What (de)motivates you guys? What do you do to keep yourself motivated?
I always get demotivated when i loose track of my thinking process / what i was doing at the moment (f.ex. go to mountains for a full week, or take a break from programming because of education).
Every time i start a new project, the class count quickly goes up to ~50 classes(each one having quite some code), so i easily forget what i was doing after some time not coding (thats also why i don’t release any finished games). I recently (for my current project, which is STS, but from scratch) started leaving long todo notes for myself in the comments and some helpful hints to get me back on the track. It REALLY helps. I can basically start making new code instantly, instead of figuring out where i left and what needs to be done.
Most IDEs support:
//to-do: note to self
I should use the feature more often…
What motivates me? A shiny new thing.
Motivating:
- Implementing cool new features to my game. 8)
- Finding the solution to a problem that bugged me for hours.
- I really love to get lost while coding for hours. It’s this kind of flow state. I always wonder where the time has gone, but I enjoy it.
Demotivating:
- Fixing all the bugs this super cool new feature from before caused
- Finding a bug in some part of my code where at the time I wrote it I knew it wasn’t the right thing to do, but I still did it, because I was too lazy and was like “ah well, I will get back to that later and make it beautiful”. Those are the times I hate myself
- Not reaching a self-imposed deadline and realizing that the estimation was waaay too optimistic.
Implementing a new feature ! -Motivating
Realising what else you have to do to implement said feature -Demotivating!
Finally adding that new feature! -Motivating
Discovering a horrendous bug that you cannot solve -Demotivating…
People. Literally just people.
I can’t code and it puts me off for hours /days when someone is just getting on my nerves.
I can’t code properly without people in the same room a few times a day. :emo:
Motivations:
- Other people playing my game.
- When an awesome idea I had actually works, it motivates me to work even more.
- Seeing the vision of something in my head become a real (well, digital) thing.
- Positive reviews on Steam and general moral support from fans
- When I sell more copies than usual in a day.
- Visual progress!
- Making really awesome advancements in my coding style, that improves my coding overall.
Demotivations:
- When I get a negative review on Steam for something completely retarded. Like my Early Access game “not being completed yet.” (huh?)
- Spending all day working on something that you end up scrapping.
- Spending all day trying to optimize a system and really just spinning your wheels.
- When I’ve overworked myself to the point doing basic math is complicated, and I can’t seem to get anything done.
- Fixing boring (usually non-game mechanic) bugs, like, the kind that really aren’t that big of a deal but are a pest to hammer out and exhausting to work through. (Something like “Why does this texture bleed only sometimes, and I can’t replicate it?” or “Why does this fire particle sometimes randomly fling off the map?”)
- When I sell no copies of my game what so ever in a day. (It’s rare, but it happens sometimes)
You bastard, be happy you’re selling a game. good luck with that btw