Feeling Stuck

Miscellaneous Topics
#1

I’m feeling a bit bad… lately, my programming habits have gone down.
My last little projects were the J4K games, and in the last 2 months I almost haven’t programmed.

I’m stuck. I don’t know where to continue. I sit on front of my PC, start Ecilpse… and nothing.

My projects (paused before the j4k contest) are:

  • Puzzle Balls DX: The same game as j4k’05 Play Here, but whitout the 4k limits. (Java2D, Java Sound)

  • Bus/City Simulator: You drive a bus, looking for people to take, fighting rival fleet buses and taxis.(LWJGL, sprite engine)

  • Mobile Game, Virtual Pet: The classic affair to take your little blob and evolve it into a cute pet/big monster. (J2ME, MIDP1.0, it runs on my Sony Ericsson T637)

So, my fellow programmers, I need some words from you… which project to take and finish? Some advice to refresh my programming? Will I need to begin a new project from scratch? What have you done in cases like mine?

Rafael.-

#2

Ahhh, coders block, happens to everyone. Sorry to hear its happening to you :frowning:

What works for me is generally to pick something where I can get alot of visual/audio feedback quickly. So, in your case I’d pick Puzzle Balls DX - start making it look great, add some nice effects (causing by simple mechanics). Add the fluff round the edges, the bit’s that don’t take long to do (menus, setup screens, music) to get you feeling more like you’re progressing - and hopefully motivate.

Theres a rule of thumb in project planning that if you have a list of things to do, generally it’s good to pick the small ones first (and float new small tasks to the top of the list). Every time you complete any task you get the feeling of stepping forward, it’s only approaching problems a one huge task that de-motivates.

Hope you get back moving soon!

Kev

#3

Thanks Kev,

Your words are words of wisdom.

I’m still not moving, but to give me more motivation I began to make a web page to put my projects.

It’s W.I.P. (even some problems with styles ;D). Also, I audited all my backups looking for projects, and I found 85!! :o, so I have content to put in the page, and work to do to finish some of my ideas in those projects.

The page is here, for anyone to see.

Rafael.-

#4

I find going off on a tangent unrelated to gaming helps get me enhused with progamming agin.

e.g. i am currently trying my hand a developing a compressor to compress the first 10^8 bytes of wikipedia for the hutter prize (http://www.hutter1.net/prize/index.htm)

I also have a few older projects i have on the back burner which i go back to when i get stuck…

#5

This post is a bit late, but just in case you still have the coders block:

If I get stuck in front of eclipse without any motivation, I find that listening to old Commodore64 and Commodore Amiga tunes gets me going again. I used to program on those computers in the 80’s and early 90’s, and listening to the game- and demo-tunes from that era gets me right back in the mood. This probably will only work if you have some kind of nostalgic relation to that music though :wink:

Slay Radio ( http://www.slayradio.org ) plays some good tunes from that period if you want to have a listen.

#6

jeje…

Maybe it’s a show of our age, but I prefer to listen SPC files (SNES music) when programing. Not that I programmed SNES, but played a lot of it.

Rafael.-

#7

Heh - I found recently listening to the sound track from XenonII on the Amiga has gotten me all keen on writing an old school shmup :o)

I don’t even like hip-hop but that Bomb the Bass track is just so goddamed catchy.

#8

After more than a year away from game programming I’ve returned, my target is to make some little games for cells, and I’m already preparing myself for this year’s J4K.

Good to know that the community is still strong… I will post my advancements in the Games’ Showcase.