Takket wrote: ↑Fri May 26, 2023 2:30 pm
I've often wondered what it would cost for CC to have someone write software to play the game. I know it isn't cheap but if they started from Lackey and built from there I don't think you're talking about more than a few hundred hours of work to REALLY make a top notch program (yes, at $100 billing I'm aware 500 hours if $50,000!!!!!!!!)
This is probably close.
That being said!!!!!!!!!! Since this isn't a money maknig venture where absolute perfection is key, I've wondered if you might be able to find some programming students that could take something like this on as a Senior project. We don't pay, they get an A+ and a degree, everybody wins. Might be worth reaching out to some universities to see if something like that is possible.
The reason the above number is what it is because it is dependent upon an engineer who knows what they're doing. That's the time it'd take a professional to do it. And the ability to do the work is where the hourly goes up.
A student,
bless their heart, isn't going to be able to do it in that amount of time (I doubt they'd finish the project over four
years of schooling). They're not going to be able to do it as well. And honestly... I highly doubt they could do it at all.
I have some recent experience with this, believe it or not. I gave talks to classes who were in their last couple semesters. Their focus for the first semester was to plan a game project. The second semester was to implement it (aka, develop the actual game).
Most of the groups didn't have a working product at the end of 6 months. The ones who did drastically cut back on the planned features just to make something that worked. And if you dug into their projects, you can tell it's one band-aid hack over another.
And the reason is, they had no idea what they were doing. That's not a knock against them. Most new programmers don't know what they don't know. It takes years of experience before stuff
really starts falling into place.
New grads are generally terrible software engineers. Their degree simply familiarizes them with concepts and proves they can stick with stuff. That's why most places who hire new grads do pair-programming. They get paired with a senior dev who can guide them through
actual work.
Now, all that being said, I'm going to have this thread moved over to another forum, since it's got nothing to do with technical difficulties here.