the shame of giving up

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piksil_demon

Guest
so ive sinked about a week into a project that had to many glitches, and decided to abandon it. i was really proud of it to start with but it just got worse and worse until it was unplayable. I know i could make it better if i rebuild it but its kinda made me sad.

am i the only one thats dealt with this? is it better to continue with the project, or return to it after youve cleared your mind of it, and maybe do another project?
 

jazzzar

Member
I do drop projects a lot, i actually only published one game with 4 years of using game maker, losing motivation is the main thing, however you should not give up on a project you believe in, if you think it's cool you should definitely keep going, maybe yeah, you need to clear your mind of it and get back to it after some time, but never leave it in the dust if it's something worth, keep in mind that everything needs hard work and dedication... good luck
 
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Jaqueta

Guest
Nope, that's very common, and there's no shame about it, because if you realize what your mistakes where, you won't commit then again.
Now, if you remake the game, or just start another one, is completely up to you, I suggest going to a new one, fresh air, with a lower "budget", so it'll be easier to finish this one. But if you fell better by remaking the old one, there's no problem at all.

I use GameMaker since 2010, and from try to guess how many games I released?

Spoiler: Six
Two of them where Alpha versions only, and ZERO came to my expectations.
The total number of games that I started develop and never finished?

Spoiler: I lost the count, but it's probably something about 50 or something like that.

Dropping projects is more common than you think, and felling bad about it, won't bring you any benefits. Just learn from your mistakes and keep moving. Soon enough, you'll have an awesome game released and you'll be very proud about it.
 
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piksil_demon

Guest
[QUOTE="Jaqueta, post: 47014, member: 1215" But if you fell better by remaking the old one, there's no problem at all.[/QUOTE]
i like remaking old ones just to teach myself the mechanics (pac-man for example is teaching me basic path finding) but i usually have one unique project i try to commit to
 
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Jaqueta

Guest
[QUOTE="Jaqueta, post: 47014, member: 1215" But if you fell better by remaking the old one, there's no problem at all.
i like remaking old ones just to teach myself the mechanics (pac-man for example is teaching me basic path finding) but i usually have one unique project i try to commit to[/QUOTE]
That's cool, I wish I had more time to do that myself, but job and stuff... ;-;

I updated my post with a bit of more tips fore you.
 

Nocturne

Friendly Tyrant
Forum Staff
Admin
pfffff... I've sunk months (years?) into projects that have never seen the light of day! Such is life. As long as you have fun making them who cares? Now, if your life depends on it you have problems but if you're making stuff beacuse you enjoy it and it's a hobby or simply a way of getting some pocket money, then it's not big deal. I think all game devs have a hard drive full of half baked projects...

I will say this though... If yo leave a project that is quite far along for more than a couple of weeks, then you'll probably never come back to it. It's REALLY HARD to pick up a project you left a long time ago, and every week you leave it makes it harder. (imho)
 

FrostyCat

Redemption Seeker
What you should really be ashamed of is how many times you asked for bailouts on the GMC before realizing that the project is beyond your means.

Get a clue and set your basics in order before attempting a dream project. If it means doing tutorials, starting with smaller projects, self-studying on the side or making small-scale prototypes first, so be it. You know what being unprepared feels like now, be prepared next time.
 

Sabnock

Member
i think we all do this and put it down to experience and lessons learnt. hell i'm only now doing projects i started and abandoned 20 years ago, or more if i'm honest :D

on the flip side if you were proud of it think how great you'll feel if you sift and sort the problems and get it complete ;)
 
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Alessio

Guest
I would never abandon a project unless it became an unmanageable one. I guess like this time. If you start over you probably do better.
 
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CedSharp

Guest
Imagine games just like pets :D Some of them you like, Some of them you really need to abandon. So here are my pets that I abandoned.
  1. Dog.(He was sick).
  2. Cat.(Drinks a lot of milk).
  3. Dog again(Ugly).
  4. Birds(Stayed for years but then abandoned them because a lot of rats made homes behind there cage)
  5. Rabbit(Peed on my clothes before school :/ (I still hate him...))
  6. 2 new Rabbits (Digging a lot of holes and they were Ugly)
  7. Dog(It wasn't his fault :'( I changed the house and left him there . *crys*)
  8. Fish (Died because I didn't know you have to change water from time to time and I didn't know what they eat, Well he died because of hunger of course :p )
And they are basicly my games :D
That's quite an accurate way of describing my own abandons ~
You have the perfect analogy my friend :)

But you definitly can't ommit that one dog you had that was charming, that you loved, and who loved you, and everything was perfect.... but then one day... a car... All of a sudden no more love :/
( for those wondering, that translates to my hard drive failing and losing all my work xD )
 

Roa

Member
I'm with Noc. I have more fun just making stuff and seeing whats within my grasp. My stopping point is almost always when it comes down to making an actual game out of what I put together. Assets and design are my stumbling blocks. I could make almost any game otherwise. It just matters that you're enjoying the time I guess, unless you want to make money.
 

GMWolf

aka fel666
Im a year into the development of a project.
The current code base is only 1 month old because i keep making new projects after i realize i did it wrong before.
On top of that, just today, i deleted a dozen classes i created (this is a java project).

Thats just one project! The amount of code i write and i just abandon is crazy high! (Good thing that harddrive space is cheap these days!).
I think thats the same with most programmers, and you just have to accept it!
 

Ehsan

Pirates vs Clones
Imagine games just like pets :D Some of them you like, Some of them you really need to abandon. So here are my pets that I abandoned.
  1. Dog.(He was sick).
  2. Cat.(Drinks a lot of milk).
  3. Dog again(Ugly).
  4. Birds(Stayed for years but then abandoned them because a lot of rats made homes behind there cage)
  5. Rabbit(Peed on my clothes before school :/ (I still hate him...))
  6. 2 new Rabbits (Digging a lot of holes and they were Ugly)
  7. Dog(It wasn't his fault :'( I changed the house and left him there . *crys*)
  8. Fish (Died because I didn't know you have to change water from time to time and I didn't know what they eat, Well he died because of hunger of course :p )
And they are basicly my games :D
0_0 those poor animals! Read what Frostycat said, please! :(
 
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jackhigh24

Guest
iv only gave up on one game and iv finished and polished to such an extent that everyone i showed it to wanted me to release it so they could buy it, but it was the first game i made with game maker and only made it to learn, i know i polished it but that was learning how to polish a game, i will never release it i dont think, all the rest of my game im good with still, just wish i could write only one at once, instead i do a bit of them all every day, still got 3 finished though and out, just another 10 to finish plus the new ones iv thought up while working on them.
 
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CedSharp

Guest
I'm not a game maker. What I love is, in my free time, trying to solve challenges. The couple small projects I made all got abandonned right when the challenge in question got solved. Everything else is just boring without some kind of source of motivation.
I've found just recently a very motivating source: My asset is currently 1rst top rated on MarketPlace, and I had started a re-make more optimized for it. So I decided to give it a go... non-stop since a week now haha.
Probably won't happen eitherway, I'll end up releasing a demo and never finish it like usual.
 
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TDSrock

Guest
I enjoy the building off games. I've written a pong game a long time ago before I knew what classes were(talking about object oriented programming (C# using the XNA engine, to be exact)) It worked like a charm but looking back I'm a bit upset with myself.

One of my projects that has been in the oven for about 3 years now was an RPG platformer game. I started building on it around when I was learning GML. So I made the common mistake of working on a dream project before taking the time to learn gml proper.
The project was put on hold after about 3-4 months of proper dev time and then about 6 months ago it was brought back to life and re-purposed for a project at Uni. It became Vilom Chronicles(See link sig if you want to check out the source of that game, I just have it there incase anyone wants to look at it).
The bottom line is. Keep your old project around for nostalgia and re-purposing. You might have had a brilliant way to solve a specific problem in your old project. If the problem ever crops up you can grab your old code, tweak it a bit and it'll be good to go.
But most importantly. Learn. Everything you build is a learning experience.
 
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jackhigh24

Guest
people are posting to fast in this today, its messing my mind up, kindofgames quoted something thats not there then so i refreshed still was not there then did it again and craps loads was there plus a load of new stuff, :confused: o_O ;) :).
 
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Blackened

Guest
if you're making stuff beacuse you enjoy it and it's a hobby or simply a way of getting some pocket money, then it's not big deal.
Wait! We can make money doing this? :cool:

I think all game devs have a hard drive full of half baked projects...
Hahaha! You just described the contents of my hard drive. The new forum software must be really powerful! :p

I will say this though... If you leave a project that is quite far along for more than a couple of weeks, then you'll probably never come back to it. It's REALLY HARD to pick up a project you left a long time ago, and every week you leave it makes it harder. (imho)
Oh ain't that the truth though. So totally been there before. Even if you comment things out that doesn't necessarily mean that your head is immediately going to be back in the game. Spare yourself that agony, your brain will thank you for it.

@piksil_demon: I've been working on my main project for at least 2 years now and everything that you have been dealing with, I have dealt with as well at some point in time. You are not alone. Like jazzzar, I too will do drop projects and sometimes they may even be related to, or even indirectly related to my main project. Mix things up a bit, keep it fresh and always keep your eyes on the prize. You'll make it. Have FUN.
-Bikkie
 

Nocturne

Friendly Tyrant
Forum Staff
Admin
What I love is, in my free time, trying to solve challenges.
This! Yep, that's me! In about 16 hours I churned out a full game (my OSG Jam entry) because it was a real challenge and that motivated me to really work at it... Then I have to add in some menu code to my main project, which is something I can do with my eyes closed, and it takes a week... :(
 

GMWolf

aka fel666
My project folders:
GMProjects: 464 MB
Java projects: 54.3 MB (no images and such)
Blender Projects: 2.36 GB (lots of images and volume caches)
Unity Projects: 42.1MB
Rust Projects: 8.20 MB
C Projects: 11.2 MB

And its fair to say 99 % of that has never been released.
 

Nocturne

Friendly Tyrant
Forum Staff
Admin
My GM Studio projects folder clocks up 4.15 GB... and my GM 7/8/8.1 folder is another 4.04GB... so 8GB of projects, of which about 5 projects have actually been finished.

Don't know whether to laugh or cry now...
 
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jackhigh24

Guest
@Fel666 i saw your and thought thats a lot so went and looked at mine just for gm projects it 3.70GB 110,943 Files, 9,451 Folders lol and iv not really give up on any, a lot of them are just making something for a challenge and might come in useful one day.
 

JacobV

Member
I spent almost 6 months working on a top-down shooter game, pouring all my time and effort into it and accumulating hundreds and hundreds of assets, objects, and lines of code. After 6 months of work, I realized that I wasn't enjoying making the game anymore, and that it was a confused, mediocre mess; so I halted development. After that, I tried to make an action platformer, but found I had no interest in that either...After a few weeks, I was playing some old arcade games when I got some inspiration for my old project. So I restarted development, building the game up from scratch, keeping everything I liked and scrapping everything I didn't; now I have a much more focused game, and something I enjoy developing. So sometimes, giving a project a break for a while can actually result in a better outcome.
 
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jackhigh24

Guest
well iv just give up right now, bloody thing, switch statements have ether just gone weird on me or im to tired, try again when mind is fresh and this thread slows down, which ever comes first.
 

Roa

Member
My GM Studio projects folder clocks up 4.15 GB... and my GM 7/8/8.1 folder is another 4.04GB... so 8GB of projects, of which about 5 projects have actually been finished.

Don't know whether to laugh or cry now...
WOW, and I thought I was extreme with my 3.5 gigs and over 1100 indexed projects over 10 years XD At least I feel better.
 
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piksil_demon

Guest
Do you want to hear more stories about my abandoned animals ? I abandoned a lot of things in life including a PSP :D, Well I forget it in my dad's car when he wanted to sell it! Am I the unluckiest person with pets and consoles ?
ok, abandoning animals i can understand
BUT A PSP! that poor archaic technology. it donst deserve that :'(
 
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jackhigh24

Guest
crawl is a good word there, especial if you consider frostys advice and i would as iv notice the same.
 

JacPete

Member
if i would get to a point where an game is unplayable, i would step for step rip off the content that is too hard. then i would let the rest stay. then i take care of the ripped content and make it more player friendly. afterwards i put it back in. if its still unplayable iam going to start over. a work of a week is not so much time. if the idea is good, i would go to rebuild from the beginning. but in the most cases you can fix everything just by making some smal changes.
and always backup youre work. things that sound great the one day can turn to a crime scene of violation of the game at the next morning.
 
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piksil_demon

Guest
It is not my fault, My dad was selling the car and he get me with him, I brought my PSP to play in the road and then when they sold/exchanged the cars, My PSP was in the old car, And I remembered the PSP after a month of the selling and I never got it back :( , I got a new one anyway :D
>=( you can replace friends, animals, and family. but no two video game console is exactly alike. repent for your evil actions!!! lol :p
 
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piksil_demon

Guest
I abandoned my Best Friend because he said GM is useless and Programming sucks...He deserve punching and kicking :D (Actually the punching and kicking was something personal not about the GM thing)


And now you know why I type "She/He", I thought FrostyCat is a girl, too, Or a frozen cat that i abandoned years ago :D (Well because she fell from the roof on a sharp pipe that instantly killed it)
whenever im not sure of the gender of someone i use s/he. or just they. if im wrong and they care enough im sure they'll tell me
 

GMWolf

aka fel666
@Fel666 i saw your and thought thats a lot so went and looked at mine just for gm projects it 3.70GB 110,943 Files, 9,451 Folders lol and iv not really give up on any, a lot of them are just making something for a challenge and might come in useful one day.
I think its because most of my projects dont use sprites... I like to work on logic.

[Edit]
Most importantly, this drive is only 1 year old. The amound of code I lost when changing PC is considerable.
But since I write much better code now, all this code isn't all that useful to me. (Though it did help me learn)
 
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jackhigh24

Guest
@Fel666 thats a lot for a year, mine is 3 and half years worth, i lost a drive well two drive but lucky im good with electronics so was able to recover nearly all my data.
 

JacPete

Member
@KingdomOfGamez must be hard to loose all these memorys, i lost once some family videos that where stored on disk. since then i got this paranoid thing to backup every byte i got xD but never give up ^^ you maybe lost the data but you still own the knowledge.
 

GMWolf

aka fel666
This thread is slowly gonna become how to back up data 101.

Before this happens, let me point this out:

Most of your project will not end up being published, or even finished. But that does NOT mean they are useless.
You learn from your mistakes. There is no denying that. If you abandon a project because of it being unsustainable and buggy, it means you made many mistakes. If you take the time to realise this, then suddenly, you learnt something thanks to that project you abandoned. Next time you start a project, you will improve in the areas you failed at in the last project.. An who knows? Maybe thats the one. The project!
 
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zircher

Guest
Only a meager 1.4 gig for me. But, I rarely feel shame because I learn something every time (even if the lesson is - that doesn't work.)
 

Coded Games

Member
Pretty normal. I have about a 50% success rate at starting a project and actually finishing it. Although I have gotten significantly better at finishing what I start mostly because I've learn to keep the scope of my games within reason. I've found that's the main reason why I failed at some of my projects, I set my hopes to be too high and never reach them.
 

Yal

šŸ§ *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
Then I have to add in some menu code to my main project, which is something I can do with my eyes closed, and it takes a week... :(
If you close your eyes while doing something boring, it's very likely you fall asleep :p

And I agree with the "half a hard drive full of unfinished project" thing... I easily have over 200 unfinished projects at this point, and a large number of finished games I never released anywhere for one reason or another. Sometimes, you need to test an idea to see whether it's good or bad... and if it's bad, you might as well drop the project before any more time is sunk into it. Sometimes an idea is good but not fun to work on, sometimes an idea is bad but fun to work on. Very few ideas have that little extra spark that makes you sink years into them.
 
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Aura

Guest
Pffft, I was loving this topic until the moment you guys fell into a discussion about pets, gigabytes of data and FrostyCat's gender. ^^"

Either way, running out of motivation and dedication to a project is a really common issue among developers. And fighting demotivation is indeed a vast and broad topic.

From my experience, most plans fall apart:

  • Because developers, particularly novices, do not start small and plan to do something beyond their abilities.
  • Because the project is not planned and thought thoroughly and completely. Most developers get to setting up a project after getting a random idea, work a bit and never open that project again. A random idea doesn't have to be a good one and you might run out of motivation very soon. Polishing the idea and verifying if you really want (can, as stated in the point above) to create it is very important.
  • Because there is a lack of creativity. Many developers start making clones of famous games every now and then; and eventually lose interest.
  • Because most developers give up when they can't make what they want to and merely spend time to fix what's broken.
  • Because many developers do not follow coding guidelines and write code in a messy way without proper indentation and termination. Eventually the code becomes unreadable, and hard to trace and make changes to. That usually ends up with the developer losing interest in the game.
  • Because of lack of artistic abilities.
  • Because after some time of development, developers start to compare their work with others'. This foolish comparison leads to demotivation as they feel that their game doesn't stand a chance against other games.

At last, I'm interested in knowing if anybody has stopped developing their games due to one of the listed reasons. Because I have. Numerous times.
 

Micah_DS

Member
Because of lack of artistic abilities.
Ugh, for me, it's this, and very much so. Literally almost every time I've dropped a project, it's been because my graphics just sucked so much that I couldn't stand to look at it any longer. I've had to work extremely hard just to be able to make acceptable graphics, and even then it still takes me a considerable amount of time to create graphics and I'm still not very happy with my results most of the time.

It's rough when beautiful graphics inspire me so much and make me want to make things that are graphically nice. It's even a challenge for me to make something simple but with a charming enough style style and good colors. That said, I am progressing in experience, but pretty slowly, and I'm still abandoning projects mostly because I often grow to hate my graphics every time. Aw well, I'll still keep pushing along until I "arrive" at my desired graphics, whatever that means.
 

GMWolf

aka fel666
Because the project is not planned and thought thoroughly and completely. Most developers get to setting up a project after getting a random idea, work a bit and never open that project again. A random idea doesn't have to be a good one and you might run out of motivation very soon. Polishing the idea and verifying if you really want (can, as stated in the point above) to create it is very important.
That happens way more than i would like...
 
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