Do you get bored, discouraged or demotivated with your projects?

General Discussions
#1

I don’t know if it’s common or just me, but sometimes when I work on a project, I suddenly don’t feel like working on it anymore. Sometimes I feel like there’s no point continuing it, sometimes it’s because I don’t like the way it’s going and other times I just feel like doing something different. This also happens when everything is going well, but I suddenly look at it in a negative way. When this happens, I end up getting demotivated and ditching the project, or starting over.

Does anyone want to share their experience? Any advice to stay motivated and sticking with a project?

I recently deleted the last game I was working on because I felt like I did a crummy job on the core game design.

Personally, I think it’s easier when you plan out what you want to do. You should know what game you want to make, and how to design it (the technical part), which I think is the hardest.

#2

I would imagine pretty much everyone on here goes through the same experience so I wouldn’t worry about it too much.

Sometimes I find taking a break from a project (or even from all programming) helps to regain that motivation, a change is as good as a rest and all that. Also when I come back to something I often find that I can see better solutions / designs that weren’t apparent to me because I was so involved.

Assuming you’re working on your projects as something interesting and creative as opposed to actual paid work then of course you can do what you want. Maybe something to try that works for me is to set yourself a roadmap of features that you’re planning to design and implement, get one done, then put that project aside and take a break or work on something else. Means you get a feeling of progression, and you get that benefit I mentioned of coming back later with a fresher pair of eyes.

Random thoughts, hope that helps a little.

  • stride
#3

I’m on a coding hiatus myself. All my free time is spent either experimenting new cooking techniques and that damn ps2 game called valkyrie profile 2. I knew I should not have opened my ps2 last week.

#4

There are a few tips that have helped me.

Once you get something working on your game. Do not go fiddle with it again!! Just because you can do it better, make the code look better, or know of better ways of handling it.
Just get the game done and make only changes and fixes you need to get the game done. Unless there is something majorly wrong with it, that’s stopping you from finishing it.

Because everyone gets better as they make the game. If you keep going back, you will never finish. Once I started to adopt this idea that, there are parts of my game that I hate and I know I could do better. And just try do implement my new ideas on next game. I have had much more success in completing things.

Additionally, and most important. Although some people spend 2 years on their first game and finish it. I personally find that to be the wrong approach for beginners. At least in the beginning, you should focus on having short completeable goals. The feeling you get when you finish a game(finished in the most part) makes you feel much better about tackling another project or game.

With the above 2 things, in consideration. I haven’t been getting as bored or demotivated nearly as much. Especially when I set more realistic earlier goals. :smiley:

#5

That’s when you know the project has spanned off too long.

This is why most of the games I make are usually made in a short time period. I don’t like hyping or trying to sell a game.

When an artist makes a painting, he hangs it up on his shelf.
When I make a game I post it on my blog.

I usually will work on my games for a span of a month unless they are for a competition or such, then I’m done with them.
I occasionally will burn them to CDs and let me friends play them, but that’s it.

But anyways,
If you want to get motivated, force yourself to add something.
Second, make the game more fun. You want to start slacking off when you’re supposed to be debugging it. You’re supposed to be engaged with all hell.
If you aren’t wanting to work on your game anymore, continue anyway. Make yourself add things.
It’s like life.
“I thought about quitting baby,”
“But my heart just ain’t gonna buy it.”

#6

Me too got bored on my first large project for a large time and just started work on it after four months of holidays (a long time right?). Now I only have 17 days for the classes to start. The main problem was writing a parser for GML scripts (I’ve made a basic one with regex but it isn’t recognizing the correct syntax nor comments) for which, these type of problems are taught in 3rd year of degree but I’ve still not joined in first year.

Just after a long time, I thought why couldn’t I complete it and bought a book “Writing Compilers And Interpreters : Third Edition”.

#7

The taking a break is ver important. But be sure not to take your brake too long because you might forget how stuff works if you’re on a big project.

Something that i think that helps is to work in a team.

#8

The more you hate your project, the better it is.

Well that may not be completely true, but I do believe there comes a point when it transitions from ‘fun’ to ‘work’. That doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy the successes you achieve, they’ll just be separated by periods masochism.

Furthermore, it’s fine to feel you’ve just pieced together the next Frankenstein. If you walk away thinking you couldn’t have done it any better, then you haven’t gained that much experience from the process. And you won’t level up. Cause you were just beating on level 0’s.

There does reach a tradeoff point with reworking your own code. Not enough streamlining can make things difficult fix later, too much reworking and you’re just code-turbaiting. I find a healthy mix of comments chastising my own work is a good indication of when things need to be mangled.

I don’t believe there is any finite set of rules for when a project needs a bus ride to the trash can. It comes down to the individual banging away at the keyboard. What are your realistic goals for the project.

Keeping yourself on task is the crux of all this. It’s ok to step away from a project, but be realistic and keep in mind the longer you are away, the more likely you are to never return. And the code ain’t goin ta write itself. Code requires time. You’re not going to come back after a 6 month break, type a few keys and magically create the next masterpiece of the game world.

After having dumped all my free time (and I do mean ALL) into a project for the past 2 years, this is my take-away for staying on track. Take it a piece at a time. Don’t get caught up in “what about ______”. If you don’t focus on just one small task at a time, then you’ll get overwhelmed.

-(Insert Something thought provoking and ends with “A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step”)

#9

A lot of very good advice here, thanks everyone!

#10

Ask yourself what do you want. Honostly.

Sometimes you want knowledge and other times you want a product. When you’re programming to get knowledge it’s unnecessary to continue the development of the “experimental” program after you found out what you wanted to know. Make clear at the beginning of your undertaking what you want and even more clear what you do not want (for example think about or write down or discuss how long you want to work and how long you don’t want to work). So you have a frame that helps you to avoid problems with your finances and emotions.

So my advice to stay motivated: consciously avoid working at something that you don’t want/need. :smiley:

PS: Of course you must have already experienced what you like and don’t like, otherwise you have to try it out ^^.

#11

That actually is a very good way to think about things. I’ve always tried to just make game that I don’t want to make so I could learn, and then get disappointed and stop coding for a few days after. I just can’t wait until I reach the point where I know a lot so that I can just sit down and pound out a fun game that I enjoy in a few weeks and not have to worry about spending 3/4ths of my time researching.

#12

This.

I myself haven’t yet found a good solution to this. I haven’t programmed the last 6 months or so on a ‘real’ project.

#13

I also strongly support the idea of “if its not broken, don’t fix it”. If you just got something to work, don’t mess with it for a while. Leave it alone and do something else, and come back to it later. Getting stressed out over one part of a program isn’t worth it, you’ll end up not thinking straight and messing things up more.

#14

Yeah, that advice is really helpful, especially for me because I like to make everything as close to perfect as possible.

#15

I was feeling somewhat burnt out recently (specially since I have to program at work too) so I took a vacation in the form of trying to finally complete Saints Row 2.

I think it is good from time to time to let your mind disconnect from your projects.

Something I found surprisingly motivating is to read my own devlog from the very first post up to the latest. Seeing how my project has evolved so far, and remembering my state of mind during development seems to be a good motivator, at least on my case.

I guess it is about making sure you are aware of your own progress. Very often I get stuck in a piece of code and suddenly get this feeling like I haven’t really achieved much. Re-reading on the actual progress I’ve made seems like a good way to dispell that notion.

#16

Pick projects that you can do and that interest you. Try and split the work up into small manageable chunks so each part looks achievable. If your project might interest others then that’s a huge benefit as they can run you programs and supply you with feedback. You might even be able to get help with coding or sounds or images etc. Sometimes it’s nice to split the work with others as you get a fresh perspective on things and they’ll usually have a different skill set to you etc.

#17

I’ve found it enormously satisfying to have a concrete set of requirements for a game, and sticking to them. Have a checklist of the little things that need to be complete before the game can be released, such as sound effects, music, menu system, high score etc. Once you’ve got those done, move to the next project. It doesn’t mean you need to have all the details fleshed out from the beginning, just don’t go adding something that needs more than one session of coding to implement.

If you think of really cool stuff to add to your game, just put it on the list for the sequel.

#18

Hell I never realized how good it was for you to take a break :o . I took a 2 day break for school because I had a big test and I couldn’t believe all the problems I solved just sitting in class! Yes, taking a 2-3 day break is very VERY good for the thinking process.

#19

I’m currently burned-out on my main projects, but have found doing programming challenges on HackerRank is a fun way to take a break from your projects while still keeping your brain in gear.
Try to beat my (java ofc) Code Golf scores! :stuck_out_tongue:

#20

Seriously burned out - my benchmarking project has reached beta, but my friends aren’t bothering to do any beta-ing. :clue:

Very demotivating.