I mean to write a game - how many people do what?

And I dont mean any of the administration b****cks - just musicians/graphics bods/coders....

And how long does the average game take to write?

In your answer you should include :

*Comparisons between above info for PC games and Acorn games
*Whining that there aren't enough coders
*Whining that everyone is lazy
*Whining about insufficient hardware...

You get the idea

Just interested to know
________
[Steve]
RiscPC SA & Duron 600@850
ICQ: 51028779

Oops typo

I mean to write a game - how many people do what?

And I dont mean any of the administration b****cks - just musicians/graphics bods/coders....

Hey! The administration is a killer job as well you know!

And how long does the average game take to write?

Depends on what type of game it is and how many people are working on it and how long it takes for the coder to get sick of the code. Also depends on working in spare time or full time.

Most Acorn games are done by individuals. VOTI consist of one main coder, one graphics artist and a backup peripheral coder.

The Overcast division consists of one main coder, one graphics artist and musician.

Fednet consisted of two coders and a graphics artist.

Artex are using everyone they can.

lets alter the thread a little now,
How many people does it take to write a 3D engine????

I could write a version of Minesweeper in an afternoon, a version of Tetris in a day....

Depends how good the coders are, how motivated they are, how much experience, and how demotivated they become when people complain that they're lazy.

And of course, how much time they have to take out to do administrative stuff, such as coordinating their graphics artists and musicians, unless of course, they have a talented, dedicated, good-looking administrator to look after that side of it...(well ok, two out of three ain't bad )

How long is a piece of string ?

I just completed Monkey Island 4 and most of the credits consisted of people who might not even have looked at a computer during the project. Wicked game too by the way

Crazy person is likely to get it done quickest, while a team of programmers are likely to do it the politically correct way and make sure it is easily expandable and stuff. They are also likely to enter into such debates as 'C is better than ARM', 'ARM is better than C', 'BASIC is the best assembler', etc. as well as regularly losing and gaining members, not updating websites for months, and finally disappearing wihtout a trace, leaving a very buggy version of the code and no source.

That good enough an answer for you?

Hmmm....
Either 1 crazy programmer or a team of programmers.

Amazing. Did you ever know Rob Templeman? (winks to audience )

Taking the Acorn platform into account would distort the answer to the original question I would imagine.
Artex are probably the most reflective of the PC platform and they consist of several programmers, usicians, administrators and a film crew for example. Ankh listed at least 6 people if I remember correctly.
At least three people are coding TEK.
Another difference is that for many PC games I imagine the development teams work in the same building don't they?
I suspect that even Artex though cannot do this entirely though.

Oops typo

And how long does the average game take to write?

18 months for a full PC team. This is JUST the game and not the engine. The engine probably took 18 months to write and was written by an outside team and then licensed in.

Note this is for a "normal" PC game where the publisher puts pressure on the developer to finish within the given time frame. For comparisons for a "proper" game look at how long Zelda on N64 took to appear.....

Judging from interviews BHP took TBA about 100 days to write. Note the engine already existed and, as good as it was / is for a RISC OS game, it doesn't compare to PC games.

RISC OS coders aren't lazy (well not all of them). We just have more important things to attend to.