What is the biggest time sink when creating a game?

[adultUser]

Renders? Code? Story? Audio?

 

[Comrade Anulnyat]

Lazy people in your team.

 

[BeWilder]

Quality renders take time, but they are worth the wait. Remember, its not just the time to do the computing, but the effort needed in posing, designing, staging, detailing and even photo-shopping and post-production. They are the life of the party though.

Next up is writing, it takes time, effort and the ability to criticize yourself, rewrite and improve. This one will vary based on experience but it'll always take some significant time... as long as you treat it with respect and care about it.

Code is not a time eating thing but we're both originally programmers her at beWilder so that might just be us. It depends on your codebase, if it is complex or if you are using a mostly prebuilt engine but in general it should only take a small amount of time to work in content updates once the main game loop is functioning as needed.

Audio is the dark horse... you really have to do it all or do non of it, nd most people do the latter. It takes much more time and effort to do than you'll ever account for unless its something you do every day and can truly estimate it well. This could potentially overtake writing as your next time consuming task.

Hope that helps!

Edit: This is a good example of the work that should go into your renders if you want them to be the best they can be. This this kind of detail that eats up the time and is often overlooked. Tell me it's not worth it though...

 

[DarthSeduction]

Renders? Code? Story? Audio?

As far as time goes, renders is gonna be the most time actually dedicated to working. If your code is complicated and therefore more prone to errors, it would probably be second. But that doesn't discount the problems with writing. I've been working on writing a 7 page script for 3 days, I might have one page. Not because I couldn't write it all in a couple hours, but because I'm critical of my writing and strive to make the best product I can. So I rewrite and I think and I write some more.

Sometimes you just get this spark and you can write for hours, other times you get a few lines and you're drawing blanks on how to continue.

So, Greatest Physical Time, Renders.

Time spent down trying to work but failing, writing.

 

[Mescalino]

Quality renders take time, but they are worth the wait. Remember, its not just the time to do the computing, but the effort needed in posing, designing, staging, detailing and even photo-shopping and post-production. They are the life of the party though.

This exactly.

 

[Nightcrawler]

Bit of and open ended question.The priority lies in what kind of format you are going to use.For Example a text game with may be a few visuals the priority is going to be in the writting and will take up a huge chunk of time as it is the main focus of your game. A vn however it will be renders as you want the visuals to tell a story as much as the text.Audio will always be at the bottom of my list as i never listen to it anyway.I prefer the story and the visuals do the talking

 

[Yoshiiki]

In a game with drawn CG I would say two things: Story (if any) and mostly - drawing. Especially when there are many poses/scenes with different clothes.
Of course, you can add extra stuff depending on how the game itself is made: in unity if you are doing everything from scratch depending what is needed, you have to add extra time for creating framework, while using some established engine may cut down on time.
Still, would say drawing.

 

[DSSAlex]

Renders themselves take the longest for me, with posing the scenes and setting up the renders and writing code about equal time sucks. The actual story writing doesn't take me too long, but that's because I've spent a long time behind the keyboard.

My computer is kind of a pile of shit, but even if I got a better video card I expect it would only reduce the render time marginally (because then I would queue up more renders to fill the time).

 

[The-real-Vastitas]

If renders or drawn art are not the biggest time consumer in a VISUAL novel or any other game ( except text-base) somethings off for sure...
2nd place is not reserved for story or code but branches...if they are part of your project you know what I mean as code and writing expands exponentially...
audio with all the free contributions out in the field may only be time consuming if you have voice acting within your project or fancy doing it all by yourself.

 

[Yoshiiki]

If renders or drawn art are not the biggest time consumer in a VISUAL novel or any other game ( except text-base) somethings off for sure...
2nd place is not reserved for story or code but branches...if they are part of your project you know what I mean as code and writing expands exponentially...
audio with all the free contributions out in the field may only be time consuming if you have voice acting within your project or fancy doing it all by yourself.

Oh yeah, branching stories can be a bi... tedious work.

 

[adultUser]

For rendering, is it the time to setup the render, or the time to run it?

 

[DarthSeduction]

For rendering, is it the time to setup the render, or the time to run it?

Posing can be a pain in the ass, and if you have to build custom assets or environments it can be a real time drain. My artist spent a week on the beach for our game.

But for most people, renders take time to cook.

 

[adultUser]

I am considering the business aspect of this and what would be the most efficient use of investment.

 

[DarthSeduction]

I am considering the business aspect of this and what would be the most efficient use of investment.

What do you mean there? Like you want to work as a freelancer? A writer can do multiple games with relative ease, so long as they can consistently write and no full time job. Similarly, a programmer has the time to do a few games, assuming they aren't working full time as well. An artist is going to devote the most of their time to the work.

That said, each one is a valuable asset to the team and has what I would consider equal value. The writer, in most cases, will also be the art director, out of necessity. It's much easier to adapt the writing to art that doesn't fit it's needs than to adapt the art to the writing, so the writer comes up with a great artistic scene and the artist renders it as best they can and hopefully it all fits. Sometimes though, you change the wording of the writing to fit the realistic expectations of the art. What I can say for sure, as a writer who has done both, its much easier to write first and change it than it is to write with the handcuffs of the art you're given.

 

[Conviction07]

Creating the scene is by far the most time consuming. And when I say scene, I specifically mean the lighting. It’s been the bane of my existence while making my own game.

 

[CeLezte]

When it comes to large and complex games it's definitely the design (creating game mechanics and systems to support them), planning (see how things fit with the story and game mechanics) and documentation phase. Keeping track of so called "moving parts" that can break your game or introduce bugs if they are abused are the ones that require the most brain power and focus in my opinion.

The actual code writing (implementing systems, testing and bug fixing), doing gfx stuff (drawing, making videos, etc.) is supposed to be straight forward and doesn't need that much work compared to designing and thinking things over.