ID:181473
 Jun 7 2010, 1:43 pm
|
|
How do you Byond developers do it? Lately I have been having trouble getting myself working. No, its not depression or anything, I still live my life the same in every other aspect. But when I go to sit down on Dream Maker, after a few minutes all of the excitement of the idea suddenly goes away and I get bored with tasks. What do I need
| |
Aside from the threat of an empty column to keep me working, I take breaks to work on other projects while I recharge. I also design interfaces soon after designing mechanics. This means I have something presentable to run and interact with while I implement the details.
Plus, I'm a stubborn fool. | |
You need a goal. You'll get bored if you're creating a game just to create a game. You need to have a goal or an expectation for when the game is finished.
Do you want to earn money so you can buy something? Do you want to prove to someone you can develop a game? Do you want to create a game to get famous? Think about a reward. You know what makes work not seem so bad? The check you get every two weeks. If you ignore the work and figure out "check" for yourself, you'll be more willing to work on your game. I'm creating this game so afterwards I can get ______ ? Whatever fills that blank will motivate you to not stop working. Atleast thats what I did to motivate me to work on Metier War. | |
Also I would like to say writing out design documents before you begin a project can really help with motivation as you know what you want needs to be done and what is going to happen. You don't get stuck while programming on an idea.
Read Function Specifications | |
Thank-you guys for your advice, and if anyone has anything more to say that could help, throw it out there!
| |
Darkjohn66 wrote:
Thank-you guys for your advice, and if anyone has anything more to say that could help, throw it out there! Sometimes I will develop mini-games or various code snippets/demo just because I see a game, and I like the challenge of producing the same exact results of something in the game, but more efficient. Like, I'll look at Shooting is in a Shooter game, and sort of mimic it with my own programming, but give it a twist or sort of upgrade. Then I usually store all of those in a large folder in case I ever want to do anything with it later on. Another thing I like to do is search the dev-forums when people ask How-To and it never gets solved. I try to make what they wanted. I also just love to sit back and look at how Game X and Game Y and whatnot run. Then I think about what is similar to those two games, and I make the complete opposite of the similarity just for kicks to see how it would be. | |
Darkjohn66 wrote:
How do you Byond developers do it? Lately I have been having trouble getting myself working. No, its not depression or anything, I still live my life the same in every other aspect. But when I go to sit down on Dream Maker, after a few minutes all of the excitement of the idea suddenly goes away and I get bored with tasks. What do I need I usually create a design guide, once finished; I take a week to actually envision how the game would play out. I also consult family members or friends on their outlook of the idea. After I have completed all of that, if I am still interested, I start programming. I wrote some of my 'motivational rules' a while back, perhaps they may be of assistance. Lastly, I always suggest modular programming. That way you can reuse systems in numerous games. Because as you may know, constantly remaking a system tends to make you lose inspiration. | |
Team members along with people interested and willing to play/try my project give me the inspiration. But BYOND lacks both.
| |
Darkjohn66 wrote:
But when I go to sit down on Dream Maker, after a few minutes all of the excitement of the idea suddenly goes away and I get bored with tasks. What do I need A more exciting idea? Generally I find motivation just from working on something, but the problem is I get burned out when I come to something difficult (note: note tedious, just difficult. Boring, repetitive and tedious I can do easily). I'm trying to find new and interesting ways to motivate myself. I know my current project is in the interests of people I don't like around BYOND. I'm more then tempted to compile a list of keys I don't like, record the computer_id's of those people when they try and login, then completely deny them access to the game. Presently, said peoples blog posts of how I'm a big meanie head are what's driving me to continue working on said project. Ultimately the lesson would be hoping they grow up a little, but I doubt it. Try being more creative with motivational methods and damn the consequences. If I really did do the above, there'd be a lot of people who think less of me (but on the plus side, the community I build around the game will be deprived of really annoying people, so that's definitely a win. | |
I'm pretty sure this is how most people work, everyone gets bored with their projects at one point. It's how to push passed that boredom that you need to figure out.