13 replies to this topic

[Dubious-Tony]

Hi all,

I've been attempting to really get into game development recently, but have recently come across "the wall".

What do you do when you get past the initial "everything is moving quickly and is exciting" stage and find yourself in the middle of the "I have to do this but I am losing interest" stage? That's if you come across this stage at all!

I'm currently trying to avoid the wall, or at least attempting to mitigate it by creating a game in well defined "iterations". Each iteration lists out what I'm going to do and what I'm not going to do, to stop me going off at tangents and not making any progress. Then at the end of each iteration, I create a "release" - something tangible, that I can see as progress.

This seems to be working for me so far, but I am interested to see what others do in the same situation.

[ApochPiQ]

Every project has a phase that seems uninteresting, tedious, or uninspiring. There is a lot of value in developing the personal discipline to finish things even when they enter that phase.

Everyone uses different techniques for coping with it, but at the end of the day, what matters is whether or not you personally have a mechanism you can turn on that helps you get through those periods of development. It's called "knowing how to ship product" and it makes the difference between getting a call back and your resume going into the round file.


My personal technique basically boils down to "suck it up and do it anyways." That may or may not appeal to everyone ;-)


Anyways... kudos for looking for ways to learn to ship, and best of luck continuing!

[J03_b]

Oh man I totally know what you mean. Back when I started even with an amateur program called Game Maker, I would get to points where I just thought man I have SO much work ahead of me and I was really scraping the bottom of the motivation barrel. But I was just so passionate about games that I kept going, and I made a lot of progress. Eventually I did lose all interest though and I just quit, but now that I'm getting into college making plans for a career, giving up and playing video games obviously isn't always going to be an option.

So when it comes to getting work done, I'm pretty much just like ApochPiQ and suck it up and do what needs to be done. But I also find that it helps to have small short-term goals to meet like you said, and sometimes I write it down just to get it set in stone so my work always has some direction and then the work can just flow without having to think too hard.

When it comes to games, I really just always keep my eye on the prize and imagine how awesome the game is going to turn out when it's done, that makes it pretty easy to stay motivated because of how excited I get.

[SimonForsman]

One method i use is to avoid doing all the fun parts of a project all at once (Different people consider different things fun ofcourse and sometimes you don't really have much choice when it comes to the order you handle the tasks in), but if you can work on a boring and fun task at the same time then try to do so and when there is no choice you just have to suck it up and get it done.

[spooderw]

I usually pick one big, ugly, boring feature and start working on it. While I work on that if I get too bogged down I do a smaller feature that is more fun for a day or to, so I have some tangible progress, then go back to the big feature.

Sometimes with rendering optimization or other big stuff you can't really work on anything else, at those times you just have to suck it up I suppose.

[Krohm]

What do you do when you get past the initial "everything is moving quickly and is exciting" stage and find yourself in the middle of the "I have to do this but I am losing interest" stage?

I'm now having a serious problem. Even the problem - not even the algorithm, let alone implementation - is unclear to me. I've been away from it for a while. I hope to go back to the problem soon and be able to investigate it with a different mind-set.
Typically, I just work my way through it.

[link161]

I hit a wall a while back sadly. Had a game coming along but it has been hard to get myself back on it in between classes and work. I would love the inspiration to delve back into it though, I think it was a lack of direction for it.

[szecs]

It think it's really about discipline, as ApochPiQ said. I start to think that discipline is one of the most important things in life, and maybe the most important thing for happiness.

[way2lazy2care]

I feel like it's very easy to do all the fun things first, so by the time you are finishing you have only boring things left. I think the best way would be to plan around it to make sure you are doing the boring things as you go along instead of finishing all the fun things putting 3 months of solid boredom between you and your game being finished.

[Dubious-Tony]

I feel like it's very easy to do all the fun things first, so by the time you are finishing you have only boring things left. I think the best way would be to plan around it to make sure you are doing the boring things as you go along instead of finishing all the fun things putting 3 months of solid boredom between you and your game being finished.

This is exactly what I do, get the fun done and leave the boring stuff for later. The trouble I've found with this is that often, the boring stuff is also the important stuff. Example, I normally get the basic game world up and running then attempt to put in control and GUI elements later. Not only does this leave a big pile of steaming bore, it also meant (for me) that the boring stuff was even more difficult to do, having given it no previous thought when implementing the fun stuff.

Another technique I've found that really works for me is to have more than one thing to do at one time. I started up a web site in order to share my development experience, so some times, I just spend a while working on that. I may also draw some more art for my game or even take a break altogether and cook something nice When I get back to work, it becomes much easier to get going again.

A quick word of warning here: Don't take a break for too long, or you'll forget that the boring stuff is what you need to do next. Then when you get back, the pile of boring can be difficult to take in!

[way2lazy2care]

This is exactly what I do, get the fun done and leave the boring stuff for later. The trouble I've found with this is that often, the boring stuff is also the important stuff. Example, I normally get the basic game world up and running then attempt to put in control and GUI elements later. Not only does this leave a big pile of steaming bore, it also meant (for me) that the boring stuff was even more difficult to do, having given it no previous thought when implementing the fun stuff.

I think a lot of games that grow out of fun little prototypes have this problem. I think it comes down to people wanting to expand prototypes into production. What you should be doing is proving your concept with the prototype, then once you decide to go forward with a full game do a little bit of planning, throw the prototype away, and start over with a solid plan for a completed game. I think the planning phase is something a lot of people miss when they work on personal projects that would save a lot of stagnation and pain.

[BeanDog]

I make a handwritten list of the hundred crappy things I have to do:

• Make a settings screen
• Make a music volume slider
• Make a SFX volume slider
• Make a worldwide high score list screen
• Show your worldwide rank on your own high score list
• Make ongoing sound effects stop when switching to the menu screen

And on and on and on. There's a real satisfying feeling to physically scratching something off a list. It's sort of like doing chores--the list seems interminable at first, but if you just knuckle down and do it, it's often over surprisingly quickly.

[alnite]

Iterations are good, keep it up.

I'd also assign certain days of the week that you have to work on it, regardless of what happens. Lately Saturdays have been working well for me, because I also have a full-time job. On Saturdays, you have to do your project, no matter what happens. Earthquake, tsunami, you gotta stick to your desk. Just kidding :-), but you get the idea. This forces you to keep working on it because you have made the commitment. Usually, the motivation picks up again after you have worked on it for about 30 minutes - 1 hour.

Don't work on it on other days, no matter how tempting. Save that excitement for later. It also allows you to rethink your ideas and approaches, and many times I came up with better ideas during this time. As soon as Saturday hits, it's just a straight coding session, resulting in better and polished products.

[Paul Franzen]

I'm not sure how many other people would agree with this, but one method I use is to keep a bunch of projects going at once, so that when one starts to feel a little stale, I can immediately jump to another without losing any net productivity. The pitfall with this is that you risk never getting anything done, though, so you have to be careful about it.