How much would it cost for help with my game?

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mont266

Guest
Hi!
Please note: This is not a hiring post, this is just a curious question :)

Over the last month, I've been working on an RPG in my spare time. I didn't intend on really going anywhere with it but it's starting to take shape and I am beginning to really enjoy seeing it develop.

I've spent the better part of a day working on lighting and implementing an inventory into the game but to be able to make something that works properly is beyond my current skill set. I am a student and can't afford to hire someone to properly work on this with me.

So I'm writing this to see if anyone can give me a rough estimate of how much it would cost to get someone with the right skillset to implement lighting and an inventory system into my game?
 
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Sabrina Stoakes

Guest
Really depends on the programmer honestly. I've seen some charge $15 an hour, some $10 an hour, and I've even seen some that just straight up do it because they want to help (although rare, and they're probably hoping you'll give them a nice tip.)

I don't want to knock any of the many talented programmers here because their skills are infallible, but I'm sure most of them here would agree that learning how to do these things yourself is worth far more than just letting someone else do it. I think good ole @matharoo does tutoring, or probably knows someone who does. I really think learning it yourself would be the best bet especially since you mentioned that you have limited funds. I have been working on my game pretty much by myself these past 2 months and I have spent only about $120 on it total.
 
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mont266

Guest
Really depends on the programmer honestly. I've seen some charge $15 an hour, some $10 an hour, and I've even seen some that just straight up do it because they want to help (although rare, and they're probably hoping you'll give them a nice tip.)

I don't want to knock any of the many talented programmers here because their skills are infallible, but I'm sure most of them here would agree that learning how to do these things yourself is worth far more than just letting someone else do it. I think good ole @matharoo does tutoring, or probably knows someone who does. I really think learning it yourself would be the best bet especially since you mentioned that you have limited funds. I have been working on my game pretty much by myself these past 2 months and I have spent only about $120 on it total.
Would you reckon inventory and lighting would take long to implement?

I love learning by reading source codes and seeing how other people develop things, I might look into tutoring tho. I'd love to have a partner to work with and work a deal that if it finished we would split the funds but I could never guarantee it would get finished, especially at this stage haha
 
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Sabrina Stoakes

Guest
Would you reckon inventory and lighting would take long to implement?

I love learning by reading source codes and seeing how other people develop things, I might look into tutoring tho. I'd love to have a partner to work with and work a deal that if it finished we would split the funds but I could never guarantee it would get finished, especially at this stage haha
Inventory system is definitely within reason. Not sure exactly how vast you wanna go with your inventory. A system like Disgaea's would be a considerable amount of work, then you have the complete other end of the spectrum where it's just you keeping track of a global variable.
 

Rob

Member
Would you reckon inventory and lighting would take long to implement?

I love learning by reading source codes and seeing how other people develop things, I might look into tutoring tho. I'd love to have a partner to work with and work a deal that if it finished we would split the funds but I could never guarantee it would get finished, especially at this stage haha
There are a plethora of inventory systems on YT (I just uploaded one myself in preparation for a Shop tutorial) and I don't feel like a basic inventory system is too challenging. You may well feel like it is but if you spend some time working with arrays then that's most of what you need to know for a decent system.

For anyone who's experienced with inventory systems, getting the basics down wouldn't take long but it does depend on what you had in mind for it exactly, like @Sabrina Stoakes says.

The same applies to lighting, but this is one area that I'm pretty inexperienced in, honestly. In my RPG all I have is a kind of "shadows" system that works like a fog of war for cave areas.

If you can't afford to pay somebody to do it (and there's nobody to do it for free/trade) then your best resource is your time! Use it to become a better coder and you'll enjoy making your game even more.
 

matharoo

manualman
GameMaker Dev.
So I'm writing this to see if anyone can give me a rough estimate of how much it would cost to get someone with the right skillset to implement lighting and an inventory system into my game?
Depends man, if you're lucky you can find freelancers in the $10-$20 per hour range but many may charge even more. And depending on how much there is to do for the lighting and inventory systems, and the experience level of the freelancer, it can take anywhere between 3 to 10 hours to implement properly.
 

JeffJ

Member
Another option is to check the marketplace. It's got several readily available assets for both your needs - inventory and lighting - and much, much more. They won't be custom, and you may have to do a bit of tweaking to them, but they will most likely be cheaper than getting it custom made yourself. This will also give you a great opportunity to study said code, especially if you need to understand it in order to make it suit your needs.

Even now, with around 15 years of GameMaker experience, I frequently purchase assets made by far greater coders than I, because it's good, it's cheap, and it saves a lot of time. I pretty much never use it "as is", though, because I always have some weird requirement for my custom needs, but adapting them is half the fun.

Lastly, as a general tip for getting more specific quotes: any programmer worth his salt will not even try to give you a price until he's got a much better grasp of the task. You say "inventory system", but that's a bit like just saying "I need a system for my game". There are about as many different inventory systems out there as there are developers. Think about how exactly you want it to work, what it needs to do, and then break it down to the freelancer, because he then starts breaking it down into all the small tasks it involves, which then gives him a better idea of the time, and hence price, involved. As someone who's been asked to do hired work before in this regard, please, be very specific. It saves both of you a lot of time, headache and money.
 

chance

predictably random
Forum Staff
Moderator
Moving this here to the Game Design forum.

Discussions about teaming strategies, contracting, asset purchases, etc. in the process of game creation are better discussed here.
 
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mont266

Guest
Thanks everyone for your advice! I am going to give the inventory another go tonight and see what I can come up with. From what i've read it seems the best way to go about a decent inventory system is by using DS lists. As for the lighting, I was up all night last night and can't get anything to work the way I want it to :'( but I am sure I will have another shot at it after i've nailed down the inventory.

Thanks again! Can't stress how much I appreciate your words
 

curato

Member
Before you get too crazy spending money, you may want to check the marketplace and see if someone has already put up something like the features you are interested in. If not, I strongly suggest making a detailed design document with as much detail as possible how you want things before you engage with any programmers. Programmers don't tend to like dangling details open to interpretation.
 
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NoobDev

Guest
It isn't really what you asked, but if you want to learn how to implement game systems yourself then Youtube has a ton of Game Maker tutorials. Since I am a new user I don't think the forums will let me post links, but I have learned a frick-ton about Game Maker from "FriendlyCosmonaut"'s tutorials. There are others doing gods work on YT as well producing quality tutorials. FriendlyCosmonaut has a tutorial developing an RPG that covers a lot of topics.
 
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