No motivation

No motivation

Tobias Dammers

Member #2,604

August 2002

Neil Black said:

I don't know how to design software...

Here's something that works well for me.
1. Write a functional design. This means no technical details: Just describe the program as you envision it, from a user's perspective. A good functional design contains no hints at any programming languages, libraries, syntax constructs or even a programming paradigm.
2. Once you have a rough version of the functional design, write a technical design. This is where you describe how you plan to implement the functionality outlined in the functional design: which programming language to use, which libraries, how to structure the code, which classes you will have and what their properties, methods, and interactions are, etc.
3. Implement the technical design.

In practice, these happen in parallel rather than serial, that is, you start writing the functional design, and when you have enough to make for a decent prototype, you decide how to implement it and do it, and while you're doing this, new ideas will pop up, you'll scrap ideas that turn out too complicated, you refactor, etc., and all these ideas and decisions will go back into the functional and technical design.

And then there's the point where no major functional changes are going to happen, and the technical framework is more or less stable; this is the point where I let go of them both and just keep "riding the wave".

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Me make music: Triofobie
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"We need Tobias and his awesome trombone, too." - Johan Halmén

Dennis

Member #1,090

July 2003

Regaining motivation sometimes works for me like this: Force myself to do absolutely nothing for a whole day. Works only on weekends, I sleep until I wake up naturally, have breakfast and then sit down in a comfortable chair and stare out the window into the sky.

--- 0xDB | @dennisbusch_de ---

Arthur Kalliokoski

Second in Command

February 2005

Going fishing isn't nearly so boring.

They all watch too much MSNBC... they get ideas.

CursedTyrant

Member #7,080

April 2006

True, provided the weather's any good. It's been particularly awful around here lately.

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[My Website] | [My YouTube Channel]

Trezker

Member #1,739

December 2001

I think a good thing to try if you have no motivation is to stay away from any computer for a whole day, including phones and other gadgets.

Spend the whole day on your feet instead of your ass.

[My github]

relpatseht

Member #5,034

September 2004

If you need motivation, playtest, even when you have almost nothing to show.

Any one person probably can't come up with all the ideas necessary to make a complete game and probably doesn't have the will power to see the whole thing through from start to finish. Have people play what you have. They'll give you so many new ideas to steal and prune to your liking and the motivation to show them something new every week or so.

Secret projects never last more than a month or so. Work in public and make sure you can see and hear the feedback.

ImLeftFooted

Member #3,935

October 2003

You could start harvesting bitcoin. To get started, why don't you buy some? I'll sell you my bitcoins for $1 each.

How is my posting?

Arthur Kalliokoski

Second in Command

February 2005

#include <stdio.h>
int main(void)
{
  for(;;)
      printf("I can haz bitcoin!\n");
  return 0;  //keep the compiler happy
}

They all watch too much MSNBC... they get ideas.

type568

Member #8,381

March 2007

You're lacking a newline at the end of the code :-/