Arma2 Postmortem Article

[mr.g-c 6]

I would like to suggest that BIS writes such a "Postmortem Article", like they did here on Gamasutra for "Operation Flashpoint", at some point in the future after release.

I would be very interested in reading this.

:);)

[S!fkaIaC 10]

By Ondrej Spanel and Marek Spanel

December 19, 2001

Operation Flashpoint

Game Data Publisher: Codemasters

Number of Full-Time Developers: 10

Number of Contractors: 3

Estimated Budget: $600,000

Length of Development: Over 4 years

Release Date: June 22 (worldwide except North America), August 29 (North America), 2001

Development Hardware (Average): Various PC systems from 266MHz Pentium IIs to 1GHz Pentium 4s and 1.2GHz Athlons with 20GB hard drives and Voodoo 2 or GeForce 2 graphics cards

Development Software: Windows 98/2000, Linux servers, Visual C++ 6, SourceSafe, Adobe Photoshop 5.0, 3DS Max, Microsoft Office, TextAloud (for voice prototyping)

Proprietary Software: Oxygen (3D low-polygon modeling and texturing tool), Visitor (landscape editor), and some other proprietary data conversion and packing tools

Notable Technologies: DirectX, Vorbis Ogg, Vicon 8 motion capture system

Project Size: 10,000+ files, 250,000 lines of C++ (some assembly), 5,000 textures, 800 3D models, 100,000 words (localized into six other languages), more than 60 single-player and multiplayer missions

Budget: 600k$ ????????????? :D Can't be true.

600.000 / 4 years / 10 devs = 15.000$ per year if it was only spend for the full time devs

Partly they wrote/spoke it already about ArmA 1.

I honor this honesty, but it was a little late.

I would give them 100€ for ArmA 2 without bugs and some features missing since 2001.

Edited May 11, 2009 by S!fkaIaC

[mr.g-c 6]

Why not?

At the point OFP was made, wages were really low in Czech republic (compared to the western world) and are still today (for instance 1/2 to 1/3 to german average wages).

I would even dare to say, that for a complex game like this, you would have to sell it for 100€/Copy, if you would fully develop it in germany for instance, as its simply to expensive here to pay a average programmer/worker (i'm assuming BIS has around 40-60 Programmers/Workers for Arma2 (excluded sub-contractors), based on the Expression by Ohara once, as he stated "Do you really think we will work with just 35 People on such big project?").

Also Suma and Maruk started developing this engine in private for some years, IIRC.

So finally 10 Employes + some sub-contractors multiplied by very low average wages, multiplied by development-time, could make actually sense to me.

[Hyp3rdyn3 10]

<3 Gamasutra, thanks for the link

[Spetz 0]

remember $600,000 back then would be like 1.5 million today,

[S!fkaIaC 10]

Counting own resources as almost serious is anyway not a serious budget calculation. Maybe it was one first budget calc loooong time ago, but in 2001 I can not imagine that they still stick to that number. Alone that motion capturing system at that time, if 100% seen as CAPEX, would bite a huge chunk out of that budget.

But anyway, wages in CZ are higher now, means much higher expenses for devs.

If ArmA 2 engine is an evolution of OFP/ArmA1 also a part of the dev-cost of the previous titles must be calculated into the budget-calc like you buying the old version and start developing on top. Starting from zero would be much more expensive.

Just a shoot from the hip, but total cost of ArmA2 will exceed 4M€ IMHO.

[MehMan 0]

Depends what you mean, total cost from when the development of OFP Elite stopped and ArmA/Arma2 started or from ArmA to Arma2?

In any case, 4M is a very low ammount. Very low.

[S!fkaIaC 10]

exceed

The 4M was related to what I know is necessary for such a development. Since there is an unkown "more" I wrote "exceed".

To calculate the "value", not the project cost, you have to include a part of the development costs all the way from OFP 1.0 up to the build they used to start with ArmA2 development. Just to get a feeling for the value if you would start from the scratch.

[Commando84 0]

yeah I remember reading that article last year on gamasutra :D

Pretty intresting read, its always great to hear dev stories from behind the lines. :)

[Red_Barron 0]

Thanks for posting this article mr.g-c. It was a good read. I have only recently learned the joys of Gamasurta from General Barron, and didn't know this article existed.

[BLSmith2112 0]

I loved that article way back when. It'd be awesome to have another.

[Raptor 10]

I suggested it directly to Marek (long time ago), but as always he didn't replyed.