Discussion What keeps you motivated to finish your projects?

W

wkaudio

Guest
I have so much on my plate, all the time. I work full time, go to school, have an apartment and pets to take care of, I really do have minimal time to make games or work on other hobbies. When I do, I cherish that time! Along with making games, I write music and stories, but I always seem to hit a point where I slow down, or stop what I'm working on.

I have to really manage my time, so when a project starts getting "grindy", I lose motivation and want to work on something else. I was thinking about this today, as I'm almost finished with my first mobile game (and don't have any desire to work on it), and realized I have stacks among stacks of unfinished projects.

So, GMC, I ask you - what keeps you motivated to finish your projects, not exclusively games, when you've hit the grind?

I hope you all are having a lovely day.
 

pixeltroid

Member
To form an idea in our mind, and use the tools available to manifest it is the closest we can come to doing magic.

I believe the ability to create something that others can enjoy (whether its a game, a song, a painting, a book) is one of the higher functions that a human is capable of. So for me to create a game I can call my own, with my own story, my own designs...is a big deal to me. What I do with it is secondary.

So I guess that keeps me motivated.
 
Last edited:
L

Lonewolff

Guest
Funny thing is, without the sad smiley this would've been a revitalizing post.
As in "in my hands, the projects just finish themselves!"
Especially if you had used the sunglasses smiley: :cool:
Sadly not the case in general.

Don't get me wrong, I code plenty that I am proud of, but most things are left in an unfinished state once the initial magic wears off.
 
Last edited:

Ihato

Member
Well, perhaps your projects are rolling release, MikeDark_x and Kepons. There is nothing wrong with that.
 
E

ethian

Guest
What motivates me to finish my projects is...

...Get with the main inspiration of my project too much as that thing inspires me and inspired me to do my project.
 
It kind of irritates me when people agree with something by just saying "This" after it. That being said...

To form an idea in our mind, and use the tools available to manifest it is the closest we can come to doing magic.
This.

I have this same problem, especially if I'm away from the project for awhile. My problem isn't so much lack of motivation, but... fear, I guess? You know, that I've lost the ability to work the magic. The two things I do are a) play through the game again, taking time to reflect on the (sometimes horribly basic) things that make my game seem like an actual game by actual game developers that know what they're doing (talking to randomly moving npcs or equipping items from an inventory are the big ones at the moment), and b) work on parts of the game that aren't programming (music, sound effects, writing in-game lore or dialogue, etc.). There are so many parts to game development, especially if you're going it alone, that its easy to jump if you're getting burned out on any one thing. It may seem at the time like you're stalling or putting things off, but hey, it all needs to be done at some point, right? The important thing is that it keeps you in the mindset of the world you're creating. Keeps it exciting. Keeps it real.

Most importantly, remember that what you're doing is special. Not many people have what it takes to create games or stories or music, and you owe it to yourself and what you're making to see it through. Just remember: some day, the thing you're working on now will be the thing someone else uses to put off working on one of their own projects.
 
L

Lonewolff

Guest
I guess breaking new ground keeps me motivated. I get bored easily once I spend too much time 'seeing behind the curtain'.
 
Working on it every day, regardless of whether it's just a line of code. That's literally the best way I've found to stay motivated. Whenever you hit one of those sloggish coding areas where there's a lot of code to do but it's super boring or your running into a really frustrating problem, working on a tiny bit every day helps so much. I've found one of two things happen. I either slowly get through the bit line by line, day by day and at some point, I've finished/solved it, or alternatively, I just happen to have a highly motivated day and plow through it. If I -don't- force myself to work on it everyday, the specter of the boring code/frustrating area/etc literally makes me stop the project and move on to something else.

Another thing is understanding that it's alright to "work" on things that aren't necessarily code, but are related to code. For instance, I used to (and still do to some extent) feel guilty when I would spend 2 or 3 days researching some esoteric topic (randomly generated noise and the various ways to implement it is a big rabbit hole that I often fall into) because it kind of feels like I'm not ACTUALLY working on the game, I'm just bumming around on the internet. But over time I've found that these research sessions serve as both a break from direct coding, which can be refreshing, but also come in handy in unexpected ways that actually boost my productivity in the future.

These might be problems specific to me, I dunno, but those are two things I keep in mind to keep myself motivated.
 
I spend a great time planning out my projects, so that I do not get to that point where I am tired of working on them. What I do is that I divide my project or game development into several parts. In each of those parts, there is a goal that I have to accomplish - thats what I tell myself. I discovered that I could survive my programming that way, because I am good at writing my ideas down, in a way that is like writing the instructions for it. Therefore my programming has to reflect what my instructions state, and that is what keeps me in check. So my recent project that I am working on, which is actually 66+ in one, or 66 individual games that I switch two and from are in one project.

Ive contracted a programming design disease called creeping featurism ( responsible for bloatware ) , thats why I had to redesign my game and instead it exploded to 66 games in one ( its a long story that I cant explain here ). I was inspired by reading the GML manual.

The definition for creeping featurism is here :
http://foldoc.org/creeping+featurism
 
Top