Re: [FT] [OT?] Has anyone considered...

agoodall@canada.com wrote:

> On Wed, 06 September 2000, "Barclay, Tom" wrote:
>
> > In short, other than time and money, there isn't any good reason we
can't do
> > 3D FT. Of course, time and money are both often good reasons...
*grin*
>
> To do a professional level real time computer game from the ground up
would take in the order of 100,000 person hours, including artists,
musicians, and of course coding and testing.

Yes, they're not cheap - budget at least half-a-million pounds !

> Even if it was turn based, limited to 2D, and an exact duplicate of
the miniatures game, you're still talking between 5000 and 30,000 people
hours.
>

Are you talking about a professional, finished, polished, boxed product
? Or more of a shareware (more likely freeware) style thing ? If the
former then I think you're still underestimating. If the latter then I
think you are a bit over. 5000 man-hours represents roughly
two-and-a-half years of my time and I reckon I could get a basic,
turn-based, 2D version of FT up and running within a couple of months.
If I had the time. Which, sadly, I don't :-(

>
> That's a big investment for what's essentially a niche product. I'm
not sure how much time it would take using another engine, perhaps 25%
of the original estimate? More? Less? Not sure, but it's substantial.

The core engine for my current project (Halcyon Sun) represents roughly
50% of the programming time of the project.

Tony