Is it possible to give an example of how long each aspect of a feature or asset takes. For example, what percentage is spent in concept, design, coding, and polish, etc? Does each asset/feature follow a similar breakdown or are some more resource heavy in certain areas? If so, are there any indicators to each asset taking longer at a certain phase?asked by Newt

So, this is a good one...

This is good.

I think one of things first off is know that they're all going to be different. Every feature is it's own unique special snowflake. Generally you can categorize them and say - ships for example, ships will probably, if it's this ship or that ship will probably spend commensurate ratios of time in each step of the pipeline. If it's this radar system versus this missile system, yeah, it gets a little more nebulous. So, I guess I think a ship would be a good one to break down to answer his question. So what percentage of time was spent in concept, so totality of a ship I would say probably 20-25%, sound about right?

Yeah, and you know concept, to speak to concept, I think that's a place we want to spend a large amount of our time. Right, we get all of our designer questions answered, our gameplay groups questions answered, our art leaderships questions answered. It's the 'cheaper' portion essentially of the whole creation process.

That's a really valid point, it can be viewed in the same way as pre-production for the entirety of the game. That's where you get everything out of the way so everybody else can just execute without having to stop and go - "what if the bike needs a bike chain..."

Yeah, yeah exactly. So, 20-25% I think that's good.

Then the design side, well design is kinda wrapped into that so let's call it 25-30% for concept, design, animation review, all that happens during that phase. The coding side, you know, in this case I would say the modeling for the ship and that would probably be about 70% of your time. That's the lion's share.

And you want spend a lot, a lot there. That's the look, that's the feel, that's it's going to work an engine, that's everything, right.

Then you know, audio, VFX, last 5%.

Yup. Very important part but definitely.

That is actually one thing in production that always tends to happen and something to keep aware of and combat if you ever want to be a producer is, VFX and audio are the oft forgotten but very important but last step in every process.

Yes, going back to the predictability part of the last question, as things you hope won't push but as things might push different aspects there has to be an end date somewhere and so a lot of times that end date doesn't move and everything gets kinda crammed down and you can talk to our audio team and our effects team... they kinda plan on it which you don't want, you want them to have the ability to be as creative and make the coolest thing possible too. So, some of the ways we've kinda combated that is we get them involved as early as we can, like maybe back in concept, like just start thinking how this ship might sound or think about how this character...

Look at what the moving parts will be...

Yeah exactly, for when it gets to animation, totally.