Losing projects

Miscellaneous Topics
#1

Do you guys ever make a project, and give up on it? This has happened to me allot of times now. Like, allot. I mostly give up on them because I get tired of doing the same idea over and over. I restart because of allot of reasons. Maybe its because I implemented something sloppy into a open source engine and I think I could have done it better. Sometimes its because its not getting any popularity and I feel it should be put away until some other day. Sometimes its because I don’t know how to do something and now I do.

Either way, I’ve stopped allot of projects. Blue machine, Embers Engine, Poss Engine, Journey to the Aether, The secret of Anna, Pablo, SlideFest, Space Platform, MineUniverse, C4RT9, and I can name many others. I have literally never made or finished a game in the 5 years I have been programming, and you may think that its because I never released it, but I never ever got past stuff like entity framework and world mechanics. I’ve made allot of stories and broken game engines, but thats about it…

I’ve tried starting small but they turn out worse, because I’m not really interested in small games.

#2

Yes. I have made projects and gave up on them. I mean, worse case scenario, you become a better programmer and you move on. However, I realize you’ve used this place as your own personal blog, and that much dead weight has already showed a lot about how dedicated you are to individual projects. I guess the reality is, the moment the game making process isn’t fun anymore, you move on to the next project to feel that drive. However, small or big project, the feeling that causes you to move from project to project will continue.

I am going to give you some advice…

If you want to complete the game, you have to force yourself to do all the “dirty work”. The feeling of accomplishment is going to be well worth it once you complete your games. It isn’t an easy process, but it is rewarding once the work is put in. Making a graveyard of half- finished projects becomes an anchor after a while.

Come on, just push for that last 10%, and break free into the wind :wink:

#3

Fear the monstrous ALOT!

Sorry, a little off-topic.

Back on-topic: you should see my programming folder… littered with abandoned projects. Motivation is the most difficult part of programming :frowning:

#4

The way I stay motivated is I pretend I’m getting positive feedback and then tell myself that people are waiting to see what I’ll do next so I gotta get an update out today to please the crowd. While, in reality, not many people care. haha

Also, maybe even write dev logs. So, your motivation would be, if I don’t program my blog fails or something.

Oh, and another thing is promising yourself money when in reality you know your not going to get any. Back when I was in my Project Raft stage, all I thought about was making money. That caused me to rush the project and give the people a pile of shit. I don’t recommend this method.

Maybe make games that you like playing? Back when I first started making games I would ask my brother what type of game he would want to play with me and then I’d go make that game and play with him. Those were the days man. Those were the days. :stuck_out_tongue:

#5

Eventually you’ll work out your own way around this. I have a massive folder of unfinished projects.

#1 Rule: Don’t delete anything unless you’ve rewritten identical functionality in a better way. You’ll never know if you might find a use for it again.

Sometimes I find myself coming back to old projects a few months later, hoping to start work again, but then being hit by a wall of horrible code. It’s not that it was ugly at the time, it’s just that in the months I was away from the project, I learnt new patterns of code that are much cleaner and easier to understand.

When you get more comfortable programming (find your favourite patterns etc.), the amount of crap code you write decreases, making it easier to pick up a project later and continue work.

Probably the best way to finish a project is to cut and refine. Cut out anything that you don’t 100% need for a good game, and refine what’s left until you have something playable and fun. Practice this by participating in Ludum Dares.

#6

I found that by starting and never finishing multiple projects, I began to get a better grasp of whats really involved in every single aspect or a project. Each project I abandoned I lowered my expectations/scope (not in quality, just being less ambitious and more picky about what I wanted my final product to be) untill I eventually finished something. Then you can slowly begin to go back up in terms of ambition.

#7

My life exists of starting projects and then abandoning it.

#8

Icing on my cake:

Let me tell you how many projects I have done: Many.

Let me tell you how successful I am when it comes to finishing it: Very few.

Look at my profile and compare that to how many projects that was left abandoned above. I call those projects “learning curves”, instead of “abandoned projects”. They helped me to create an RPG that I loved dearly in my latest projects, and I can’t thank my old projects enough for that. They taught me many things that I had never would have thought of accomplishing when it comes to programming in Java. Each of them, contributing to the game logics and mechanics behind my latest game, have a role to fulfill, and it is our duty (the programmer’s duty) to bring the fulfilling to fruition.

Got tired of how many projects you’ve abandoned? Lost motivation? Move on, and repeat from zero. Always a good place to start afresh is from a clean slate and a peace of mind. If you’re still suffering from this, then you need to cut down on some of your motivation. Too much motivation can also do harm.

Tell this to yourself: DIVIDE AND CONQUER.

You start with a simple, easy concept, like a game rule. Start from there. Then mold that into something you wanted it to be. Mold it into a bottle shape, it becomes a bottle. Mold it into a human toy, it then becomes a human toy. It is like water, fast and free-flowing, slow and easy-going. Be water, my friend. Your little concept will start to evolve into a wonderful game mechanic one day.

#9

I’ve made and abandoned projects too. One time I deleted a project because I thought “eh, the way I wrote my code is very ugly. Maybe I could just rewrite all of it, but I might as well just start from scratch…” so I did. Then I found out that I’ve written code that was in the old project that I wasn’t able to redo. So I tried going to the Recycle Bin to see if my old project was there. It wasn’t. I may have emptied it. I instantly regretted it. (Although a very small portion of the code survived, thanks to me asking a question ;))

Nowadays I don’t delete projects just because I lost motivation. I simply leave it there. Who knows? Maybe I’ll come back to it, and actually finish a game :slight_smile:

#10

I test ideas by prototyping. I create fast a simple testbed, play around it and if it’s feels like a bad idea, I’ll throw it away. If it’s feels good I’ll start a new project and write it again, but with better code structures, assets etc.

I don’t count those thrashed protos as lost projects, they are created only for testing something as fast as possible.

#11

We’ve abandoned tons of projects. Sometimes we just don’t like the idea after we get a certain distance with it and decide it’s not fun after all. Sometimes we realise it’s going to take too long to make and stop.

Cas :slight_smile:

#12

In the past year I have found a very helpful method to keep me somewhat motivated:

I basically am writing a 2D engine and at the same time I am writing small arcade remakes using my engine.

This gives me some variation in my work, and I actually get small projects done.
So while I produce very small games (Snake, Tetris etc) I am making an engine that I will later use to make my big game idea!

This is really working well for me because I quickly get tired of game-making and would rather make boilerplate code (yeah I’m backwards like that) and thus I can switch back and forth :slight_smile:

But the most important part is to start small and experience the feeling of getting something finished :slight_smile:

#13

We must start advocating the “Divide and Conquer” method. It works wonders for people like me.

#14

The only way I finish projects is if someone else is relying on me. For instance, I had a tutorial series. If I didn’t write code and then record a video and upload it, I would feel guilty and people would ask where the video for today is. I also make games for JumpButton Studios and I tell myself that maybe someday we’ll make an awesome game, and I want to be a part of that.

#15

Or, you know, just use a source control system. Svn, Git and Perforce are all available in free flavours with integration with your favorite IDE.

#16

Specifically speaking, you can go ahead and sign up for GitHub for Students Plan. From what I can tell, you can have 2 years of private repositories on GitHub, but also you get to host your Git-controlled projects for free.

#17

Bitbucket.org has free unlimited private repos too.

#18

That I didn’t know.

#19

You could also just get a large flash drive and store all your old projects on there. The only issue is you might lose the flash drive (I’ve done this before a lot…), but its much easier to transfer projects between computers and you don’t need to have another online account.

#20

First off, you have worked really hard on Blue machine and It looks neat even if there are a ton of files. What I did was start off with a simple idea and keep applying the knowledge I gain to it(Flubber Space). It may only be 500 lines of code(Is that a lot compared to other basic games?), but keep your ideas in a small journal that you look back at every now and then. When I first started, I had page after page of cool ideas, but I couldn’t even make a basic game loop with Java2D.

Short Answer: You’ve done a lot of “tests”, and should stick to somthing small, and make it as big as you wanted. Doesn’t everything start off small? :point: