Motivation and Productivity

[nikki]

Hey guys!

Recently, I've found that the intensity of my work on my current project, GraLL 2, has been declining. My best time was last year in September (felt awesome), but since December it's been a little low. This was because I took a 'break' in December to concentrate on school work (had exams coming up). After that I did get some work done on it (some pretty good work actually) but it wasn't as rapid as usual. Right now it's time to work on the levels, but making levels is harder because you don't simply come up with new ideas (as you would when working on making the obstacles), but you have to come up with new ways of using already existing ideas (use existing obstacles to make new levels - or scripted sequences etc.). I really want to work on it, but when I sit down, no ideas 'come to me' anymore. I just laze around, play a game, and go take a nap, or something...

So how do I get the motivation and productivity up?

Also, I have another question: If I don't get any work done on the game in a day or 2, I feel really guilty. I feel like 'damn, earlier I used to work on this, now I didn't do anything! Am I 'losing it'?'. Is this feeling a good thing? If not, how do I get rid of it?

Thanks for your help!

[KungFooMasta]

I'm just speaking for myself, but for me I also feel the same sometimes; I want to make progress on my projects, but at the same time, I want to relax and live life a little. (Like a lot of others I have a full time job not related to my projects) What are your goals for Grall2, and what would you define as complete? Have you considered other types of Game Development projects? Maybe you need a refresher. I don't want to give you any bad advice, but thought I'd throw out some ideas.

[spacegaier]

I know these ups and downs as well. There are periods where I even stop working on any coding project for a while (sometimes lasting even some weeks) and instead concentrate on my other hobby: Making music.

I'd also have given you the same advice as KungFooMaster: Take a break / work on something else. This however, has the small risk, that you'll never come back to the project you worked on before (which however is quite unlikely for such an already maure project as GraLL2). After the break, your batteries might be recharged for this kind of work/project.

This method at least works for me. I have quite some projects that I finally want to finish sometime, but after working on them for a certain period without any real progress, I temporarily loose focus/interest and change the project for a while.

One thing however, I realized is, that when you come back you tend to erase big parts of the old project since in the meantime, you've learned new things and want to incorporate them in the old projects as well, which is quite time consuming sometimes...

[nikki]

Hmm, maybe you're right. Maybe I do need a break. I'm leaving for Spain this Wednsday with my friends (school excursion )! That should be refreshing!

[mkultra333]

Perhaps part of the problem is that creating media like maps, textures and models is a very different process from writing code. A more casual approach might not be the wrong one. Tinker with a few maps, it'll help you come up with a few ideas and tricks. Perhaps your disinterest is partly because the creative part of the project can't be solved as directly and analytically as the programming part. But it will still require you put in the hours.

[calsmurf2904]

What I do to not get bored is just do 2 projects. Work on one, and when you get bored working on it work on the other one. Keep following the process, because when you work on the other project you mostly also come up with new ideas for the first project. It does mean having 2 projects though.

[jacmoe]

This is totally normal.
Especially if you're the passionate type (and you are ! ) you can't help but taking breaks from time to time.
Even if you don't want to.
Leave it be.
It's not going to run anywhere, and you're not going to not going to come back to it.
A break will make wonders - trust me.
Even if it lasts 3 months.
I do that all the time.
Because there's no way you can give without receiving.

[xavier]

So how do I get the motivation and productivity up?

Don't sweat it -- I took 2 1/2 months off last summer, then worked like blazes through the end of the year, and have laxed since then (so basically another 2-3 months vacation).

If you fret about it, you'll just burn out. Let the interest wax and wane naturally, and that won't happen.

[xavier]

What I do to not get bored is just do 2 projects. Work on one, and when you get bored working on it work on the other one. Keep following the process, because when you work on the other project you mostly also come up with new ideas for the first project. It does mean having 2 projects though.

Work-work is my second project.

[jacmoe]

Recently, I've found that the intensity of my work on my current project, GraLL 2, has been declining. My best time was last year in September (felt awesome), but since December it's been a little low. This was because I took a 'break' in December to concentrate on school work (had exams coming up). After that I did get some work done on it (some pretty good work actually) but it wasn't as rapid as usual.

That break wasn't long enough, I guess.

I really want to work on it, but when I sit down, no ideas 'come to me' anymore. I just laze around, play a game, and go take a nap, or something...

No - that's wrong!
Get out there in real life - your ideas will eventually place you at your desk, not the other way around.
In good time.

Also, I have another question: If I don't get any work done on the game in a day or 2, I feel really guilty. I feel like 'damn, earlier I used to work on this, now I didn't do anything! Am I 'losing it'?'. Is this feeling a good thing? If not, how do I get rid of it?

The only way to get rid of that is take a deep breath and shrug it off.
Are you feeling guilty for what?
You are not losing anything - to the contrary.

IMO anyway.

[calsmurf2904]

What I do to not get bored is just do 2 projects. Work on one, and when you get bored working on it work on the other one. Keep following the process, because when you work on the other project you mostly also come up with new ideas for the first project. It does mean having 2 projects though.

Work-work is my second project.

Well, yeah. Ofcourse it only works when you aren't programming as job too.

[Jabberwocky]

One thing that helps me out sometimes is to switch gears to an entirely different part of the project. For example, if I'm feeling burnt out on some particular aspect (say user interface work), I'll jump into something else, like combat, level design, or graphical improvements.

[nikki]

@nikki: I guess you didn't like any of my team names. What did you use? (Just curios.)

I liked your team names a lot, but I didn't think my teacher and everyone else there would be very happy with those. I chose 'Team Analog'. Whaddya think (we still go ttime to choose)?

Everyone, thanks for your great adivce! I think taking a break would make a lot of sense. I've recently begun to take an interest in physics (especially electricity) so I guess I'll concentrate on that for a while, and of course, do some general 'have fun' stuff (music, football, whatever).

[kraj0t]

I'm leaving for Spain this Wednsday with my friends (school excursion )! That should be refreshing!

Aha! So, right now, you must be lurking around here somewhere... hmm.

You chose a funny time of year to come by: it's Easter now. 'Semana Santa', as it's called here. Watch out for frenzied ultra-religious 'parades', specially if you're around Seville or Andalusia. Don't panic if you see them all crying and shouting, while wearing KKK-like costumes.

Anyways, man. Have fun. That's the best investment in life.

[reptor]

Go for a walk in the nature. You can get ideas for your game from there.

For Grall 2...? A waterfall. Rapids. Bridges. Did you consider having water as an element in that game? I think it's worth considering having such 'nature' elements in the game.

Also... have a look at buildings. Perhaps take a tall hotel building or something like that as a "level". Start from the top and make all the way out of the building... or from street-level up to the roof!

[bvanevery]

Well, I recently got nothing done for 2 months because truthfully, I can't stand dealing with MS low-level 3D APIs. Sure I have the technical background to do it, but I sure as heck don't want to. Nothing in the real world could get me to do a darned thing. For awhile, I just shifted my energies to other life projects, trying to be "productive" at something if not my game development. Today, after getting over an illness that had been an excuse for a few days, I up and decided that this is silly. Clearly I don't want to write a 3D engine from scratch, even if in principle I can, so I went looking at the open source 3d landscape again. I was pleasantly surprised that in the intervening months, Ogre went to a MIT license and also added DX11. The absence of those things is what kept me from dealing with Ogre in the past. So now I'm willing to give it a whirl... it can't possibly be worse than MS APIs.

What I'm trying to say is, if major amounts of gruntwork are getting in your way, ask yourself if you really must do that gruntwork. Find a way to make it go away. It can be hard, because due to our technical backgrounds, we may think we "must" do X Y Z. Must write a 3D engine, must write optimized code, must write a cross-platform library, must write in something more cool than C++, or we'll be miserable and disappointed in ourselves, or such. Well, maybe we have to do less and move on.