Pricing Programing Jobs?
Community Forums/General Help/Pricing Programing Jobs?
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| Is it better to work hourly or by milestones? Meaning you have a list of goals, then once they are met you get paid. Maybe do half the agreed upon price in advance? I guess it really depends on how competent of a programming you are. Because several things I could code myself in 3 hours someone seasoned could do in 30 minutes or less. LOL! Even after being away from this community for 3 years I still recognize many of the names here. I will admit I'm a far better designer than a coder. Which is why I would prefer to focus more of my efforts into tweaking the assets for my game project instead of getting things to work. Within the next few weeks I will be comfortable labeling my game officially in the Alpha stage, so I was hoping to see who out here has a little free time and will work for a reasonable price. Personally I feel that weekly milestones would be the best approach. An example of what I need help with: 1. Implementing the GUI from concept to full functionality in the game. 2. Rework the Flight mechanics to be more realistic. 3. Smoothing out the animations in blitz. I will handle all the assets regarding models, animation, texture, music, etc... I will post some screenshots of my work in progress and general idea in another thread. I have always followed this quote by Chuck Yeager "It's the man not the Machine". Ken Silverman said something similar about game development and technology. It's not the tech you use its what you do with the tech. Proof that an idea sells better than anything else is the fact Minecraft, a messy Java game by and Indie Dev was sold to Microsoft for 2.8 billion??? |
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| I am not going to offer my services as a coder because I do it in my day job every day for work and I've never felt able to work for other clients outside of my day job. However - if I was going to offer my services as a programmer for hire my going rate would be somewhere between $100 and $200 AUD per hour ($70 USD/$140 USD). Most likely I would estimate the three specifications you have given as 'x' hours beforehand and quote based on that - weekly milestones would simply take into account the hours estimated to be required to build something like that. From the limited specification you have given I would estimate that the three components specified would require as a brief estimate: 1. Gui - 8 hours (1 full day with testing) 2. Flight mechanics 4 hours (half a day with testing) 3. Smoothing animations - not sure how this is a coding issue, more an animation issue, but could be complex or could be simple depending on what is meant by this...I'd estimate 8 hours (1 full day with testing). Total cost would be 20 hours work at $150AUD/$100USD per hour = $3000 AUD/$2000USD. |
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| That's about what I expected for cost. A bit higher than what I can currently afford but that is a very fair price. Regarding the animations its more or less getting things to behave correctly and having the entities follow a waypoint system. I'll probably be able to handle this myself once I finish more of the animations, just after a 3 year break some of this feels brand new again. :) |
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| If I can add an opinion from my experience coding a game in 2015: In 2015 I outsourced some of my art to a quality Melbourne based artist. Art cost me approximately $3000. I also had to purchase hardware for my testing, spend on marketing, licences and sound effects and a host of other expenses that came to a total of $7000 for the project (AUD). With all that effort I managed to recover about $60AUD in total sales before google took their cut of 30%. (Coding for my project would have cost about 600 hours but I did it myself). So.....be sure you are willing to spend $3k on a project as it is a lot of money to spend and it can be tricky to make it back (unless you don't care about that). |
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| Perhaps instead of recreating my full concept within my codebase I could pay for a slimmed down version? So the coder would create the framework and get the basic menu working, but it would be up to me to extend it from there to the final result. That way I could save some money and focus the budget on other areas. I have 3 different GUI concepts in progress right now. Each do the job but do not fit in aesthetically as well as I'd like. I have a few books on 1960's through 1980's jet fighters and various Britannica books I'm studying as reference. If anyone knows of a book that specifically addresses Military GUI and HUD systems let me know! The first design shows everything which induces information overload... So what I'm trying to do is split the various systems into 4 parts, switching between them via the F1, F2, etc... |
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| @Imperium>>Matty's prices are very high imo, i used to code/model/animate as a freelancer for 25EUR per hour... My approach was to work/provide/bepaid step by step, so i created one functionality/component and then i provided a time limited demo of the result (executable) and then if the "employer/outsourcer" was satisfied he paid me (via paypal) and i send him the code+components. It worked well most of the time, except when there were IP issues. (some people want an exclusive right to use a code when the procedure/function is commonly used (not specific to the project), not sure how to deal with that) Of course the price will vary depending on the understanding/skills/experience of the coder/modeler/animator and how fast he can deliver the work. My advices to you are : -make a deal to have the freelancer/"employee" to work/provide/bepaid one step at a time (one functionality/component at a time) so that you can choose to stop at any time and not waste time/money/energy with unskilled/careless/dishonest people -make sure that you can use the executable/code/components provided as you want (for your specific goal), but at the same time be flexible (like with art you can have a right to use the thing in your project but not the right to be the only person who own/use it on the planet, (especially in the case of commonly used procedures/functions) |
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| So you've not yet started with the project? If you're thinking about using Blitzmax + module using the b3d command set (= OpenB3d, MiniB3d or even Leadwerks2), I would be interested in building/setting up a game framework for you to extend upon. I am actually a webdeveloper but programming games gives me that warm fuzzy feeling :) |
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| another thought would be to approach someone/people on here to do things that you think they would be best at and would want to help? Be prepared to heard cats though. The more people involved, the more likely it strays from it's initial ideas |
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