No Motivation...

[fleshwhiskey]

Don't touch any browser, that may be poison, depending on what type of person you are; if you have a short attention span, every site is like tvtropes (or wikipedia).

The browser is always the culprit for me. I'll always end up going to reddit or some site I don't even care about and start wasting time.

[fleshwhiskey]

Thank you guys for the LÖVING responses! Hopefully I can get back on track with my games... If you have any more tips, please reply away!

[fleshwhiskey]

I could be in a minority here, but I think that if you grow tired of a game idea, the idea isn't good enough. I never grew tired of the idea behind Hat Cat, which is why it's now finished. The idea I'm working on now I've had for about 10 years, and the gaming industry still hasn't filled that important hole, and I just hope that doesn't happen in the next year or so

Actually, this is the very reason why I don't keep a notebook of my ideas. If it's a worthwhile idea that I think I'll pursue, I just don't forget about it! It sticks with me, and it drives me to create awesome stuff! (I just need to learn NOT to open my web browser to look at cat videos so often )

[T-Bone]

Flesh, that's what I do too! Not only for whole game ideas, but also specifics, like a joke or pun I might think of to include in a game. If it's good, I'll remember it. If it's bad, I'll forget it. It's a very natural filtering process.

Writing down you ideas for me is the same as saying " The idea I have now is surely better than the one I will have in the future", which is rarely true.

I guess you could write down multiple ideas and in the end choose the best one, but I find that difficult in practise. One of the most common reasons I've scrapped projects in the past is that I've come back to a document after a while and thought "man, this is crap!". Not writing stuff down makes it easier to criticize your own ideas without throwing everything away.

[Alexar]

i feel just the same, i did wrote a lot of prototypes but few finished projects. because the most exciting part of game design is to realize something in your mind, but after done with the prototype, you have already done with the interesting part. there leave a lot of ui things, art things, value tunning, so the boring parts come.

[kbmonkey]

Here is an organizational trick I use on my coding directory:

{code}
├── love
│   ├── lab
│   ├── learn
│   ├── tests
│   ├── third-party
│   └── workshop
{code}

lab: I start new projects here
learn: tutorials or downloaded code for learning lua or love
tests: when I want to try something out it goes in here
third-party: downloaded code or libraries
workshop: after a new project is in the lab for a couple weeks and I feel I will keep working on it, I move it here

Separate your real projects from all the tests and snippets keeps visible what you should be working on, and what is transient. I use this not only for love, but also for python and javascript.

[Lacotemale]

This is so me right here. So many ideas, so many projects started and so many abandoned projects.

Lots of the time my code becomes a mess and I find it hard to continue working on it. I find it hard to solve this issue as usually I don't know how to restructure my codebase. Other times its because working on the same game/project gets boring.

I'm a good coder but bad at planning, organisation and code structure practices.

[Davidobot]

I have one thing to say about this and am truly surprised no one has linked it here before:

[Jeeper]

Anyone who has experience with sports or working out in general will know that motivation and feeling motivated is a very fragile ground to stand on. Motivation comes and goes, sometimes randomly. What you want to rely is is discipline. There is a great concept called "no zero day", meaning that you should make it a habit of doing SOMETHING that progresses your project EVERY day. Even if it is something very small.

Days become weeks and weeks become months, all of a sudden you have a finished product.

[tjohnman]

You shouldn't look for motivation, for it is fleeting like the wind and it will fail you as soon as it goes away. You should look for discipline, for it is reliable and never ending in its fruitfulness like the grossly incandescent light from our glorious sun. Find your own sun and tame it.



(People who look for motivation = vampires, You = Kars)

Epic video. But surely you mean the grossly incandescent light from our glorious father, right?

I hate the idea fairy...