage your own ability in a programming and/or development capacity, so how should we? Like I suggested in my other post, pick up something like C# and Unity and actually put in some blood, sweat, and tears to find out. Is there a reason you haven't started yet?

Well it does matter to me, while it might not do to you, even though you might not see or understand why. Fair enough if you don't want to give me your estimate or thoughts on the matter, and fair enough if no one wants wants to or simply just aren't capable of it. I don't need a 500 page essay on the matter, I just asked people for their thoughts and experience on the matter and I didn't expect them to go into major technical detail or anything. All I wanted to know is if those who answered had any experince and reference to the gaming industry, and else just shoot from the hip on their thoughts on my questions...

and in all fairness, it wasn't a problem for people to answer in the first place. The problem was they answered questions I didn't ask, which I just respectfully tried to let them know. So to put it like this, it is basicly like going to the doctor with something on your arm and ask "what is this" and instead they tell you what it isn't. Though the answer is useful it doesn't really help anything. You see my point? Anyways normally when you get these type of "it all depends on" questions on the interwebs (which the interwebs is packed off in every aspect of life), it just common knowledge you say where you come from and then give your answer based on your own experience and knowledge while letting the other person know what your own experience is. You can't try to figure out everyones skill level, talent, experince and so on, you just have to give the best judgement based on if you were in my shoes based on your own life. Like "if this were me, based on my x years in the gaming industry and my x years knowing how to code, it would...." and so on.

my questions are no different than a question of "how long it will take to learn French/English/Russian" though you can't truly use the answer anyone give you because it's completely indivual, it doesn't mean people can't give their take on it based on their experience and it won't have any use to anyone. For some it take 5 months for others it take 5 years, but you can still get an idea from it, based on their background, skillset, education and so on.

The reason I havn't truly started is I don't want to fall behind in my classes, so until I feel like I have settled in and know my pace, I try to just follow class instead of doing my own projects so I fall behind cause I get caught up in them.

21 minutes ago, bilbo92 said:

my questions are no different than a question of "how long it will take to learn French/English/Russian" though you can't truly use the answer anyone give you because it's completely indivual

We can find plenty of people who have actually learned French, English or Russian, and ask them how long it took, fair enough. Unfortunately, your question isn't as concrete as this.

1 hour ago, bilbo92 said:

Let's say I want to make a 6v6 online game that is just 1 white big squared platform, where each player could choose 1 out of 21 differently coloured cubes, with each colour having all the abilities one of the 21 heroes of Overwatch have

I've never made a 6vs6 online games with 21 different ability sets. Nor, I'd warrant, has anyone else on the forum. Plenty of them have made games, and those games took anywhere from a few person-weeks to a few thousand person-years to develop, depending on complexity.

Complexity isn't easy to predict - it depends on a lot of choices you have yet to make. Rendering coloured boxes in an engine like Unity is a matter of a few minutes. Doing the same from scratch might take weeks. The "online" in your requirements might be solved by taking an off-the-shelf networking middleware, and you could have a basic version of it working in a few weeks. Or you might spend years learning the ins-and-outs of networking...

@bilbo92, I apologise for reading you wrong...
...

...

Did you get a chance to look at my blog?
I can only answer to that project, oh and my Shapes TD game.
I've been programming Unirule for four years now.  It's hard for me to say just how many hours I've put into the project week to week because some weeks I'm more motivated then others.  Learning to trust and ride the 'motivation' waves has been a personal self discovery.  But seeing as I ball park ~2000 hours of coding, debugging( where most of my time is spent ), letting inspiration find solutions to some of the problems and challenges( sometimes taking months ), and taking breaks from the project lasting a month or two.  That would mean I program on average about 1.5 hours a day.  I'm very close to finishing my framework ( basically the foundation code that'll support a game ), but I've been saying to myself and everyone here that "I'm very close to finishing my framework" for about a year now.  I'm crossing my fingers that it'll actually get done by the end of this year.  So close but yet so far away hahaha.

I participated in the GameDev Tower Defence challenge and earned myself a little badge, you can see it under my name.   @Rutin has three badges because he's particapted in three challenges so far.  My Tower Defence game, which is not finished, I worked on for 2 months.  It is not a finished game but the basics are there.  I'd say I put 200 to 300 hours into that project over three-ish months.
 

2 hours ago, bilbo92 said:

I even mention if I had to do a game like any of the 3 titles on my own it would probably not even ship before I die,

2 hours ago, bilbo92 said:

But as I said it's something I do because I do have the motivation for it

2 hours ago, bilbo92 said:

and it would be stupid to do a lot of "small" games first that I have no motivation for, because that will definitely not help me.

@bilbo92, we invite you to make your game here.  We'll help out with any technical questions you have.  There are people here who can answer most if not all of your technical questions.  As you see we're not so good with subjective questions, haha.

I'm curious to see your vision...

Cheers

Hi bilbo92,

I read all of your post but the last optional section..

I am not a "professional in the industry", I have, however been learning programming languages and writing software since the early 90s.  I worked for 13 years as a Computer Systems Engineer for Internet Service Providers and Telephone Companies.  I understand the networking side of programming fairly well, and I've been toying with game programming as a hobby since I started programming in the 90s. I'm not going to try to tell you how long your projects could take, that's not possible. I will try to break down what I'm doing and hopefully it will help you get the picture you are looking for.

I am one developer, and I challenged myself to construct an MMO. 

Open world with procedural everything.  So I don't have to make the environment myself.   

I'm using Unity for the Game Client, so I don't have to write my own engine. 

I'm using a 3rd party Customizable Avatar system so I don't have to do any character modeling.

So, in essence, I'm building a close analog to what you are talking about.

I've spent 2 months developing the Client(unity) and Server(C# with VS) and I'm probably at 25% of where I would call it a bare-bones functional alpha/demo release. 

And that's 2 months of 8+ hours a day dedicated to this project.

I don't have any degrees, or formal training.  But I do have hard earned knowledge and a few decades of relevant experience to draw upon.

I will be honestly and truly surprised if I make my bare-bones/alpha release of winter/fall 2019.  And I'm taking nearly every shortcut to this goal I can imagine.

Good luck out there, and I hope this helps a bit. 

Don't give up on your dreams, and really, don't worry about how long they will take to build.  That just gives you reasons to quit before you start.

Edit: And to be fair I should add, the only reason I've been able to develop in Unity so rapidly these past two months is because previous to this project I spent almost a full year working on another Unity Multi-Player game that I have shelved for the time being.  I learned a LOT on that project though.

13 plus years and counting on my Multi-player online RPG project, but that's with some cavets, and that is with two people working on the project on and off.

1. lots of pauses in development, including years with no work on the project

2. I used a lot of pre-exisiting code (ended up replacing most of the artwork) all open source client and server, a complete game, more or less, but not something that I would want to play. So basically it is a hard fork of an existing project ( completely different project goals)

3. At the time I started the project, I didn't know how to program in C (the server) or Java(the eventual client after we dropped x11), I got someone else to do some of the programing for me, while I did a lot of the art/project admin stuff.

4. Done, nope, playable, yes, fun, well maybe, we fixed some of the stuff that made it too hard for newbies.

5. Still considered alpha, most of the major features not implemented yet.

I think learning the code is the easy part. You can learn code by copying it. Blender, maya Lynda.com but even after learning code. You don't have any art. How will you put everything together without it. You can think of how you would put a game like overwatch together, but for the coding and the art to get you where your game needs to be. I have an 2 artist. 1 animation, 1 multi person that also knows design. and one person that does music. I don't want to just make a game. I want to bring out a game company. that's copyright, that's making a business sale  and hope investors will buy, but if I do it that way. I have to be ok with giving up shares. If I won the lottery I wouldn't have to worry just like that guy that pretty much won the lottery with no game experience and he brought his company out. Your questions are hard because everyone has there own ideas of how much time effort want to put into game. an game like overwatch. You got to ask yourself. What are you going to do to get your game out. I want to make one of the best mmo games before that genre dies. I know it's going to be hard. I got the game, the story, how I want to customers/players to feel. I accept that challenge because I have sales and marketing experience. Somebody is going to let my game and someone is going to say yes. You got to think what all you can do before you get overwhelmed. My body physically wont let me make another game right now. I have to make this game. Then the plan is to make the coolest magneto game ever! lol. Just think about what your going to do? how your going to get it? and when you got it. How does that make you feel. For anyone who made games and successfully completed them congrats. I had to look at tactics. all mortal kombat games are similar fighting styles, GTA5 is the similar tekken, soul calibur, COD. final fantasy. crono cross. parasite eve. the second one  was like resident evil for some reason. They make their game. then make a part 2 which don't have much in it like every COD game out. Make it lie freedom fighters, or what's that xbox army game called? I want to say rage but it was an open world army game. There is so many possibilities. oh and remember this.. Superman from the 64 sold more copies than any other game. more than wow. more than gta. and that game was horrible. Don't give up man. You'll figure it out. 

The main issue isn't assets, but math skills .. Programming is very heavy math, especially for 3D - and using an engine won't exclude you from knowing why stuff works and how..

Like others have said, try starting with very basic games, those can be challenging enough to create when you start from zero

Online stuff isn't really what you should aim for (you'll face many complex problems to overcome), go for simple singleplayer games until you're confident in that

16 hours ago, swiftcoder said:

I've never made a 6vs6 online games with 21 different ability sets. Nor, I'd warrant, has anyone else on the forum. Plenty of them have made games, and those games took anywhere from a few person-weeks to a few thousand person-years to develop, depending on complexity.

Well that's just any sort of MOBA, which the internet is flooded with these days, so I would imagine some on these forums would have been a part of developing such a game - as said I don't expect people to have them them completely solo or anything? And truthfully yes, I would take every single shortcut I can to make what I want, if there is a solution that fits my licking in every aspect of the development cycle.
 

4 hours ago, vinterberg said:

The main issue isn't assets, but math skills .. Programming is very heavy math, especially for 3D - and using an engine won't exclude you from knowing why stuff works and how..

And that is also why I unrolled at the university to learn code and get a software bachelor, because I know that no matter what I will need to learn to code if I want to make a game on my own. But truthfully I doubt I will get to have anything related to gaming in during my education, but since it's where I want to end up, this is what I will do in my sparetime, when I have finished my homework and everything, and then try and implement what I've learned and put it into my game, or to acquire the knowledge of how to do it myself using what I've learned.
 

16 hours ago, Awoken said:

Did you get a chance to look at my blog?

Yes I also came across it before, before I wrote this post

and thanks @Jastiv and @Septopus it was more these sorts of answers I looked for, though I like you are fair about saying you can't give an estimate, but instead just try and tell how you do and how much time you spend/costed to develop so far.