Having given up the believ in ever finding a programmer who actually does the work, I am thinking of hiring someone for money.
I don't need one exactly now, as I still have to finish listing all the things I would ask to be programed, but it won't be long that I will need someone.
As I am not really in the position to pay a lot, and before I go and search for someone, I would like to know a few things, that I hope one or the other of you can clear up for me.
So here is my questions:
- How much money would someone want (someone having the fun and the
ability to put my given ideas into code) for each hour of programming?
- Would it be better to pay for each piece of code?
- How do you define how much which piece of code is worth?
To make it clearer what kind of code it would be:
There won't be any things that are not common in a game.
Mainly switches, doors, level changes etc. (Adventure stylish)
Any hints and ideas?
How much money for programing?
I dont think you're going to get an answer on that one, the scope is too great.
Programmers (at least around here), do what they do because it's a passion, and have no constraints on creativity, buget, time, scope, anything really, and can produce quite amazing stuff as a result of it.
At current market rates, your request could run into many tens of thousands of pounds(sterling).
People could take on your work at a much reduced rate, although may prove un-reliable.
Now, I think you're comming from the wrong angle here, and it's only my opinion, but....
Judging from your website, you're either a good artist, or level designer. And in my book, a good artist/level designer >= a good programmer.
If you pitch it correctly, you should not only be able to team up with an appropriate candidate, but make he/she eat out of your hand and jump through hoops (on fire!).
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Michigan Marijuana Dispensaries
Programmers (at least around here), do what they do because it's a passion, and have no constraints on creativity, buget, time, scope, anything really, and can produce quite amazing stuff as a result of it.
At current market rates, your request could run into many tens of thousands of pounds(sterling).
People could take on your work at a much reduced rate, although may prove un-reliable.
Now, I think you're comming from the wrong angle here, and it's only my opinion, but....
Judging from your website, you're either a good artist, or level designer. And in my book, a good artist/level designer >= a good programmer.
If you pitch it correctly, you should not only be able to team up with an appropriate candidate, but make he/she eat out of your hand and jump through hoops (on fire!).
________
Michigan Marijuana Dispensaries
Last edited by area51 on Tue Feb 22, 2011 1:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I'm not going to get into a pissing contest with you eXodus.
What I mean is, he dosn't have to pay for a programmer as his skill is a commodity equal to that of a programmer. And can be traded accordingly.
You can't make a decent game nowadays without the help of an Artist, regardless of who programmed the tools he uses.
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SUZUKI GSX250FX
What I mean is, he dosn't have to pay for a programmer as his skill is a commodity equal to that of a programmer. And can be traded accordingly.
You can't make a decent game nowadays without the help of an Artist, regardless of who programmed the tools he uses.
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SUZUKI GSX250FX
Last edited by area51 on Tue Feb 22, 2011 1:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
and SmOrliwiz has an advantage. Demand for artists exceeds supply around here, since this is largely a programmer's forum.
You do a lot of programming? Really? I try to get some in, but the debugging keeps me pretty busy.
Crucible of Stars
Crucible of Stars
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Guest
The bottom line is: what is it worth to you? If you're doing this to make money, then by all means, pay someone for it.
But it's not going to be easy to find someone.
First of all, it depends on the skills the person has.
It's about 3D programming, and not everybody "gets" 3D.
Also, when you pay somebody to do some work, you're going to spend a lot more money if they first have to learn the APIs involved.
So using a prebuilt engine (at least a 3D engine) that the person knows about, regardless of whether that is Ogre, Irrlicht or SomethingElse3D(tm), is going to make an enormous difference.
I think you're in the right place to look for a coder with the right skills, but money is probably not the right incentive.
To give you an estimate:
Being a programmer in RL myself, I make just over 100 euros (after tax) per day, and I'm from a relatively cheap firstworld country, and I'm not among the highly-paid around here.
That money pays the bills, so if someone like me were to work on a project during office hours, that would require some 15 to 16 euros per hour to compensate. (Probably a lot more if the person does not have the security of a day job).
Obviously, for a country such as India, where the cost of living is a lot lower, (and likewise the going rate is much lower) that figure would be a lot lower.
For someone from the US, it might be twice as high.
Outside office hours, it would be for fun. Because it would have to be. Programming is an activity that requires concentrating for long periods, and that is not always easy after a long day of work.
Money most likely can't fix that. Only a fun project can.
Daytime compensation might be a bit different for an "amateur" (note the quotation marks, I don't mean to imply anything about the quality of one's work).
But again, for the amateur the primary attraction is probably also going to be to have a fun project.
So my suggestion is: make a good "sales pitch" of your project, show off some of your artwork to convince potential teammembers that you are a hard worker yourself, and capable of creating quality work, and make your game concept crystal-clear.
(PS: I'm not available, since I'm working on something already, when I'm not procrastinating...)
But it's not going to be easy to find someone.
First of all, it depends on the skills the person has.
It's about 3D programming, and not everybody "gets" 3D.
Also, when you pay somebody to do some work, you're going to spend a lot more money if they first have to learn the APIs involved.
So using a prebuilt engine (at least a 3D engine) that the person knows about, regardless of whether that is Ogre, Irrlicht or SomethingElse3D(tm), is going to make an enormous difference.
I think you're in the right place to look for a coder with the right skills, but money is probably not the right incentive.
To give you an estimate:
Being a programmer in RL myself, I make just over 100 euros (after tax) per day, and I'm from a relatively cheap firstworld country, and I'm not among the highly-paid around here.
That money pays the bills, so if someone like me were to work on a project during office hours, that would require some 15 to 16 euros per hour to compensate. (Probably a lot more if the person does not have the security of a day job).
Obviously, for a country such as India, where the cost of living is a lot lower, (and likewise the going rate is much lower) that figure would be a lot lower.
For someone from the US, it might be twice as high.
Outside office hours, it would be for fun. Because it would have to be. Programming is an activity that requires concentrating for long periods, and that is not always easy after a long day of work.
Money most likely can't fix that. Only a fun project can.
Daytime compensation might be a bit different for an "amateur" (note the quotation marks, I don't mean to imply anything about the quality of one's work).
But again, for the amateur the primary attraction is probably also going to be to have a fun project.
So my suggestion is: make a good "sales pitch" of your project, show off some of your artwork to convince potential teammembers that you are a hard worker yourself, and capable of creating quality work, and make your game concept crystal-clear.
(PS: I'm not available, since I'm working on something already, when I'm not procrastinating...)
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Guest
Oh, and w.r.t. the artist >= programmer stuff: that's kind of correct.
Lots of people can do decent stuff with APIs such as Irrlicht, but not a lot of people are talented 2D/3D artists.
Yes, great coders are rare, but as much as we programmers really make the world go round, most of a game's attraction is the pretty graphics and other content.
Not that the code doesn't matter, but the average gamer notice the difference between decent and good code, but does see and hear the artwork all the time, so that has to be good. (Of course according to the user, everything will be a bug, but that's the software business for you)
When you get your team together, one of the challenges will be to keep team members communicating and civil. (Speaking out of experience having been involved in an UnrealTournament mod for about a year and a half).
The coder, as far as he is responsible for getting artwork to "work" in 3D (e.g. playing the right animation etc), will be frustrated by the artists urge to refine and refine, and screw up the "glue code" the coder has already done in the process.
Everybody is going to be frustrated because the coder doesn't seem to do anything, and everybody is going to be frustrated if their input seems to be ignored.
Also, for communicating with coders, it's a good idea to keep topics simple and separate. In that mod I was in, the main artist would write huge e-mails, often with unrelated points, and that made simply replying to them a lot of work.
Bug tracking software is great for keeping that sort of communication organised.
Lots of people can do decent stuff with APIs such as Irrlicht, but not a lot of people are talented 2D/3D artists.
Yes, great coders are rare, but as much as we programmers really make the world go round, most of a game's attraction is the pretty graphics and other content.
Not that the code doesn't matter, but the average gamer notice the difference between decent and good code, but does see and hear the artwork all the time, so that has to be good. (Of course according to the user, everything will be a bug, but that's the software business for you)
When you get your team together, one of the challenges will be to keep team members communicating and civil. (Speaking out of experience having been involved in an UnrealTournament mod for about a year and a half).
The coder, as far as he is responsible for getting artwork to "work" in 3D (e.g. playing the right animation etc), will be frustrated by the artists urge to refine and refine, and screw up the "glue code" the coder has already done in the process.
Everybody is going to be frustrated because the coder doesn't seem to do anything, and everybody is going to be frustrated if their input seems to be ignored.
Also, for communicating with coders, it's a good idea to keep topics simple and separate. In that mod I was in, the main artist would write huge e-mails, often with unrelated points, and that made simply replying to them a lot of work.
Bug tracking software is great for keeping that sort of communication organised.
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Guest
SmOrliwiz:
To answer your question-- when you hire a freelance programmer, you need to set forth milestones. You pay him at each milestone, assuming he completes each one. You may put something into your contract as a bonus for early completion, or a penalty for late completion. You should definately put something into your contract stating you OWN the code that he produces, so that if you have to go with another programmer later, he can run off of the same code base. Unfortunately that doesnt mean that the code will be clean or good enough for another programmer to use, but its the best you can do.
As for how much: how much is it worth to you, how much can you afford and how much will it take to convince someone to work for you. If you can find a kid in college, you might be able to get away with $15/hr or even $10/hr (or bundle that much money into milestone format). For a proffesional programmer, I'd charge you something more like $30/hr (which is on the cheap because I like game programming, but thats how much my free time is worth).
As for deciding milestones, you have to deliberate with your programmer as to what they are, because the first few will actually take a huge ammount of coding and setup for something you think is simple (like, have a character in a 3d scene).
To answer your question-- when you hire a freelance programmer, you need to set forth milestones. You pay him at each milestone, assuming he completes each one. You may put something into your contract as a bonus for early completion, or a penalty for late completion. You should definately put something into your contract stating you OWN the code that he produces, so that if you have to go with another programmer later, he can run off of the same code base. Unfortunately that doesnt mean that the code will be clean or good enough for another programmer to use, but its the best you can do.
As for how much: how much is it worth to you, how much can you afford and how much will it take to convince someone to work for you. If you can find a kid in college, you might be able to get away with $15/hr or even $10/hr (or bundle that much money into milestone format). For a proffesional programmer, I'd charge you something more like $30/hr (which is on the cheap because I like game programming, but thats how much my free time is worth).
As for deciding milestones, you have to deliberate with your programmer as to what they are, because the first few will actually take a huge ammount of coding and setup for something you think is simple (like, have a character in a 3d scene).
a screen cap is worth 0x100000 DWORDS
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AssiDragon
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While you might be right, I hate this way of thinking. It's an easy excuse to make programs (especially games) as bad as they are now - "hey, who the hell cares it's full of bugs, we can patch it anyway. Who needs optimizations either... buy more RAM or a better CPUAnonymous wrote:Not that the code doesn't matter, but the average gamer notice the difference between decent and good code
The users don't really care about these stuff anyway."Staring through eyes of hate we kill
Are we controlled, or is our own will...?
(Edguy)
Are we controlled, or is our own will...?
(Edguy)
AssiDragon is right.
I might add that it specially bothers me when a rig like this one:
P4 2.8ghz with 768 MB RAM and an ASUS V9950 (GeForce 5950 Ultra 256)
scores a low quality settings. Yes I'm talking about Battlefield 2.
Battlefield reminds me a Penny Arcade comic strip where EA naming strategy is laughed at
I might add that it specially bothers me when a rig like this one:
P4 2.8ghz with 768 MB RAM and an ASUS V9950 (GeForce 5950 Ultra 256)
scores a low quality settings. Yes I'm talking about Battlefield 2.
Battlefield reminds me a Penny Arcade comic strip where EA naming strategy is laughed at
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Guest
Hey, it's not like I disagree with you, I'm on the same team.
But the reality is that great code doesn't sell. Eye candy does sell.
We know it's great code, but the average user couldn't care less.
He/she does hate it when you write bad code.
High system specs are a requirement when you want to do something with a lot of eye candy. You can make a beatiful game with great graphics, but if your user has already played Doom3 or Halo2, he's not going to be impressed. So you're going to aim high.
And id has been pushing people to higher system specs ever since Quake.
Unfortunately it's a gaming fact of life.
I wonder if BF2 would classify GF6800 as high quality though. It's a top of the line consumer card. (In fact, I still have a GF5200 - stop laughing already!)
Mind you, with the current 2 to 3 years of development cycle for games, I have to wonder why the code often is as buggy as it is. Let's say you write an engine from scratch. That shouldn't take more than about a year. Probably less, if you can work on it fulltime.
Which still leaves you with 1 or 2 years to test and iron out any imperfections. So maybe the programmers don't tend to be assigned to the same game for 3 years?
But the reality is that great code doesn't sell. Eye candy does sell.
We know it's great code, but the average user couldn't care less.
He/she does hate it when you write bad code.
High system specs are a requirement when you want to do something with a lot of eye candy. You can make a beatiful game with great graphics, but if your user has already played Doom3 or Halo2, he's not going to be impressed. So you're going to aim high.
And id has been pushing people to higher system specs ever since Quake.
Unfortunately it's a gaming fact of life.
I wonder if BF2 would classify GF6800 as high quality though. It's a top of the line consumer card. (In fact, I still have a GF5200 - stop laughing already!)
Mind you, with the current 2 to 3 years of development cycle for games, I have to wonder why the code often is as buggy as it is. Let's say you write an engine from scratch. That shouldn't take more than about a year. Probably less, if you can work on it fulltime.
Which still leaves you with 1 or 2 years to test and iron out any imperfections. So maybe the programmers don't tend to be assigned to the same game for 3 years?
Originally posted by area51:
I'm not going to get into a pissing contest with you eXodus.
lol that was lost in translation I think, should have put it in italics.Expressing my opinion isn't a way to piss you off.
It's nothing to do with being pissed off at all. What I meant by a pissing contest is like, when you were kids, didnt you ever have competitions to see who could piss up a wall the highest? Trying to out do each other.
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Montana dispensaries
Last edited by area51 on Tue Feb 22, 2011 1:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.