[casual_games] How many hours does a programmer need...

[Ryan Sumo]

Thanks for the solid advice everyone, I'm sure it'll come in handy.  At this point I'm trying to keep the team size as low as possible in order to keep costs down, and also because I did notice that the more programmers you have working on a project, the harder it is to keep things in synch.  I'll probably go for 3 at most, and then only of necessary.  Thanks again!
   
  Joe Pantuso <jpantuso at traygames.com> wrote:
     
  Crash course in programmer wrangling;
   
  - Accuracy of time estimates is proportional to developer experience.  Even (especially?) highly skilled programmers with only a few years of development work under their belts will see every problem as simpler than it really is and wildly underestimate the time required. 
   
  - Productive time at programming (time spent adding useful code) comes in bursts while in a state sometimes referred to as 'flow'.  From the point of a cold start or starting again after being interrupted for a conversation or something of only a couple minutes, time to flow is 15-45 minutes depending upon the complexity of the problem.  This means that length of blocks of time available and environmental distractions or lack there of can have a dramatic effect on actual productivity without actually affecting the hours spent. 
   
  - As the number of programmers on a project goes up the amount of time spent keeping in synch climbs logarithmically.  This introduces a hard limit on the number of programmers that can work effectively as a unit of 6-10.  I will assume though that you won't be able to muster more than about 3, at that count they shouldn't be getting in each others way enough that they'd be less efficient than 2, but even at that low number it will depend on how well (frequency and quality) they can communicate and how experienced they are working in a team. 
   
  - Many lesser programmers are very proprietary about their code, and when other developers make changes or additions to it they get territorial.  This is a clear sign of a 'B' or 'C' class player but you won't know about it til possibly too late. 
 
  - Your best path to efficiency and knowing how much trouble you are in as early as possible is to use the Sprint/Scrum method of scheduling and working.  I highly recommend you google on those expressions and read up on it.  In a nutshell the programmers agree on a set of functional code that can be produced in 1 calendar month, they talk very briefly each day about their progress the last 24 hours, what they expect to accomplish the next 24 hours, and any obstacles that are in their way.  They also estimate how much of their month goal they have completed and have remaining.  It becomes obvious quickly if people are estimating poorly, and cutting the project into 1-month chunks allows you to change direction rapidly if conditions warrant.  This is a baseline 'agile' coding methodology everyone should be aware of. 
   
  - The level of ability of programmers varies dramatically.  This phenomenon is sometimes described at the high end as 10x programmers, i.e. the most effective programmers are 10 times as effective as everyone else.  Unfortunately this is not only generally true, but the 10x programmers are at least 10x as rare as everyone else. 
   
  For your particular project the prior experience of these programmers will have a dramatic effect on their ability to be productive on this project.  You don't say what these guys do for their day jobs.  If they have no game programming experience, you are in for a rough learning curve. 
 
  Good luck.
   
  -J
 
  On 3/27/06, Ryan Sumo <endlessthirteen at yahoo.com> wrote:     How many hours does a programmer need per week to finish a game with a 
dev time of 6-8 months?
   
  I've been talking to some programmers about a game I want to make and 
been asking them the hours they could spare if they did it on the side.  
I've been getting answers ranging from 4-5 up to 7-10 hours a week.
   
  I was just curious how past developers who worked with people who did 
it on the side fared.  Can I compensate by having more than one 
programmer?  Because as far as I can tell from working with them the more 
programmers on a piece of code, the more muddled up it gets.
   
  Just to give you guys an idea, the game would be about as complex as 
diner dash, or a little more than that.  
 
      
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