How long

How long does it take you guys to make an average program. I know it will vary depending on the program, but out of all, the average time it takes you, how long is it. Mine is about 2-3 hours, and thats for like a good program (for me that is), so um yeah.

What about 1 to 3 months...
That's for a really good program, for which a client wishes to pay.

No, not like a proffetional one. Just an average every day program

YES!. My 100th post

2-3 hours!?

Well, for most of my programs it takes a long time. Days, maybe weeks, but of course it depends *hugely* on what you're writing. If i'm writing a notepad clone, maybe minutes, if I'm re-writing windows,... well..... minutes. :D

You forget that for a lot of people, large professional programs are the average, every day programs. It would help if you gave an example for the sort of programs you are writing.

Depends on how far you've planned for it.
If I have a plan, it could take maybe a day (2 to 4 hrs) to get it working.

Now, completing the program is another question.;):p

HOURS?! Wow...

My projects generally take, oh say two weeks to three months. But then again, I do have fairly large projects.

I got much biger problem then you guys. If I start to write some project (average time is one month) after few weeks, I got another idea and I leave it uncompleted. 3/4 of my projcets are not finished.

then I'm realy mad at myself...

I don't do many VB projects that are big, but the biggest one took about 7 months. :) Of course, I wasn't actually working that whole time...

codeTag, it was.

Biggest project to date was a DirectX 7 RTS game. Started in July and gave up in January due to lack of support. Since then been working on a full IRC client. The basics have been done now to write the GUI..... *moan*

The time it takes depends on how much I work on the project and avoid being sidetracked by other things. Since I stopped the DirectX game thing it has been much easier.

Look out for squIRC. Once I get the hang of this subclassing malarky then it will be finished in no time :D

Well I guess I would be the one to skew the averages then. I have one that, depending on when I define the start and stop dates, took me 3 or 3-1/2 years to complete. It is rather large and hideously complex though.

Started re-writing the core systems for our company, started 8 mnths ago, and the light at the end of the tunnel is still very small!:(

Wow! The longest I have ever spent is about 2 weeks and i did about half an hour a night, and it wasnt a very good program. I wish I could stay focused for as long as some of you guys:)

The difference is that you are probably doing it as a hobby, and some of these people are professional developers. Asking how long an average project takes to complete is like asking how long is a piece of string. It's all relative.

So when do we get to see some of these games you have written Kitaiko?

2-3 hours ain't long, drawing the graphics alone takes hours. :-\

In the past month I wrote eight static kids games, they took less than a day each. Same for utility applications.

For clients though, between 1 and 6 months.

Happy Birthday Lord Pookie, I see you're 3 years old today.

lord pokie: I havent been doing much programming cause of school, but now i dont have much, so i am going to stay up all night one night and make like 10 games, or a couple of really good ones.

Dont you mean start making 10 games.....
If I had £1 for every time Ive suddenly jumped on a new project when it came into my mind then got bored within the first few hours, I would never have to work again.

:D

Right, but when do we get to see some of these game? :D

Yes I'm getting old, the big '3' today.

No wait, now Ive changed my mind, im going to make 1 big long game, and force myself to finish it on saturday, or the year 2007 for those of you in America.

I have one really LONG RPG that I started um... oh no - amnesia!:eek:

I guess about March 2001. Hey! An anniversary is going to pass!:):)

Yes I'm getting old, the big '3' today. - Lord Pookie
Would this be 3 in dog years, Lord ' Axe Murderer ':eek:?

The project I worked on for the longest was an RPG. I was using Visual Basic 3 and couldn't have picked either BitBlt or DirectX out of a line0up. Instead I used pictureboxes for everything. It took me about a year to get the basics done and the first two maps, then I spent another couple of months adding effects(as well as I could using basic shapes and VB3), a few more maps, and a script. Then my hard drive fried. Right now it is sitting in the top drawer of my dresser, may it rest in peace.

Next to that I spent about 3-5 months working on a shooter game, Super Monster Shootout, using VB4 32-bit. It's at a playable state, but has many bugs and many things I could do to make it better, now that I have VB6, but alas, I have lost interest in that and moved on to other things.

I also developed a couple text-based adventure games in BASIC that took me many months each.

Probably two of the shortest things I've ever made, besides stupid things in BASIC when I was very young, was PNLC and MemoryGame.

PNLC takes your phone number and lists all the possible letter combinations for it, through which you can search and see if your number has any clever letter combinations.

MemoryGame is just like the highly-overpriced Simon(c?) game. Lights flash in an increasingly long pattern and you must click the same pattern. (But my game has five buttons and a cheat code too ^_^)

Yes, my greatest weakness in developing or learning most anything is the amount at which my whims change.

Arigato (for putting up with my ramblings),
Gamer X (http://gamerx-creations.cjb.net)

P.S. You can find most of the things I've programmed at the above web address. (hence the name)

It's a living. :D

No, it's 3 human years, I started programming at a very young age, think it was around 4 days old. :rolleyes:

:p

congrats on your hundredth post

Yeah thanks woohoo...

Suppose I need a speech now:

I'd like to thank my computer for without it this feat would not have been possible.
I'd would also like to thank my Internet company for allowing me to access this wonderful VB forum, for without them, this would not have been possible.
blah blah blah.
Okay I'll shut up now. :cool:

Yeah, when I work on my games, it's all about the graphics. My games don't take all that much coding, it's just the logic and graphics that take forever, right, everbody?

The graphics do take up most of the time, especially if it's an rpg game, and as the graphics reflect your game, the better the graphics, the more professional the game looks.

I guess it all depends on how much detail you wish to add you your game for the amount of code to write, I seem to spend a lot of time writing the code, then changing it until I'm happy so that can take a lot of time too. :)

Wow! Three human years?
I could barely spell 'Axe Murderer' at the age of three.
I thought this was a 3 in dog years. Thought you were going on the 'down side of the hill'.;)

I'm glad to hear some of you spend a lot of time on graphics.
My degree is actually in Fine Art, so I spend a whole lot of time on graphics...I thought i was the only one *sniff, sniff*:rolleyes:

Could you imagine if the makers of the Final Fantasy games (Squaresoft) dibbed out on the graphics as instead wanted to emphasize their code. :)

Re: ICEPLUG

You know Axe Murdering is a dying art. :eek: (Get it) :D

Since I first started programming about 9 months ago I have really been working mostly on the same program. It is a Mastermind game and has been alot of fun developing. I spent lots of time the first week or two on it and had it working much the way it does today (completely functional). The stumbling block which was just mentioned here recently has been the graphics, since I am not an artist and can't afford to buy something like Photoshop and probably wouldn't know the first thing about using it, I do all my graphics with MS Paint, an Icon editor (Microangelo), and convert them when needed using Ulead Photoimpact 6. The graphics I am using now I think are quite good, but boy did it take some time to get it that way.

I guess this program is going to be one of those that is never finished and will probably wind up with so many features that it will seem overboard but ah well, that's the way it goes when your a newbie. Since I am still learning things I am using this app to assist my learning and therefore it goes from very bad to halfway decent in the coding.

God, I love this stuff :p

Orbity

i wish i had the know how on how to make a program that would take me three or four weeks my programs are simple calculators or winsocks that only allow two people to chat or somestuff like that never good or intresting.

You know Axe Murdering is a dying art. (Get it)
LOL. I got it.:D

I agree with the graphics mode.
I am so proud of my own game - maybe because I used some free game graphics from other sites in my game. Also, music helps me create and emphasize my game while I create it.
It gives me a feeling that my game is coming out good and I am putting my work into something beneficial.
Of course when I finish the game, I will create original artwork and music to keep my game in the clear.
Bad idea trying to sell 'my' game where none (or a little) of the artistry is mine.

What if there were no Axe Murderers? There'd be Chainsaw Murderers. <-- An art to die for. :(

Chainsaws... Are you crazy!!!!!
They pollute the air with all those fumes, and if you pollute the air, then people will get breathing problems, and some may even die!!!!! :eek:
Besides Chainsaws are too technical for me to understand. :(
Unless I beat them over the head with it. But that sort of defeats the purpose....

So have you published any games for us to look at Mr IcePlug?? :)

Rats! I had a whole lot to say, but I got a page error.

Anyway a quick summary.
I had a large puzzle game with 100 levels, 8 MB, and it's really difficult.
What if there were no Chainsaw Murderers - baseball bat murderers!
I did have a game in the Game Programming section
Plataform - I have to spell it like this now.

OK. That's the fifth error. If I don't get this in before 2003, something is wrong.:mad:

You know, I press CTRL+A then CTRL+C every time before I click submit as ages ago I got that error message and lost my info, so now always send it in the clipboard incase it happens again. :)
Sort of the same as using online email websites. :)

I'll go sus out that game too....

You could have baseball bat murderers, but over here we would be more inclined to have cricket bat murderers, and as no one likes to get blood on there cricket bats :( I would be out of a job quick smart. :eek:

I remember that platform now, was on here like last week or so.... :D How cute... :) :D

A really good game I made once took 3 - 4 months. :)

How cute...

Mog? Monsters? OK they're not "monsters", they're misunderstood animals/entities.:)

I program that took me the longest duration to produce (bug free that is) was an area calculator for 2-d objects, and an Volume and Surface Area calculator for 3-d objects.

I had to create 3-d objects in Bryce.


It took me 2 weeks to create, I worked on it nearly non-stop during that two weeks, this may not sound impressive but it ended up being forty pages of source code.

Some other programs I created were a Pi calculator (3 hours), and a proportion calculator to solve for unknown values (20 minutes).

i cant work on it full time, so it varies. about a 3 monthes for a good program with the time i have