I am curious to know exactly how much this game costs in case someone will be interested to buy it. Cost in a way where you will own all the game and the rights to develop it further. (not to play it, i know its free to play).

"you mean like the sum of invested working hours? "
Anything is welcomed mojjj. I just want to know in numbers.

over 9000

theres a statistics page somewhere which contains some of the numbers youre looking for, dont know where it is tho. as far as i recall, the amount of manhours put into zk is quite high and the cost would be a couple of millions if people would have been paid wages.

If some company would like to take over ZK development, they are free to do so, as long as they keep the game source code freely available, so taking ZK and developing it further

free, but taking ZK and not allowing anyone else to develop it further

illegal.

quote: I'm pretty certain that 4 people with 55 000 salary a year can replicate ZK in a year of 7-8 hours a day dedication.

No way. Uber honestly didn't produce more with PA, yet they certainly didn't have such small numbers.

quote: Interesting numbers. I'm pretty certain that 4 people with 55 000 salary a year can replicate ZK in a year of 7-8 hours a day dedication.

ZK has evolved - that entails lots of duplicate effort and revisions. You could not compose ZK in a year, and you could probably only replicate it if you had the original to use as a guide throughout. RTS balance as fine tuned as ZK in a game as complex as ZK is as far as I am aware unmatched.

quote: Cost in a way where you will own all the game and the rights to develop it further.

As I understand the licenses of spring & zeroK do not require you to pay anything. You can make your own versions and also sell it. And other people can do the same with your version.


I think problem with the cost-estimate-sites is that they assume every line of text to be unique lines written by full-paid programmer.
But one advantage of spring is that it does NOT require super-expensive skills for everything.
(Completly unexperienced people have learnt to write basic unit scripts or wupdgets within some weeks.)

Spring mods contain much text which imo is closer to "data entry" than "programming":
The definition files of units and wrecks/features, CEG (particle effects), stuff like https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/Zero-K/blob/master/Anims/cursordefend.txt ,...
Something like "adding wrecks to all units" is many lines but after short introduction such tasks could easily be done by trainees.

Missions ( https://github.com/ZeroK-RTS/Zero-K-Missions/blob/master/sortale_ep3.mission.xml ) count as thousands of lines but are actually exported by editor.
Using missioneditor is of course also work but but different to 11.000 lines.

When remade from scratched some things could be done more effectively, too.
Ideally a commercial remake would have more clearer defined goal and be better organized, instead of more or less randomly growing.
Many dead ends would be avoided = faster development.
Beside engine, game itself & infrastructure one would also need some tools.
Though you could do without the outdated ones like 3DObuilder or Scriptor.

quote: RTS balance as fine tuned as ZK in a game as complex as ZK is as far as I am aware unmatched.

Maybe, but I think balance is bit overrated. There is lots of changing and tweaking (still going on) but were the zK or CA versions from some years ago really unplayably bad? I think not.

Art is needed too.
I think in hobby this takes unusually long: People are 'learning while doing' or try out new techniques for the fun of it or get bored and take long breaks.
There is tons of videos by random youtubers who show it is possible to model & texture something complex in few hours. Imo CAD is similiar and ther I know this is to be possible too.
Not everything needs to be create inhouse by fulltime artists.
Generic 3D art (trees, rocks etc) can also be bought.

Same for audio effects, just get some soundpack.
Few dozen to hundreds dollars can buy art packages of very high quality.
For hobby that might be considered boring/lame but zeroK already uses art from many different sources.
For rather small price one can skip the whole "find something with suitable license" part and just get what is needed.


Yes, online RTS game, such wow, much project and everything, but realistically:
wikipedia says Planetary Annihilation had raised approximately $2,228,000 via Kickstarter and an additional $101,000 via PayPal.
That is with engine, with full original art, orchestral soundtrack and so on.

$16M for the game plus $8M for engine would put zero-k pretty close to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_video_games_to_develop
That seems way too high.

But Spring and ZK are hobbies - things people do in their spare time for their own satisfaction and enjoyment. That's a different metric to the work output of salarymen.

quote: But Spring and ZK are hobbies - things people do in their spare time for their own satisfaction and enjoyment

stop romanticizing stuff, because:

quote: [3:04 AM] Licho thats why i laugh when people here talk about "fun" developers have .. its bs, its hard work like anything else, fun might come later from outcome, but process is annoying. I prefer cleaning toilets to coding ZK