Opinion Inspiration

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Vyking

Guest
Heya,

I'm on holidays rn and I have so much spare time to do stuff, but I have absolutely no inspiration to code anything whatsoever. How do you people get inspiration to code things? I'd love to know.

Thunks
 

Nocturne

Friendly Tyrant
Forum Staff
Admin
Play games! Often a single game mechanic from another game can spark an idea for doing something new and different. Also, read books, read comics, watch films, go for long walks to places you don't usually go to! Take a shower too! Go swimming, go to the gym, get on a bike! Call your friends, go see a movie, go out on a date, get dinner from a different restaurant!

Inspiration comes from many, many, many, different places, but if you don't go looking for it it'll never find you. ;)
 

andev

Member
I have a 10GB+ folder of screenshots/gifs slowly accumulated from all over the internet, where I've just looked at someone's game and gone "holy crap that looks amazing". If I have no inspiration, I pick a random image, take a guess at the game mechanics and try to recreate it from the screenshot to see if I can make it work as well as they did. By the time it's done and I've made some executive veetos and minor tweaks, it's a completely different game. The problem then is staying motivated to work on it long enough to see it to completion.
 
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HammerOn

Guest
Don't overestimate inspiration. Good ideas come from multiple iterations and constant polishment, just like the game development process itself.
Ideas are cheap and pop all the time. The first "version" of an idea is always weak or cliche because it's what you like or sees a lot. But the more you rethink, redesign or polish it, the original and better it gets.
What @Nocturne pointed out is crucial to have a wild range of first ideas but you can't stop here. Waiting for a good idea is waste of time and going to the final product with the first thing that comes to mind never gives great results. This isn't how creativity works.
In short, iteration is more important than inspiration.
 
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Yokcos

Member
Discipline is more useful - doing the thing even though you may not want to in the moment, even though you don't feel like it at the time. "Inspiration" or motivation is much more unreliable and is almost invariably finite.
 

Neptune

Member
I've found that the first 6 or so months of my project were the most difficult. Some days I would have to use weird little strategies to get work done, such as simply opening and running the project... naturally work would follow.
Currently, about a year in, I have the luxury of motivation because I really like what I'm working on. I still have things that feel dreadful to begin coding, but its not dread about working on the project specifically...

If you're looking for motivation to start a project, you could find something to fuel the drive. Pride and hate are good in absence of anything else.
 
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Evano

Guest
Code for only 5 minutes. Then when 5 hours are over go do something else.

What I'm saying is: Just start doing it. The rest will follow automatically.
This here is solid advice. There's a Japanese technique called kaizen where you initially focus on something for a minute if you want to try and learn something but you lack the motivation to do anything. Force yourself to just do something for a short amount of time, even if it's something really basic like make a sprite move left and right. Then each day you increase the complexity on what you want to program and you'll eventually reach a point where you'll enjoy programming without it feeling like a chore.
 
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Vyking

Guest
Thanks so much guys for your response. I've started a new project and got a few other ideas too. :)
 
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Thunder Lion

Guest
Play games! Often a single game mechanic from another game can spark an idea for doing something new and different. Also, read books, read comics, watch films, go for long walks to places you don't usually go to! Take a shower too! Go swimming, go to the gym, get on a bike! Call your friends, go see a movie, go out on a date, get dinner from a different restaurant!

Inspiration comes from many, many, many, different places, but if you don't go looking for it it'll never find you. ;)
Sometimes your work can inslire you, I use to do land scaping that inspired Quinlin a game Im workong on that is about working to survive
 
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