Could a skilled developer team finish EEU from scratch in 1 year?

Minisaurus · 2020-11-12 02:03:49

Lets say, if graphics and everything else but development is finished, how much time as a minimum would it take to develop EEU?

Can someone who is actually a skilled developer answer if it would be or not possible for a dedicated developer team to develop EEU in less than one year if they fully work on it?. (From scratch to "finish").

Grilyon2

peace · 2020-11-12 08:49:26

form scartch that also means wihtouout ghrapics and everything else

TaskManager · 2020-11-12 09:18:10

whats the definition of done aka "finish" for a project that typically receives updates for years

Gosha · 2020-11-12 09:35:21

a skilled programmer who has time can finish ee in one month

The Party Animal, Grilyon2, Snowester

mutantdevle · 2020-11-12 11:05:03

TaskManager wrote:

whats the definition of done aka "finish" for a project that typically receives updates for years

We consider 'finished' the be the steam release.

Gosha wrote:

a skilled programmer who has time can finish ee in one month

I think this is very hyperbolic.

If we ignore the graphical features like backgrounds, decorations, block packs and UI, and only focus on the explicitly programming factors, then what would need to be added to EEU would be all the current action blocks that are planned to return, all the basic features like the shop, friends lists, time trials, etc. and then a few extra action items primarily through the form of zones like music zones and liquid zones. All of those features, if done by a single developer with lots of experience in programming (Ie, doesn't have to spend periods of time experimenting/researching how to implement various things) and working full time for at least 40 hours a week could definitely get all of that done within a year. Though, that doesn't factor in anything like making changes based on community feedback or the design process - it just assumes that the developer knows exactly how all the features will work and will implement them exactly to everyone's liking each time.

nielsd · 2020-11-12 12:44:49

It depends. We have to keep in mind that the developers of EE/EEU atm do this as a hobby, and how much time they want to spend on this hobby.
It also depends on how much research the developers have to make.
Another inconvenience that can occur when developing in a team is that one person has to wait for the code review of another. If they do this as a hobby, the loop of reviewing & requesting changes can take longer because they don't necessarily work at the same time.
As for development time, I don't think 40 hours a week is necessary.
I'd say it can be done in a year, even with community feedback.

TundrumMax · 2020-11-12 13:29:03

Numerous people, including myself, have attempted to recreate EE from scratch with barely any hardship. Some of us even managed to successfully create multiplayer functionality.
EEU is just an EE remake with special graphics and extra features planned. If the staff worked on EEU every day for 3 hours then it would be finished very quickly.

Minimania · 2020-11-12 13:40:42

I'd say they'd be able to finish in early 2019

XxAtillaxX, some woman

LukeM · 2020-11-12 15:30:05

Remember that the biggest challenge with a project like this is designing it in a way that is easily extendable in the future, people like to compare the development time of EEU to the development time of EE, but it's important to remember that we created EEU precisely because EE failed at many of these things.

On top of that is the fact that EEU is a hobby project, while EE was part of Chris' job. He created PlayerIO and EE was a project he created to demonstrate and test PlayerIO's functionality I believe. Since it was decided that using something like PlayerIO would be a bad direction for EEU, it requires much of the infrastructure provided by PlayerIO to be rebuilt to ensures stable servers that support any number of players, which is a significant task.

I strongly believe (as is probably already obvious lol) that Xenonetix has been setting the wrong tone when it comes to EEU, he is very much acting as if it's a project run by a company with employees, even going as far as calling it hiring and firing when he invites or removes someone from the team, and publicly calling out or threatening his 'staff' when he believes they're not dedicating enough of their free time to the project. This not only sets the wrong tone in the community, but also decreases the morale of the team, meaning it's generally less enjoyable to work on and making it take even longer. This ended up being one of the reasons I left the team, and is a part of why believe that it would be best for EEU to go in a different direction with a different owner.

On top of that, as mentioned before, this divide between the 'staff' and the community has caused a lot of drama, some of which has ended in people being annoyed enough to actively attack the game which led to data breaches and corrupted data, which has taken a lot of time to repair, and again reduced morale. IMO what we're seeing right now with a lack of progress is kind of expected, that's just what happens when people lose enthusiasm for a project.

EEU is, and for the indefinite future will be, an unpaid hobby, so even without all of the above it's expected for it to take a long time to complete such a large task. A real team of full time employees could definitely do it a lot faster, but that's not an option, and as discussed in the "will a company buy EE" topic might not even be something we'd want. So yes, a full time developer team could do it in a year, but a full time developer team is not what we have.

Blackmask, mutantdevle, Atikyne, some woman, capasha, Grilyon2, Slabdrill

Gosha · 2020-11-12 21:57:14

LukeM wrote:

So yes, a full time developer team could do it in a year, but a full time developer team is not what we have.

correction, full time developer team can do it in much much shorter period of time than that.

Minisaurus · 2020-11-12 22:26:21

And what do we have? Snails?
It is hard to not imagine a bunch of snails typing on a keyboard to develop EEU. That would actually explain a lot of things.
(I don´t think developers failed, they have done a great job, but very, very slowly, so slow that it is hurting the game and it´s community).

I don´t like to point the finger at someone, but it is also hard to not point out that Xenonetix is largely to blame for all the delays, as he is in charge.

den3107 · 2020-11-13 01:04:54

From personal experience, getting up to a release version with the intention of future updates (eg visual extensions and minor additions such as more magic rewards or quality of life improvements (whether from a playing or building perspective)), I'd say, you'd roughly neeeeed...

Proper server with infrastructure. Depending on the scale, infrastructure can remain fairly manual at the start, but you'd likely want to switch over to automatic scaling eventually.
Core gameplay (physics, replication (online parts) & movement).
Extensions on gameplay for diversity (this is where stuff like portals and gravity boosters come into play).
Gameplay artstyle with the minimum required component to cement that (x amount of smileys and block packs).
Menuing, both visuals and UX (user experience, aka ease of use).

Now, obviously all of this depends on some other elements, such as if you want to make your own engine, use stuff that's already being used, and if so, what (eg. UE4 has some pretty solid replication in place which is pretty easy to work with, but not that suited for 2D, whilst with Unity replication can be a bit more of a hassle).
Atm assuming you want to go for a semi-custom engine in JS (working based off a framework, but not a full engine), which also means custom replication (which I believe accurately enough shows the current method of development).
Another big assumption: Design is fully done, so it's just implementing featuresets. Normally this also costs a lot of time and can sometimes form a bottleneck (causing delays for other teams). Don't believe this is currently the case for EEU (the design being finished, I mean).
Going to assume all team members haaaave... Let's say 2 years of field experience (so after school, and I'm even going to exclude all internships aside from a potential graduation internship)

(disclaimer, I'm a programmer and designer, so art is based on what I passively gather from the artist at my work)
I'd say, graphics team of 1 person with 1 FTE (ie full-time, 40 hour weeks) should suffice within a month, where pinning down the style will take most of the work (this includes art iterations).
Optionally you could take 1 more person for UI/UX which works closely with the artist, but doubt he'll have 1 FTE worth of work in that month.
Programming... I'd say 4+ FTE with working on the engine, this would entail physics/movement, some form of (custom) replication and the portions that shift the framework into an engine (modularity, ease of adding content, able to stitch everything together seamlessly).
Probably want 1 additional FTE handling infrastructure and tightly working with who-ever is responsible for replication.

Only thing I'm currently highly uncertain off is the engine portion, since I just do not know what frameworks are in place that you would want to build upon and what their pre-existing featureset is (regarding physics and replication).

So, as a crude estimate, I'd say you would need at least 6.5 FTE to make it in a single month, of experienced developers and artists that have a matching profile for the task at hand.

Obviously, as plenty of people have pointed out in this thread and others, the current team doesn't get anywhere near this. Fairly sure they make few hours, not sure how experienced they are, but solely judging off the nature of the project I would assume most are students/hobbyists and I'm not even sure if even then their skillsets 100% align with the tasks they work on.
Poor management and workflow also greatly helps with causing delays, which gets a lot harder to create properly when you have an unstable workforce (not just people leaving/joining, but just in amount of hours in general). No view of what the current state on that is, but I wouldn't blame Xeno if management wasn't perfect. Doesn't mean it should be bad either, of course

Those were my two cents. Do with it what you want.

mutantdevle, Gosha, capasha, Slabdrill, Grilyon2

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#1 2020-11-12 02:03:49, last edited by Minisaurus (2020-11-12 02:10:03)

Could a skilled developer team finish EEU from scratch in 1 year?

#2 2020-11-12 08:49:26

Re: Could a skilled developer team finish EEU from scratch in 1 year?

#3 2020-11-12 09:18:10

Re: Could a skilled developer team finish EEU from scratch in 1 year?

#4 2020-11-12 09:35:21

Re: Could a skilled developer team finish EEU from scratch in 1 year?

#5 2020-11-12 11:05:03

Re: Could a skilled developer team finish EEU from scratch in 1 year?

#6 2020-11-12 12:44:49

Re: Could a skilled developer team finish EEU from scratch in 1 year?

#7 2020-11-12 13:29:03

Re: Could a skilled developer team finish EEU from scratch in 1 year?

#8 2020-11-12 13:40:42, last edited by Minimania (2020-11-12 13:41:50)

Re: Could a skilled developer team finish EEU from scratch in 1 year?

#9 2020-11-12 15:30:05, last edited by LukeM (2020-11-12 15:39:31)

Re: Could a skilled developer team finish EEU from scratch in 1 year?

#10 2020-11-12 21:57:14

Re: Could a skilled developer team finish EEU from scratch in 1 year?

#11 2020-11-12 22:26:21, last edited by Minisaurus (2020-11-12 22:46:35)

Re: Could a skilled developer team finish EEU from scratch in 1 year?

#12 2020-11-13 01:04:54, last edited by den3107 (2020-11-13 01:09:53)

Re: Could a skilled developer team finish EEU from scratch in 1 year?

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