How Long You Think? And...

Hey guys, I'm in the middle of creating a game inspired by Zelda from the NES.

I'm just curious, (just because i'm curious), how long would it take you (If you truly wanted) and was (legally) allowed too, would it take you to re-create it literally pixel by pixel, action by action?

No my game isn't Zelda, just inspired by Zelda.

The reason I'm asking is well first of all I'm just curious how long it might would take you to do just that - re-create Zelda NES. And, I've noticed, you don't really see many 8-bit RPG's (or games in general), in fact the majority of pixel art games are nearly always 16 bit, why is it 8 bit is never really used? I find 8 bit is beautiful if you use the proper color pallet.

I find the few 8 bit games out there, fail for the most obvious reasons, they don't stick to the proper color pallet, sprite sizes of (8x8, 8x16, etc). They end up trying to get way to much detail, such as surpassing the 3 color limit per sprite, etc. I think this is why 8 bit games shined in my opinion, despite the limitations, them limitations is what made them unique in my opinion.

 

Exact clone should be fairly fast, but if you're making a zelda-inspired game, you could easily waste a few years polishing it.

8 bit, IMO is associated with NES color palette which was quite limited.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_game_console_palettes#NES

It is not EGA palette, but close to it.

"16bit" games actually sometimes had small number of colors on screen (60+ for sega, 512 for snes), but ability to customize the palette gave them distinct "16 bit" look.

Because of restrcited palette and low resolution, colors were... rough, and NES palette is more of an acquired taste.

Spoiler

So, basically, the reason is similar to why EGA graphics are not popular.

 

@neginfinity : Yeah I was thinking a clone would be fast, because it's (today) at least, not anything very hard. Figured if you already had all the art, etc. It would probably take tops 2 weeks if you took your time.

Yeah I'm using the NES Pallet for my game actually, it's frustrating at times because of the limits haha.. But I find it a challenge to use the same limits they used, I mean I plan on adding some modern touches to it (not graphically), well - maybe animated water pixels an such, but you get what I mean, just modernizing some mechanics and features to make it at least unique.

But it's crazy how limiting the pallet is, I don't think it fits for every game, something like in the Image - it looks rather kinda ugly - not bad, but ugly lol. is that Contra? Looks like the Contra Item pickups.

But I loved NES Zelda, I think it was a fairly beautiful game for it's time.

 

Regarding palette:

Nes palette:

Spoiler

64 color palette:

Spoiler

1st image is nes image quality, 2nd one is "16bit system" quality.

Basically, you can make pretty much anything with 64 colors per scene, however, you need to be able to customize the palette. and NES didn't give you a way to customize. That's why it is less popular today.

 

Oh yeah I know, I'm just trying to stick with the NES Pallet, it may not look as beautiful as the other, it's just what I want to use... Sorta as a challenge to my self, it's all in good fun... People will either like the game or they won't...

It is a top-down RPG, and I'm noticing the colors actually blend really well in this sort of game-play.
I'm been trying to understand though, even in Zelda - why are shadows done with a dark blue and not black? why wasn't there different shades of black? It was either solid black or no black at all.

 

There were shades of black. Two of them

Look up conversion from RGB to Luminance.

Luma can be calculated as one of the following (source):

0.2126*R + 0.7152*G + 0.0722*B
0.299*R + 0.587*G + 0.114*B
0.299*R^2 + 0.587*G^2 + 0.114*B^2

Regardless of the method chosen, blue has lower luminance than gray of the same level (say 0x000040 vs 0x404040), and sufficiently dark blue color will pass for black color easily.

Also, take a look at this if you haven't seen it already:
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1023586/8-Bit-8-Bitish-Graphics

 

In regards to shadows being blue here is 2 links that explain it:

http://thevirtualinstructor.com/color-theory-for-highlights-shadows.html
https://www.thoughtco.com/how-to-paint-convincing-shadows-2578798

 

Interesting find

 

I don't know about NES, the color palette was not the only limiting factor. On C64 in example if you used multicolor bitmap mode you dropped the resolution to 160x200 and could use 4 of it's 16 colors in each 2x1 pixel block (one of the 4 colors shared across the screen). With some tricks you could enhance resolution and ease color restrictions and interlace / overlay with sprites. Amazing things came out of this....still only 16 colors + many more restrictions.

In particular game GFX can work well...photos...more difficult.

 

If a person had all of the graphics provided yes that would certainly knock some work off the scope. I think 2 weeks is very aggressive and not realistic for most people but of course it all depends on the number of hours in those 2 weeks.

I think a lot of people probably do what I used to do up til several years ago... spend most of their free time on this stuff. So 2 weeks may represent 120 hours.

I think last year when I was spending 10 to 12 hours per week creating LoZ I'd estimate 4 to 6 weeks. Now probably 10 to 12 weeks. I think there's always more work, more mechanics, etc than people realize at first glance. Just designing the world as a tile map, doing enemy, special object placement, enemy spawning, player control and attack including the long range attack when at full health dropping to a melee attack when injured, enemy movement, attack and death... that yeah probably 2 to 3 weeks.

 

I wouldn't recreate Zelda, even if I set out to do so. I'd end up wanting to create a game inspired by A Link to the Past, but that game is large for one person to complete in a reasonable time frame, so I'd focus on 1/4 of that game and hope I could finish it in about 8-10 months - if I could work full time. This is only a wild rough estimate since I've never been able to work full-time on game development, so I really don't know.
Now if some of the features in A Link to the Past could be done in the 8 bit limitations of the NES era, that would be a pretty cool game imo.

@GarBenjamin has some info on this. I see a ton of 8 bit games being developed on twitter, although I don't follow close enough to see if they are adhering to nes era guidelines, imo it really doesn't matter, as long as the game is interesting.

 

Unless the creator has a death wish and want to gloriously die of heart attack after 2 weeks of no sleep, 2 weeks aren't happening.

I actually haven't played original zelda, but I recall it was a fairly big game with a lot of puzzles and wandering around. I'd allocate at least two months for it, and then it is possible that the scope would explode beyond original bounds.

Take a look at axiom verge, for example. It started of as metroid clone, and took ... 5 years I believe. It is not a good idea to take pixel art games lightly.

 

I agree that's what I am saying 2 weeks I don't think that is realistic. The 2 weeks is what @N1warhead mentioned above. But again it all depends on how much a person is immersed into the development. If they are spending 60 to 70 hours per week on it and really in the zone sure they could possibly do it.

It depends on many things... a huge one being is this the person's first time making a 2D game and using tile maps? Or is it their 100th time? Huge difference there. Is it the first time someone is making a 2D LoZ style rpg or is it their 10th time? Again huge difference there.

I often check out games made in game jams because I consider those to be the scope of game I can target. And there are some very good games made in very short periods of time. Of course, this shouldn't be seen as well that game is ultra easy to make but instead that developer is damn good (at least at making that particular type of game).

Two that might be of interest came out of the LowRezJam. I found this jam particularly interesting because of the way it scaled down the visuals from the start to a 64x64 screen. Entire game screen 64x64 pixels.

Legend of Xenia

Legend of Dad <-- Dev details
Play Legend of Dad.

These kind of game projects represent the ideal for a solo dev IMO as far as illustrating how to scale back in certain areas to focus on the more important areas. Meaning if a person is spending less time on any one piece of content they can create more content and/or focus on implementing better more interesting mechanics.

 

Jams are not a good examples, because they do not represent finished product. Total devleopment time would be at least 10 or 20 times longer. Meaning 20 or 40 days for 2 day jam. There's still stuff to polish/fix left, and if you're planning a release and not a jam, it'll be necessary to clean it up.

Basically... pixel art style will allow to cut off some work from art side of things, but the other stuff will be still here, waiting for you.

 

Well everyone has their own view on it. To me this is exactly why they represent the correct target. Because whatever comes out of the jam is still not entirely completed. Some much closer than others of course. But as far as representing the scope to shoot for I think they are very accurate.

 

I do not know LoZ well enough to give a really accurate estimate, but if I understand you correctly you are asking for a like for like final release product, with the benefit of having all artwork done at the beginning.

I guess the only meaningful measure would be normal gross work hours (including and accounting for mistakes and redo, research, etc time) that you could convert back in the time you have for this per week. I also assume it is only for one platform / resolution / etc. Of course it also makes a difference if you use pre made tools for tilemaps, etc...and if you know the original.

My estimate is 500 hours (approx 3 months a 40 hours per week) for a like for like release version, starting with only the gfx, no 3rd party assets and no knowledge of the original (I.e retype all dialogs, or extract and import., redo all quests, Etc)

Again, this could be terribly wrong as I don't know the original well, but I think that in example the approx. 60 hours estimated by @GarBenjamin are unrealistic (or if @GarBenjamin can do this, I don't get his point on looking for efficient game dev environments as they clearly would not be the bottleneck - you should make games then!!!)

 

With all graphics already done and provided (and I am thinking arranged in a very easy to use format as in already in sheets and I don't need to waste time messing around lining things up, making sure the border is around each image to prevent artifacts in rendering and so forth. All of the crap that takes up precious time)... with that in mind and keep in mind I am not thinking of composing music and using something like bfxr to quickly produce the sound fx... yes I think 60 hours is reasonable.

The reason why I don't consider that efficient is because in 60 hours... man that is a lot of time. I think the rest of you simply view time differently than I do. 60 hours I could walk 300 miles easily. I could mow my lawn and do the weedeating many times. 60 hours of dedicated training just 1 hour per day... at the end of 60 days a person can make a very noticeable improvement for fitness.

So maybe I shouldn't but I view time in regards to all of the other things that can be done in that amount of time.

 

I don't know what to say...60 hours is great, I would bank on this if I were you.

The time view...well to put things in perspective, you are talking about 7-8 work days. Many people play 60 hours in just a few days. If you want to build a good game that others enjoy, their play time should greatly exceed your development time - you would just need 6 people playing 10 hours Zelda clone (10 h is realistic for its depth) to break even and 750 people to buy it for 5usd to earn 10,000 per month equivalent

I think it is not to the point to compare what could be done in 60 hours, this is just a personal preference on how to spend free time (gym, recycling, social work, sport, cleaning cars, you name it, many might have more tangible results in an hour for hour comparison).

You are talking about modding or you are dreaming. If you can write a good game development document in 10 hours, outsource the rest, done. You have many many years of game dev under your belt, what is your best product so far and how long did it take, why?


Ps: Sorry if this comes across harsh, I don't mean it. But I don't get your reference point (is it the how to get a baby in one week kind of discussion)

Ps 2: pub talk off


Edit: just watched 5 min of loz gameplay video, it actually looks fairly basic. But still, to get to a finished product with balanced gameplay / error free always takes more time than one would hope.

 

@sngdan no worries... I'm just thinking out loud. Probably shouldn't do that but I start thinking while participating in a discussion and there it goes.

I sent a message to you so we don't take this thread off the track.

 

Warhead asked for a recreation. This excludes all caviats of "the graphics are already done" "if I can rip dialogue and quests"
That isnt recreating, that is just trying to minimize the work load.
Recreating something isnt taking others peoples work and filling in the blank spaces around it, its doing all the work/tasks required to 'recreate' the product.

Without this - add on 2-4 additional months. Zelda has a 'feel' that I dont think is copy-able without knowledge of the product. Although this point of view might be just nastalgic feelings about one of the BEST games of all time!

 

True I went by that other post where he mentioned "Figured if you already had all the art, etc. It would probably take tops 2 weeks if you took your time."

Of course, doing all of the graphics would add a good chunk more time. I am not sure exactly how much more but certainly a meaningful amount. It's not just creating the images but also putting them into sprite sheets and for Unity this also means making sure they have the border around them to get rid of the glitches issue (referring to this although that might not be a thing in the recent versions of Unity... it was back when I first started with Unity), slicing and so forth.

@N1warhead looking forward to seeing what you end up with. Certainly be great to make such a game because it will not only be a completed game in itself but also serve as a "quick start" to build on and make more advanced 2D rpgs in the future. Like you can focus on the 2D battle scenes in side view and kind of have the second Zelda Link game. And so forth. Good luck man!

 

@theANMATOR2b

You are right I was wrong, for whatever reason I thought the starting point was all gfx done. I read the first post again and it says pixel by pixel. This time would need to be added to my earlier estimate. But I don't know how much art is in there, so can't give a good estimate but this would take some time, even if it is just recreating the existing art.

Not knowing the game - yep maybe you are right here, too. I estimated a 20 hour play through time and multiplied this by 3 in my above estimate to allow seeing all elements of the game and taking development notes, roughly 1/10 th of the overall estimate.

@N1warhead
The only truth comes from doing it - but creating something similar will take a lot of time - this is for sure. The bar is high.

 

I remembered I had bookmarked a demake of the Legend of Zelda you can play in your browser.

Well I went to play that and then checked out the dev's site and found the developer's page for the demake. Interesting, he used an image for his map editor as well. Seems reasonable. It is a very nice way to quickly define the levels.

Originally I bookmarked the game just because I found it very interesting... it represented the ultimate in simplifying the presentation to focus on the other aspects.



Anyway just thought it might be of some interest.

 

I was working on a Zelda clone to teach a kid how to use Unity.

I'd say I put in about 5 hours working with the kid and in that time I was able to have the basic character controller and the inventory done (mind you, that's while showing a 12 YO how each step is done). We just used primitives to make crude models and the animations consisted of having the character bounce up and down while walking, but it did the trick.

If I were to see that project all the way through I believe it would have taken ~500 hours.

Oh, and I would STRONGLY advise just using edited models from the asset store if you want a quick turn around. Doing NES style graphics is a lot harder than you think.

 

Yeah definitely would add dev time. In addition to creating the art and getting sprites set up, each enemy had different hit reactions and some differences when hit with different weapons and unique AI. I'd really enjoy that part, even if it took a month of Sundays for me to complete.

That's really interesting, thanks for sharing!

 

Probably a week, two tops, for art (are there even a hundred sprites?), a week to implement every item, and maybe two weeks for all the monster behaviors. From there it's probably two months for the levels depending on the tools you have.

Are we talking actual RPG's here? Thing is I doubt you can find many people that think that even 16 bit Final Fantasy did Amano's art justice. It's competent art on its own, but it ain't no Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust.

At the end of the day, no one is choosing to make pixel art because it makes better art. They choose pixel art for their own reasons that has nothing to do with their audience.

 

"Better art" is completely subjective. There are plenty of people who genuinely enjoy the artistic choices that come out of having limited resolution and palette.

 

And most of those people are other artists who understand the craft and can appreciate the difficulties someone went through. Normal people do not care nor should they. Just because you limit yourself technically, that still doesn't mean you've done anything to improve conveyance or deepen meaning.

 

I guarantee that most of the people enjoying sprite art aren't other artists.

 

We'll have to agree to disagree.

 

Yeah, I'm pretty okay dropping it here. It's pretty clear this is a matter of opinion and it'd kinda suck to derail the thread over it.

 

I just wanted to say that I'm doing exactly what you're doing, but with Crystalis. I started out by making a Zelda 1 clone, but then I decided I wanted more. I'm also following the NES palette and really enjoy/hate the limitations it brings. Keep it up and don't listen to the nay sayers even if they're right do what makes you happy!

 

Hot damn that's slick looking!

Where's your WIP thread? I'm following it!

 

@ayrik you hit on something that I've heard many retro game players mention... in addition to the general uniqueness of the games (compared to modern releases) they appreciated the way the developers were able to do quite a lot with the little they had to work with including the graphics constraints. As a developer I like that part too. Working within the constraints.

Your game is looking very authentic. Looking forward to checking it out sometime.

Maybe @N1warhead will share a screenshot or video to show his progress.

 

@Not_Sure I don't have a WIP thread yet but I should start one soon I guess!