How long does it take you?

[Technocrat]

Since I assume that everyone else on the forum is better than me at everything ever when it comes to making things in AGS, I was curious - how long does it usually take you to make things for games?

In my case, I tend to measure things by evenings (roughly three hours), since they're the free time I get from teaching small people. So...

Non-walking character - an evening
A fully-animated four-direction-walking character - about three evenings
A  room- one or two evenings
Objects - half an hour to an hour
A game - the last two that I've finished were, start to end, two months. On the other hand, I've so many games that will never see completion, might as well average it out to "infinity"

How about yourselves, then? Am I rushing things, or about on average?

[Radiant]

An average-length game would take me about a month to make, although with sufficient spare time it could be done in slightly over a week. A full-length game takes approx two years, I'd say.

[Dualnames]

Surprisingly enough I'm way off normal AGS stats:

A room - 1 hour to 2
Full working-character -  a day
A game - usually 6 month for a medium length game and 1 month for short game (and 2.5 years for ..anyway)
Objects - half an hour?

[Wesray]

A room - depending on how big and elaborate it is it can take me from a couple of hours to a few days
Char with walk animations - 1 to 2 evenings
Objects and non-animated chars- about half an hour; though I worked on one screen object for over a week recently (don't ask)
Game - when all is said and done the medium-sized game I'm currently working on will have probably cost me about 18 months of my life.

Yeah, I'm a really slow worker, but then I don't have a lot of time to work with AGS, a few hours a week at best.

[Igor Hardy]

objects - never timed it
Full working-character - forever
A room - eternity
A game - no less than 1 month (but definitely longer if I'm doing everything alone)

Surprisingly enough I'm way off normal AGS stats:

What are the normal AGS stats?

[LimpingFish]

The time I spend procrastinating about possibly starting to formulate an idea for something, is far greater than any time I spend creating things.

Which is why two short games is all I have to show for more than half a dozen years of fiddling with AGS.

And even the units of time devoted to creating the various elements of those two games fluctuate wildly.

[markbilly]

Objects - half an hour.
Full working-character - never finished one in one sitting. Usually spread over months and months.
A room - couple of evenings. Have done one in a day before.
A game - Haven't finished one yet. Although the majority of Wall-E was done in a day then added to over a weekend. If TLG-Part 1 is finished by end of Summer as I hope, that will be 4.5 years! (just shy of 2 years for the current incarnation.)

For all of the categories apart from "a game", I'm considering just art. I really don't time myself as a habit, though...

[Kweepa]

Looks like a great candidate for a google survey!

Your times, Mr Technocrat, coincide almost exactly with mine.
I might take a little longer on a character.
Oh, and except for the games, since my last four were hour games

[xenogia]

For me it's done when I feel it is good enough. So it can anywhere from a few days to a number of weeks until I'm happy.

[(deleted)]

(deleted)

[Technocrat]

When finishing my last one (1st Drop - go on, you know you want to play it again) I found that just when I thought I'd finished the "hard" stuff (art, scripting, etc) the things that took most of the time was the testing and refining - and ultimately, this was what drove me mad enough to say "nuts to this, I'm just going to release it".

I suppose in a sense, I've had a lot more practice at drawing rooms/characters/objects/GUIs for games that never saw completion, but testing is a whole other kettle of fish when only two instances have come anywhere near it. Less opportunity to improve at it.

[Dualnames]

When finishing my last one (1st Drop - go on, you know you want to play it again) I found that just when I thought I'd finished the "hard" stuff (art, scripting, etc) the things that took most of the time was the testing and refining - and ultimately, this was what drove me mad enough to say "nuts to this, I'm just going to release it".

That explains why long term projects take so long. Some of them get stuck on team coordination, others in a constant round of refining and reshaping.

[Matt Frith]

Non-walking character - Sometimes I can draw a few characters a day if I'm the right mood, other times it can be longer.  My Star Trek characters don't take that long though as they are mostly variations on the same template.

A fully-animated four-direction-walking character - Again,  I could probably do a character walk cycle a day if  I got my ass in gear.  My animations are quite generic though so a good walking animation would take me much longer.

A  room- Depending on how complex the room is, it can take me anywhere from a few hours (Star Trek backgrounds) or a couple of days.  Sometimes a background will annoy me enough to spend a week on it!

Objects - I usually rush doing objects whenever I draw them so most of the time they take minutes.  I don't think I could spend more than half an hour on one though.

A game - Well, I've only released one game and it took me around 3 months, but I was pretty much learning AGS from scratch.  I probably could (should?) have spent a little longer having it tested.  The sequel I'm making is currently taking a lot longer, but I think I am putting a little more polish into it.

Like Steve McCrea said, a survey would be neat and they are all the rage at the moment