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| No motivation |
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CursedTyrant
Member #7,080
April 2006
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I've been writing small scripts/tiny algorithms or ideas, but I just can't get into anything bigger than a bomberman clone (and I couldn't even bother to finish that when I tried, though I was coding it in Flash, which I highly dislike) without losing motivation and quitting. Lately, I can't even start anything at all. I'd write a small, fun game, but immediately I can find hundreds of issues I'd have with it that just demotivate me before I even start coding. Graphics for one. I just can't seem to make pretty graphics. Sure, one or two pieces of nice gfx here and there, but not enough to make a game. I could use placeholders, but I don't like having to rely on those. That is, however, not even the biggest issue here. I simply can't get anything started. I have a few ideas, but every one of them is just too big to make by myself, or too complicated (I know I'd find a way to do it eventually, but the thought of spending weeks trying to figure something out really bothers me in my current state of mind; I just need to see progress). Any advice on what to do to resolve my current situation? It's been like this for half a year (or more) now. I love coding games, but I just can't bring myself to do it lately. I suppose it's the sheer amount of unfinished stuff and the realization that most of the projects I'd want to do are just too big for one person. And I don't want to do another Tetris clone. Already did that once. Heck, I don't even have the will to do anything really, really small. --------- |
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OnlineCop
Member #7,919
October 2006
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Most of what we've done here when we've run into the same motivational snag is to start some sort of Monday project. (Search for it: we've had dozens, some even sorta successful.) When that happens, you get a group of people willing to work on a project with you. They are waiting for YOU to finish your work, and then you can take a breather while someone else works on their own portions. Example: Some can work on the graphics engine. Some can work on the physics engine. Some work on sounds. Somewhere in there, an artist or two contribute, then leave again. Things just start falling into place, or it falls apart. If they fall into place, it keeps you motivated. If it falls apart, then you're no worse off, other than having lost some time. But if it's "completed enough" you can always put that into your docket of projects!
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Matthew Leverton
Supreme Loser
January 1999
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Find a new hobby that you enjoy enough to actually do. |
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imaxcs
Member #4,036
November 2003
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I know this feeling quite well. Here's my take on it: So after years of beginning and not finishing projects/games, I think I have reached a level where I can tell what works for me and what doesn't. So here are is a personal list of things I follow and would suggest to others:
That's it from me. I could probably add a few more (and will, when they come to mind).
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Arthur Kalliokoski
Second in Command
February 2005
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I'd say having even a simple breakout clone completely done would be quite educational, even if nobody plays it. It'll give you needed experience toward a "good" game. "Completely done" includes installer (if any), setup screens, splash screens, victory screens, high scores, ability to set screen modes, sounds, etc. etc. They all watch too much MSNBC... they get ideas. |
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Trezker
Member #1,739
December 2001
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I'm currently experimenting with the effects on motivation from working full time as a programmer. The results from the first few months are skewed by the fact that travel times to and from work have been too long. So I can confidently say that commuting is definitely an energy killer. But Sweden celebrates a commuters day as if it was a good thing. "Yay, we have more commuters than ever before!" Who in their right mind would think people take a job in a different city because they love public transports? Especially considering our train system is so bad you can't ever trust it to be on time. |
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CursedTyrant
Member #7,080
April 2006
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imaxcs said: That's one of the reasons I never aimed for a simple game. I never did pong, pac-man, breakout or any other of these entry-level games. They just don't give me anything. I want to make games that are immersive. So much that the players tell their friends about it. I suppose I'm the same way. I want people to play my games and enjoy doing so, and tell their friends about it. Nothing motivates me better than having people (the more the better) say good things about stuff I've released. Quote: Don't aim too high. A good 2D space shooter or a jump'n'run is (in my book) way below a fully blown RPG or RTS, complexity-wise, but can still be immersive. I won't fool myself into thinking I can pull off a game of this magnitude ever again.
True, but it all boils down to graphics. I can't make good game graphics to save my life, and then there are sounds and music and what not. Even if I found people to do the latter, I won't find anyone to do the graphics without a working engine. Quote: Pick a niche: again, there are 1000s of breakout clones out there for pretty much every platform you can aim at. If you really want to make game that has been done so many times, be sure to have something that is unique. If you can't come up with something, choose another game. For example, I looked at the Android market and found that there were no good jump'n'run games out there. Most of them were dead simple and kept me entertained for less than a minute. So I went for that! True, I even have a couple good ideas. Unfortunately, they're all pretty complex. And simple just isn't gratifying enough for me. Quote: Try to set small goals, release often: I released my game when i had 4 levels finished. A few houndred people downloaded it, giving me good ratings but said they wanted more. That motivated me so much. Until now, the game has 12 levels and a few thousand downloads.
The mobile market doesn't really interest me, having no Android/iPhone myself (and emulators can ever only work so well). Still, you have to have those 4 levels finished and features implemented before you can release the game. I'm having trouble motivating myself to even begin coding. Quote: Don't think technology: if the platform you aim for (or for any other reason) requires you to learn a new language, SDK, API, whatever... LEARN IT! Don't let that first bump keep you from reaching your goals. Java and C# are so much better for game programming, btw...
I can't even begin a project in any language I already know. If I had to learn a new one to start coding, I wouldn't even try. Arthur Kalliokoski said: I'd say having even a simple breakout clone completely done would be quite educational, even if nobody plays it. It'll give you needed experience toward a "good" game. Probably so, but I'd still end up thinking of many new/advanced features to add, so it wouldn't be simple anymore. I just can't do simple, I suppose. I was thinking about a generic 2D shooter with some clever shader use, or perhaps something involving sci-fi subs, but I know I couldn't make all the graphics myself. It would be best if the gfx was 3D (easiest to make and render as sprites/animate), but 3D is too complex for me to learn well enough in a relatively short amount of time (even using XNA, which makes it really simple), even if only because I've never used a physics engine in 3D and I don't know how to use it efficiently and effectively (or at all). Also, I suck at Blender. Just too many things to learn, all at once. --------- |
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imaxcs
Member #4,036
November 2003
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OK, so you're a hard case... CursedTyrant said: True, but it all boils down to graphics.
One other thing I realized is that choosing the project/game you're going to do based on available resources. You can't draw? Use free graphics or go for the minimalist style. About music: once I felt my game was good enough to show to my friends, they actually started spreading the word a bit and a few weeks later, a friend of a friend contacted my via facebook and said he wanted to work on some music for free! That was great! Quote: True, I even have a couple good ideas. Unfortunately, they're all pretty complex. And simple just isn't gratifying enough for me. Choose a middle ground. Maybe your games are way too complex on the whole, but try to strip out non-essential elements as much as possible. Then it might be feasible to pull off but still fun to play. Once you're rolling, the motivation for putting other stuff in will come. Quote: Still, you have to have those 4 levels finished and features implemented before you can release the game. Yep, and I was honestly almost again doing the usual "lazy move". But shortly before I reached that point, I tried putting in the least amount of work to get it "playable". I cut corners, hacked some stuff in and released! The motivational gain from people playing this "beta"-version alone kept me going from then on. Quote: I'm having trouble motivating myself to even begin coding.
This is a roadblock. If you can't motivate yourself to even start, it's useless. You can't make something out of nothing. Sorry!
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Neil Roy
Member #2,229
April 2002
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I too suck at graphics, the key here is to download some 3D Rendering software. I happened to have TrueSpace on hand. It's awesome for creating graphics for your games, and they can look quite nice. Something as simple as a ball and paddles for a pong game for example can look really nice when rendered, and it's not difficult to create, with my software there's a sphere primitive already made, you just plop it on the screen throw in a light, set the colour of it etc... render, you're done. Same for the paddle, different shape, size & colour it, render, done. I even created the blocks for a breakout style game with it! Plopped down a cube, colour and lighting, render, done. Quick, easy and the result looks very nice. Other nice software for 2D stuff is Tile Studio, a free 2D package (just google it, you'll find it). It has some nice features that make creating 2D tiled graphics easy, has a built in level editor as well. Play around with it a little and you'll see what I mean. I've used it to create line sets for my Deluxe Pacman game that turned out looking VERY nice (you can have it fill in from a range of colours which can give you some nice rounded looks, with just one click). There are some basic games thare are generally recommended that new game programmers create. You don't have to release them, or even finish them 100%. The idea is they will teach you certain concepts as you program them. Here's the order, I'll try and remember... 1) Pong - teaches basic scoring, collision detection, player movement. 2) Breakout / arkanoid - similar to pong, but can have different levels with different arrangements of blocks, simple to do. 3) Tetris 4) Pacman - introduces enemies, simple AI. 4) Super Mario Bros - introduces larger levels, enemies, side scrolling, powerups etc I've done most of these except a mario bros style game. You could look at some of these games, or other games you have really enjoyed playing and maybe see if there's some twist you would like to add to it. Some ideas I have had I'll throw your way... I love games where you explores HUGE worlds that have a lot to look at, lots of details, interesting locations etc... so I thought about doing up a 2D space game like that, HUGE galaxy, randomly generated with some rules about how it is created. Or perhaps something down to earth, a HUGE 2D world with forests, roads, buildings you can enter (that would perhaps load in a seperate "in house" view) etc... something really large (with various types of vehicals you could buy/steal, whatever.... the world would be randomly generated again, with certain rules set... like you generate roads, houses must be next to a road, perhaps houses prefer to be closer to lakes, the more houses you have, the greater chance for other buildings like buisnesses, churches etc... you get the picture, ruins in the game... not sure what the game would be about, but... use your imagination. One idea I had for a space game was one where you woke up on a space craft drifting in space and you lost your memory. The objective of the game would be to find out how you ended up drifting in space, how you lost your memory, who you are etc... at the end of the story, I wanted to have time travel mixxed into the plot, the secret would be that you're a scientist who invented time travel, it has fell into the wrong hands, and using it could destroy the world as you know it, the solution at the end of the game would be that you would have to kill yourself to stop the terrible events from unfolding. Anyhow, if someone decides to make this, let me know. SHould actually start a game idea thread to help people out, just throw your ideas in there... hmmm... --- |
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CursedTyrant
Member #7,080
April 2006
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I was actually quite good at 3D at one point, but I forgot most of it. I know about Tile Studio and I'm actually using it myself for testing maps. It's quite nice. I prefer Graphics Gale or a paletted set up of The Gimp for making graphics, however. Still, pixel art can only get you so far. Neil Roy said: There are some basic games thare are generally recommended that new game programmers create.
Ahem, not exactly a new programmer here. I could probably throw a couple of ideas as well, so a thread might be nice. After all, I doubt I'll ever create those games, so why not share. Always wanted to make a really big space exploration game, but that's too huge of a project even for a small team. I had an idea for a 3D space racer, with nice shaders and stuff, and interesting laps. For example, flying through the center of a small moon, asteroid belts, some sort of plasma storms, nebulae, etc. Even started it. Didn't get very far. I still don't know enough about coding 3D. --------- |
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Tobias Dammers
Member #2,604
August 2002
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I found that motivation stays high if you start out with a ridiculously small scope, finish that (with all the polishing it might need), and only then start adding new features. With most things, you can have something working within a week (many of my projects took less than a day to arrive at a usable first version, but those were not games), and then build from there. --- |
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CursedTyrant
Member #7,080
April 2006
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That is a good idea, but a major downside I can see with that approach is that building on top of existing code and adding new features can really mess up the whole code structure (especially if you just want to quickly hack together something usable), and you end up rewriting a major portion of your game. Then again, designing everything to be complex from the beginning is just as bad, because the project looks like it'll never get done. I'm currently trying to learn Blender a bit better, and it might not be impossible considering the fact that the new Blender interface is not as insane as the old one. If I can make fairly good looking graphics (be it as rendered sprites or models), then I could probably make a quick shooter or something using those. --------- |
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van_houtte
Member #11,605
January 2010
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find something else to do ----- Sometimes you may have to send 3-4 messages |
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Neil Roy
Member #2,229
April 2002
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I can't stand Blender. You can now download Truespace 7 for free. Microsoft bought out Caligari(sp?) and then release TS7 for free, which I was impressed with... up until they stopped supporting it, effectively killing my favorite renderer, still, it is out there available for free, which is nice. If you can get an older version of it I recommend Truespace 6 or earlier myself. This could give you something to create, how about creating your own program with allegro that helps you create graphics for your games? --- |
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james_lohr
Member #1,947
February 2002
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Trezker said: I'm currently experimenting with the effects on motivation from working full time as a programmer. For me, becoming a professional coder has killed my productivity for one reason alone: as a professional I'm obsessed with best practises an doing things properly. I look back on the games I wrote as a kid with mixed emotions: I have a sort of nostalgic pity for how naive and poor my coding used to be, but I'm also slightly in awe of how much I actually got done, despite having zero appreciation for best practises (I didn't even use indents!). Sure, the game I'm writing at the moment is beautifully written, and I'll never scrap it on the grounds of poor maintainability (like some of my previous projects), but hells teeth progress is slow.
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William Labbett
Member #4,486
March 2004
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You can achieve a lot without great skill : {"name":"603844","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/f\/4\/f4b665f8802381703740668430e792cd.png","w":637,"h":371,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/f\/4\/f4b665f8802381703740668430e792cd"} Maybe you ca /* edit n */ learn how to draw.
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Arthur Kalliokoski
Second in Command
February 2005
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[EDIT] I'm having a motivation problem at the moment. I know what I need to do, technically, it's just that the busywork in my skull is more than I can bear at the moment. I'm trying to get out of the rut by doing things I haven't done in a good while, such as watching movies, searching for programming info on the web, etc. Hopefully it won't last more than two or three days. They all watch too much MSNBC... they get ideas. |
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Tobias Dammers
Member #2,604
August 2002
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CursedTyrant said: That is a good idea, but a major downside I can see with that approach is that building on top of existing code and adding new features can really mess up the whole code structure (especially if you just want to quickly hack together something usable), and you end up rewriting a major portion of your game. Refactor early, refactor often. And stay open-minded when it comes to paradigms. --- |
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GullRaDriel
Member #3,861
September 2003
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Just go and kill yourself. You're no more needed if you can't pull your fingers out of your arse by yourself. Life isn't like school studies. There are no more some looking at your back. Be your own prosecutor. Just write down a schedule for doing things, and do these damn things in time !! What else do you want me to tell you hmmmm Move on or keep acting like a slaughter sheep. That's all that is to say.
"Code is like shit - it only smells if it is not yours" |
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Tobias Dammers
Member #2,604
August 2002
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GullRaDriel said: Just write down a schedule for doing things, and do these damn things in time !!
{"name":"time_management.png","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/a\/5\/a5741a0000013adf3dcc7d6faa107f61.png","w":630,"h":280,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/a\/5\/a5741a0000013adf3dcc7d6faa107f61"} --- |
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Johan Halmén
Member #1,550
September 2001
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 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Years of thorough research have revealed that what people find beautiful about the Mandelbrot set is not the set itself, but all the rest. |
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type568
Member #8,381
March 2007
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Tobias Dammers said: That said, procrastination is not a bad thing by itself. If you always finish everything you start, and always deliver everything in time, you're inevitable doing unnecessary work. So true, especially true for emotional people. Yet, "fucking around" since 8 am on daily basis is rather not likely to produce "good results", although there gotta be exceptions. The overall "correct" behaviour does lie somewhere in the middle of army discipline and what's on the comics.
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MiquelFire
Member #3,110
January 2003
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Neil Roy said: 1) Pong - teaches basic scoring, collision detection, player movement. 2) Breakout / arkanoid - similar to pong, but can have different levels with different arrangements of blocks, simple to do. 3) Tetris 4) Pacman - introduces enemies, simple AI. 5) Super Mario Bros - introduces larger levels, enemies, side scrolling, powerups etc Notice you didn't give a reason for Tetris. Does it teach you anything? --- |
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Neil Roy
Member #2,229
April 2002
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Nothing.... don't bother. LMAO.... there used to be a list someone created, I just recall that was in there, I don't remember the reason why. Moving blocks, timers perhaps... <shrug> Just shut up and make the damn thing!!! The version I made I added a twist to it, each line you make shows a little more of a picture in the background. The level ends when you reveal the entire picture. I had various pictures I chose where you couldn't be sure what they were until most of them were created.... I also created an adult set of images for it as well. It's fun to take these old games and try and make them yourself with your own twist on them. My tetris game isn't complete, I stopped work on it, but it does work and is playable. I think I am just missing the score or something, I have more ideas for it I was going to work on it again that could make it even more fun. I just don't call it "Tetris" as the company that owns the copyright loves to sue, or at least they did years ago (anything with "tris" in it) so mine is just called "BLOC!" Edit: Here's a screenshot of it (note the date I last worked on it, heheh) It's no coincidence where that blue block ended up. --- |
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GameCreator
Member #2,541
July 2002
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You may have been referring to this:
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I don't have a magic wand.
