Just wondering how many person and manhours needed to create typical eroge posted in this site (e.g RPGM games, simple unity game, VN etc), im not really have in deep knowledge about game production but i assume different game with varied content have a lot of challenge in term of how long it take to produce and various technicality and since most of eroge were created by indie studio therefore i assume not a lot of people's involved in the production. anybody in this forum are welcomed to share their knowledge and experience about eroge production, i just curious how would it take to making an eroge.
How many manhours is needed for making eroge?
- Thread starter Mg42gun
- Start date
- May 24, 2020
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- Jan 21, 2022
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Every project is different, however -
A competent and completed project? Thousands of hours.
For some projects, it's a part-time hobby for the developers with 5-20 hours per week.
For some others, it's a one-person full-time operation that is 40-60 hours per week.
And for yet others, it's a team of people working a combination of hours.
- Apr 14, 2021
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okay just make an example let assume an indie studio with 4 man team inside working 40 hours a week completing a project that needed 1200 hours of work, if we exempt weekend day that would be a 30 weeks time needed to creating a game (not included other like releasing the game, finishing etc) but idk how long or how much content from a game created within 30 weeks
- Jan 21, 2022
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Perhaps you're asking the wrong question(s). Why are you attempting to figure out how long development will take? Are you looking to develop your own product but do not have experience in doing so? Are you attempting to figure out a project budget? Are you attempting to figure out if you can make a living doing this?
How much content do you want to have in your final product? What kind of art and how many different characters will the artist be creating? What kind of writing? What story arcs and branches? Do you want multiple endings or a straight path (even with the appears of free will)? Will this be Ren'Py, RPGM, Unity, Unreal, HTML, etc?
You need to have the end goal in mind and work your way backwards, that is proper project management.
In your post here - you are making a lot of assumptions, particularly the 1200 person hours to complete a product.
That's not going to be more than a repetitive point and click reminiscent of about 4-5 old "meet and fuck" flash games.
When I say thousands, I mean multiples of thousands. There is one title on this site that I am aware of the developer posting their time involved for each progress update. They clock in at about 2000-2500 hours per update (writing, coding, artwork, rendering), and the update is about 5-8 hours of VN interaction for the consumer if they don't skip text. The developer is currently working on the 7th part of their VN and total interaction time is expected to run into the mid-30 hours if a person begins play at the beginning.
Product is in Ren'Py, considered one of the simpler interfaces for developers. The VN has little variations available based upon consumer decisions but there are not multiple endings at this time.
7 parts x 2000-2500 hours per part = 14,000-17,500 hours development
14000-17500 hours / 35 hours of interaction = 400-500 hours of development for each consumer hour of interaction
However, that's not counting conception of the idea prior to development and many other variables. Also, that is a one person product and so there is not the discussions about direction and the like in a collaborative process of a team.
- May 24, 2020
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Is your team experienced? For me personally a real edit of a a story can take 2-3 hours per page and your writer will have to do that probably 3 times before finalizing it. From the time I've spent in unity, I imagine you could have a really solid demo in 30 hours but the polishing takes much much longer, getting rid of bugs, ensuring code is flexible and readable, fixing issues with all your assets. Then your artist is an unknown, Im sure they could create place holders relatively quickly but if they are doing 3d, they can maybe sculpt, but can they sculpt for a game, rig, create the maps, and shaders? Does your dev and 3d artist have crossovers in enough experience to work with eachother and make that pipeline a little less painless? How are you marketing your game for growth, how will you make enough of a profit to justify the cost of developing with a team, are you going to be responsible and pay your team for the long term beyond 30 weeks if it runs over that? Ive been really actively learning the development pipeline for maybe 4 months, you can set a time limit on yourself like that but you cannot know what to expect from your first game, and without experience I think its really irresponsible to put a timeline like that on others.
no i just making an assumption, i didn't have any experience with game production
- Sep 13, 2016
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Completely related to what kind of game, how long it is and how effective the development process is.
You can finish a very short project by yourself in a week, while longer ones can go up to years.
You can finish a very short project by yourself in a week, while longer ones can go up to years.
- May 24, 2020
- 196
- 204
lol me neither, for reference im a little under 300 hours in unity going through the tutorials on their website and nearing 50 hours with blender. I dont really keep track of the other stuff. I dont really understand what im doing after 4 months, I know its not a lot of time overall and I could probably be working harder, but you should be really aware that it will be a lot to sink into this
try to imagine the worst scenario you possibly can. then 10x that, and you're approaching the lower bound if everything goes right. it won't of course.
you could easily write 10 books while making one porn game. so easily.
you could easily write 10 books while making one porn game. so easily.
It really just depends on too many factors to give a straight answer.
Let's start with something simple - writing. Depending on your expertise, how fast you write, and how many edits you do, it can be anywhere from 100 to 1000+ words an hour of writing. If you're stuck on a tough scene, it can be significantly longer; I've had days where I work for sit there for 10 hours to maybe get 500 words done, if that.
When you get into backend Renpy code... it can be 30 minutes or 8+ hours to get some coding functionality done, again depending on how much experience you have and your talent/skill for coding. And the more complicated your game, the more bits of functionality you need.
If you're doing full on RPG or sandbox stuff that requires actual Python or another coding language, it's hard to give any kind of meaningful estimates, because it depends on so many factors. Using a premade engine vs making your own, planning out HOW to handle aspects of the battle system, etc. But you should expect a *lot* of hours for a polished system.
Planning things out doesn't get much attention, but it's crucial to having meaningful character arcs, plots, battle systems, etc. and takes a lot of time to do properly as well. Not all of it has to be dedicated time - sometimes just ruminating on an diea while doing other stuff is fine - but even in your downtime you'll often end up thinking about the game. I know I do lmao.
Depending on if you're doing your own renders or commissioning content, that can add a LOT of extra time - the more detailed your commissions, the more work you put into finding good references, the faster that time investment balloons out of control. And if you're doing commissions, going back and forth with the artist can take a surprising amount of time, sometimes interrupting your other workflow. Can end up taking a few days on your end for a higher-quality sprite, and a lot more on the artist's end.
To say nothing of my experiences trying to fix bugs or implement new features without breaking spaghetti code, and then fixing that code to not be shit.
For some perspective, my game has around 20 hours of playable content, maybe 25 if you're a slower reader. I've put around 3000 hours into making that. I was a complete amateur coder, had to make the rpg engine from scratch, and had to fix a lot of things I did poorly or incompletely the first time around. And I'm a pretty fast writer when I get in the zone, but it's easy to get stuck on a scene, and learning how to commission well took a lot of time too.
I put in somewhere around 30-60 hours a week, sometimes approaching 70. On a good day, I'll get 6000 words done. But there are a looot of days where I end up getting little or no writing done because I had to deal with some other aspect of the game.
Even if you're 'just' making a kinetic novel with no mechanics/choices whatsoever, it can still take a long fucking time. One of my closest friends is working on a (non-porn) kinetic novel of his own, he writes fast, has the whole damn thing planned out, dude's a straight-up workhorse, and he's still put (very rough estimate) around 800+ hours into making around 10 hours of reading for the first, like, 1/4 of his story.
As woody said - take the worst-case scenario and multiply it by 10 to get a rough idea of how long it'll take if everything goes well.
Let's start with something simple - writing. Depending on your expertise, how fast you write, and how many edits you do, it can be anywhere from 100 to 1000+ words an hour of writing. If you're stuck on a tough scene, it can be significantly longer; I've had days where I work for sit there for 10 hours to maybe get 500 words done, if that.
When you get into backend Renpy code... it can be 30 minutes or 8+ hours to get some coding functionality done, again depending on how much experience you have and your talent/skill for coding. And the more complicated your game, the more bits of functionality you need.
If you're doing full on RPG or sandbox stuff that requires actual Python or another coding language, it's hard to give any kind of meaningful estimates, because it depends on so many factors. Using a premade engine vs making your own, planning out HOW to handle aspects of the battle system, etc. But you should expect a *lot* of hours for a polished system.
Planning things out doesn't get much attention, but it's crucial to having meaningful character arcs, plots, battle systems, etc. and takes a lot of time to do properly as well. Not all of it has to be dedicated time - sometimes just ruminating on an diea while doing other stuff is fine - but even in your downtime you'll often end up thinking about the game. I know I do lmao.
Depending on if you're doing your own renders or commissioning content, that can add a LOT of extra time - the more detailed your commissions, the more work you put into finding good references, the faster that time investment balloons out of control. And if you're doing commissions, going back and forth with the artist can take a surprising amount of time, sometimes interrupting your other workflow. Can end up taking a few days on your end for a higher-quality sprite, and a lot more on the artist's end.
To say nothing of my experiences trying to fix bugs or implement new features without breaking spaghetti code, and then fixing that code to not be shit.
For some perspective, my game has around 20 hours of playable content, maybe 25 if you're a slower reader. I've put around 3000 hours into making that. I was a complete amateur coder, had to make the rpg engine from scratch, and had to fix a lot of things I did poorly or incompletely the first time around. And I'm a pretty fast writer when I get in the zone, but it's easy to get stuck on a scene, and learning how to commission well took a lot of time too.
I put in somewhere around 30-60 hours a week, sometimes approaching 70. On a good day, I'll get 6000 words done. But there are a looot of days where I end up getting little or no writing done because I had to deal with some other aspect of the game.
Even if you're 'just' making a kinetic novel with no mechanics/choices whatsoever, it can still take a long fucking time. One of my closest friends is working on a (non-porn) kinetic novel of his own, he writes fast, has the whole damn thing planned out, dude's a straight-up workhorse, and he's still put (very rough estimate) around 800+ hours into making around 10 hours of reading for the first, like, 1/4 of his story.
As woody said - take the worst-case scenario and multiply it by 10 to get a rough idea of how long it'll take if everything goes well.
- Oct 1, 2018
- 1,631
- 3,191
Just the rendering for our game. I spend 4 hours (at least) every week night. And 12-16 hours each day on weekends. So that is around 50-60 hours a week. Now, this includes creating characters, outfitting them etc. Then I almost always create or make changes to any environments I use, even if it is adding a different texture to a wall. This can sometimes take all week just to get one environment right. We are 2 chapters into our game, but I believe that is around 2 hours of gameplay. The second chapter took us about 5 months, but that was longer than it should. I would guess 4 months will be about normal for a 1 hour update for us. So 240 hours a month, times 5 months = 1200 hours for one chapter. And that is just renders.