What are your mental or psychological barriers to project success?

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togFox
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What are your mental or psychological barriers to project success?

Post by togFox »

I've been coding for 2 years now (I'm just a pup!) and I find that most projects fail due to me being over-ambitious. The other thing that bites me is me deep diving into a single "scene" and progressing that very well, only to realise too late, due to lack of planning ,that the next "scene" will break unless I re-engineer the scene I just finished. :( At that point I lose heart and notch up another failed project.

And you? What trap do you fall into time and again?
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GVovkiv
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Re: What are your mental or psychological barriers to project success?

Post by GVovkiv »

My trap is overengineering everything to point where "I don't want to use this anymore, i need rewrite it to be less overengineered" only to ends up with another overengineered solution, so i just give up when i tire from this
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dusoft
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Re: What are your mental or psychological barriers to project success?

Post by dusoft »

Content. I am OK with programming and developing an engine, but when it comes to preparing content I lose interest.
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Hugues Ross
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Re: What are your mental or psychological barriers to project success?

Post by Hugues Ross »

Honestly, I don't feel like I've got any major mental barriers at this point... I used to have that very programmer-y grade of NIH where I had to make everything myself in low-level langs, even down to silly things like basic 3d math and 'standard library' type features, but these days I've mellowed out a bit and I'm less bad about that (hence why I'm here).

My barriers are mostly physical now--time, energy, and wrist health are my main woes.
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darkfrei
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Re: What are your mental or psychological barriers to project success?

Post by darkfrei »

I like to make everything, but until the point, where I need to unjust all small elements of code to one big spaghetti code. I cannot execute this code in my head anymore and it's pretty complicated to support and develop the project.
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GVovkiv
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Re: What are your mental or psychological barriers to project success?

Post by GVovkiv »

darkfrei wrote: Tue Feb 07, 2023 2:13 am I like to make everything, but until the point, where I need to unjust all small elements of code to one big spaghetti code. I cannot execute this code in my head anymore and it's pretty complicated to support and develop the project.
I also has this kind of problem. I just look at this big spaghetti and small snippet and: "i need to rewrite entire thing, but with that new small element in mind". And repeat it it and repeat until i burn out and throw that project in "dead" projects folder so i can in future finish it (future = never)
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darkfrei
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Re: What are your mental or psychological barriers to project success?

Post by darkfrei »

GVovkiv wrote: Tue Feb 07, 2023 1:53 pm ...and throw that project in "dead" projects folder so i can in future finish it (future = never)
That's what this topic was made for:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=93912

Maybe your idea or your experience can be helpful for someone other.
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soulmata
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Re: What are your mental or psychological barriers to project success?

Post by soulmata »

I'm on the cusp of a commercial release for a LOVE game I've been working on for the past 9 months, and I have to say the big difference between this one and the many others that I've started and left unfinished has been collaboration. I brought on a friend, and together we worked through mechanics, writing, pitched ideas together, and then eventually opened up portions of it (particularly writing) to a small pool of friends to contribute. When we had a prototype, we had some friends try it out and give us a great run of good feedback, then went back to work in iterating through it all.

Contrast to the solo projects, where inevitably I'd find myself grinding on mechanics and getting stuck in these iteration loops where I was hyper-focusing on a single thing, and after a year of effort I've have a barely functional set of loosely associated mechanics. That burns you out fast, because as soon as you run a build and you really don't like what you see, you've lost that reward for wanting to do it again.

Having someone else there with you is a tremendous boon.
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ddabrahim
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Re: What are your mental or psychological barriers to project success?

Post by ddabrahim »

My projects usually fail because I design them around a certain mechanic, but once I have this mechanic in place I lose interest to finish the rest of the game. Making generic gameplay staff that has been done 1000000 times is just not interesting and the mechanics on their own are not fun to play and I always end up with a bunch of unfinished staff that doesn't worth sharing.

I am always wondering if the mechanics I have implemented worth wrapping in to a lib and share it but then to be really useful I should be writing a documentation how it works and at that point I just don't do that either.

I am having fun though, I do enjoy my time.
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Re: What are your mental or psychological barriers to project success?

Post by zorg »

i always fail on GUI.
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