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Author Topic: How many rooms?  (Read 6905 times)

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DaFool

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How many rooms?
« on: May 11, 2009, 01:46:48 PM »

Hi all,

I'm just a hobbyist and new to adventure gaming, so I'm not sure if this question's been answered before, I tried searching but only retrieved vague answers.  It would be nice if some veterans would be able to gauge the amount of effort required and provide a specific answer.

I'm planning to take about 6 months - 1 year creating an adventure game all by myself - composing all the music, doing all the scripting, and creating all the graphics.  I'm really tempted to go 2.5D but I figured having to touch up the renders would become a chore enough, so I couldn't even begin to think about exporting for the .x format.

I want to be able to sell the game for $8-12, so it has to be relatively short (3-4 hours), so I can concentrate on quality.

The question is how many rooms would a game in this range have?  Right now I have 16 rooms all mapped out but there will be back-and-forth and I read that having to pass through a scene many times is a big no-no.  Then again I have more experience with rpgs so I think of the rooms as town locations so there wouldn't necessarily have to be a puzzle to unlock each one, only in the 'dungeon' (puzzle-solving) locations.  I plan to execute everything simply through various ways of inventory manipulation, so a big portion of my game design involves special objects - one-time use, reusable, etc. in various combinations.

It seems there are quite a number of industry professionals here so this forum's pretty quiet since everyone else besides myself seems to know what they're doing.  Thank you for your time ^_^.
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Shagma

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Re: How many rooms?
« Reply #1 on: May 11, 2009, 04:54:02 PM »

Hi there. Well I'm in a similar situation. I'm not a profesional although I'm making a game for this years university proyect. I'm in production right now, the script is done and so is a storyboard. After making these two things I looked at the storyboard and estimated about 2-3 hours (is the first chapter of a game), but of course I will not know that until is played. I don't think rooms make the difference at all, you can have 40 rooms and go by them in half an hour. At least in my game, dialogues and puzlzes are what really extend the time (I have plenty of dialogue). And also there's the individual pace of each player. If you want my advice, try to think about making each part of the game an entretaining and powerful one, and do that until you can in your time. If in the end you have to make a few changes to be able to finish your game, then do it, but don't sacrifice art and gameplay quality thinking in extension. In my opinion is better to have little but great than lots but mediocre, so if you are a hobbiest and this is not your way of making money, then take all the time you need to find perfect each part of the game you have done. Still, in general, I think 16 rooms (16 rooms of doing something else than walking by) can fill about 3 hours... even if you don't have to go back so much. IT is always nice though to have a few rooms that are just for ambientation, and siometimes you can go back a lot to a room but make changes to it (it's darker, empty for some reason, whatever fits the story that can help not going through the same exact room that much).
Well I don't know if I helped in any way XD
good luck on your proyect.
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Akusa

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Re: How many rooms?
« Reply #2 on: May 11, 2009, 06:30:40 PM »

How long does it take for you to do one screen DaFool?
I have a simillar RPG hobbyist background so i tend to do many screens with less or no interaction just for the mood with the side effect that i lose time.
If you do not plan a special release date, i would say plan how many rooms you need and then look how long it takes to do one screen. My aim is to create at least 1 room per week. My main problem is just that NPCs take 2 weeks to complete and in my RPG experience, i want many NPCs so i try to figure out how to reduce the time i need without reducing the NPC ammount.

Also a little advice: use placeholders for your game. Just sketch out the sceens in your 3d modeller of your choice (or draw some outlines if you use hand drawn backgrounds) and look how much rooms you really need. This way you dont loose 10 hours of work just because you decided not to include this one room.
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DaFool

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Re: How many rooms?
« Reply #3 on: May 12, 2009, 02:02:23 AM »

Thanks for the advices.

Yes I do plan to have multiple states of each room (destructible I might add).  For something completely handdrawn it takes me about 8-12 hours to make a background.  If I push it I can make 2 per weekend.  6 months is 26 weeks so that should be plenty time left for actual programming and other graphics (let's not forget the sprites!)

I would love to do placeholders but I plan to build the entire playset in one big model then go around with a camera taking angled shots... technically I can add more rooms if necessary if they lead to better transitions between scenes.  And should I tweak the model extensively I'll need to retake the camera shots and redefine the paths again.
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Akusa

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Re: How many rooms?
« Reply #4 on: May 12, 2009, 05:19:52 PM »

well then you can still use placeholders.

Valve for example uses 3 stages with multiple iterations:
  • gameplay stage - Here they just use simple shades and the now famous "orange"-textures for only the most basic gameplay. No special props, background houses are simple blocks etc.
  • basic art stage - now they start to include textures and start to work out the overall art. Houses start to get textures, roofs become more then triangles etc.
  • final stage - now all the small details start to come in, barrels, destroyed bricks etc. Also now the lighting and mood is defined and finished
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Spellbreaker

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Re: How many rooms?
« Reply #5 on: May 12, 2009, 07:12:58 PM »

Sam and Max Season 1 sold very well, and each episode had very few rooms, so I guess it does not depend on the number of rooms, but it depends on creativity...I mean, it's things like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L2Gve7oh_4

which makes that specific game so enjoyable. Or think of Games like White Chamber, which was a hit-game. It was free, but if they would have sold it for 15$ many people would have bought it, because it was so special.

So if you are very creative, even a Game with few scenes can sell well.

Greetings,

Nico
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