Re: Forming Co. ???????

From: rwallace@unix1.tcd.ie (russell wallace)

Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 14:05:05 +0000

In <jddnr=d.dani@netcom.com> dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig) writes:

>The main thing that seems to be missing here is an appreciation of how
>long it can take for that reasonable income to start coming in.  First
>there's the programming, which takes much longer than people would believe.
>A reasonable rule of thumb for producing maintainable code commercially
>is 2500 lines of code per man-year.  The most popular ways for non-
>professionals (and too many professionals) to speed that process up
>(skimping on design and testing) tend to result in far *more* programming
>down the road.

It depends. True, for very large (tens of thousands of lines) commercial
systems, 2500 lines of code/man-year may not be overly pessimistic,
including time for design, debugging etc. On the other hand, Galaxy is
now around 4000 lines of code, and I've spent *much* less than a
man-year on it (and I think the code is quite maintainable). One reason
for this is that small programs have much higher productivity because
there is no need to coordinate programming teams. Another is that PBM
games are quite easy to program, because there is no need for a
sophisticated user interface (they're basically batch mode) and no great
efficiency requirements. It is important to try to keep the design
simple (one PBM game I know of is 27,000 lines of code, which must be
seriously painful to keep track of).

>Then there's the play-test, which can be quite lengthy
>if it's going to be an honest attempt to improve the game and shake out
>the bugs.  Once that's done, it's time to get a revised rulebook printed,
>buy ads, and start building up a customer base.

Yes, the best way to do playtesting is on the net. First, this is
essentially free, so while you're not getting any money in the meantime,
you're not paying anything out either. Second, it's much faster than
doing it by post. In fact, you could reasonably overlap the last coupld
of months of the playtest with the start of your advertising campaign
(there's a fair delay between taking out ads and receiving money in the
post).

--
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem"
Russell Wallace, Trinity College, Dublin
rwallace@unix1.tcd.ie

References

Re: Forming Co. ???????
dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
Fri, 28 Aug 1992 07:35:07 +0000
Forming Co. ???????
<34RIPSE@CMUVM.CSV.CMICH.EDU>
Tue, 25 Aug 1992 15:24:48 +0000
Re: Forming Co. ???????
dani@netcom.com (Dani Zweig)
Wed, 26 Aug 1992 00:19:38 +0000
Re: Forming Co. ???????
gl8f@fermi.clas.Virginia.EDU (Greg Lindahl)
Fri, 28 Aug 1992 04:02:16 +0000