How do you all deal with the demon that is procrastination?

Maybe I'm a special case, but I'll do anything with my game other than work on its completion. I kid myself that something needs doing first; aesthetics, fix the odd error... anything but creating rooms. By the time I've finished messing around I've no desire to do anything else and inevitably close down without actually having done anything to further its completion.

I loath to admit it, but it's almost as though I have no real interest in creating a finished game, and only enjoy the process of solving coding and scripting problems... even if I do get 95% of my solutions from here.

it's really tough, when all your time is spent on trying to figure each thing out... It'd be so much easier if you knew how to do all of the coding, to get a game actually made~finished (or even just being playable, lol). It's not easy for me too, when I'm spending all my time stuck on something, instead of working on getting my game progressing along. Also, a lot of game making or coding is quite boring and monatonous~repetitive, at least for what I'm able to do with coding, anyways. It's really a struggle when you don't know how to code well. A finished~playable game really takes you to already know the coding, and just requiring you to figure out your game's design, which once you do that, then it's easy to code all that stuff in, as you're good at coding. That's not the case for me, sighs.

I'm not sure lack of coding knowledge is my problem - even as someone who knows as little as me. I know enough to create rooms, exits, object use, etc, so I can't use that as an excuse. It's like I have some weird fear which stops me from completing things. I get so far with something, then this auto-stalling thing kicks in which prevents me from continuing.

I tell myself one room a day is better than none, but it doesn't seem to make much difference.

OurJud wrote:Maybe I'm a special case, but I'll do anything with my game other than work on its completion. I kid myself that something needs doing first; aesthetics, fix the odd error... anything but creating rooms. By the time I've finished messing around I've no desire to do anything else and inevitably close down without actually having done anything to further its completion.

I've tended to do a lot of that in recent years. A game I wrote a couple of years ago was 99% finished for weeks - all that needed doing was writing the end game sequence - yet I spent weeks doing nothing but going through earlier parts of the game and fixing and re-fixing things that I knew were fine. Even when I finally did get it finished, I then spent weeks more just playing through it, fixing and re-fixing more stuff that was fine, and just generally doing everything I could to avoid uploading it once and for all. I always have this voice in the back of my mind saying "yeah, it's okay now but if you rewrote that bit and this bit and that other bit, it'd be much better", and yet no matter how many times I rewrite bits, the voice tells me they could be better still if I rewrote them some more. Sometimes we're our own worst critics.

I can sympathise with all that, david.

I have ADD so this fits me so well and I am currently not on any medication for it, which makes it worse

Maybe I have ADD

Just a little nose candy... That game will be done in no time!

No doubt, but it gives me crusty bogies (or boogers as you strange Americans call them) for days.

First, I'd say that even fixing the odd scripting error or tweaking a message or polishing is something. It might not be the great leaps you'd like, but it is some sort of progress. It's better than sitting down, opening Quest, maybe playing the current game a bit and then wandering off and coming back later when it's time for bed and you need to shut down the computer and you realize you did *absolutely nothing at all*.

But sometimes you even need to do that.

I'd say if you don't even have the creative whatevers to add another room, then you're either in a lull mentally or the game has run out of steam to some extent. (You can tell the difference by whether you have interest in other things or not.)

I have had similar problems with my own games. To that extent, I have one game finished and a number by the wayside (so perhaps I'm not the best person to ask). What I have found is that it often helps to take a step back or just time off. That has happened to me with a project that I was really keen on - then I got discouraged over some things and wandered off to other things, like online courses, which I have now also lost some momentum for.

And it's all ok, in my opinion. I then went back to the game I hadn't touched in months, played the minimal part I had completed (the title and bits of the first area), and I don't know if it's absence making the heart grow fonder or what, but I suddenly wanted to get back to it. So I've been thinking again about it (not coded yet, as I don't know the direction I want to go), but the enthusiasm came back.

That might not work for everyone. If you walk away from the game for a while, you might never get back to it. That's a risk, but I think if you've done anything in there that works for you, and if the idea still appeals on some level, it will call you back. And if it doesn't, then even if you pushed and slogged your way through it, it will probably end up crap since your heart isn't in it. Find something that does work for you.

So I'd say - give it a break, go off and do something else, take some time to let it clear a bit (where "a bit" could be days or even weeks), then come back and see where you are with it. If it's real, the enthusiasm will come back when the time is right.

Now, it feels different when you get to that last 1%, but that can be the hardest part sometimes. Hopefully by that point, you've got enough going on in the game that you really want people to play it, and that can help to carry you through to the end.

But again, most importantly: any progress is progress. Even if it's just one thing you did today, it's more than you had when the day began. Don't knock that.

I like your philosophy.

The 'run out of steam' idea is true to a certain extent, in that my setting (virus-infested wasteland) means that I'm really struggling for ideas in terms of locations. I've done roads, a beach, forest, deserted towns, cave (in the guise of a bunker)... and all the time I have a voice in the back of my head saying, "Now what? More roads? More forests? What?" In other words I'm struggling to fight off monotony in terms of locations.

I'll put I my two pennies worth regarding that last comment, avoiding monotony and creating diverse fictional worlds. I might just have something useful to say, after all, I spend half my life dreaming up new worlds... Then again, maybe not. Anyway, here I go.

When it comes to creating a fictional world, I think there are a great many things which must be taken into consideration. For a start, a world needs history, and there's no getting away from this. A world without history is a man without a soul, a hollow façade. This applies to any fictional world, but when you're setting your story in a post apocalyptic setting, it's even easier to forget that your world did not simply spontaneously appear in the state it's currently in. An apocalypse is a modifier, it's a chaotic upheaval which radically changes a society, often through the obliteration of much of what that society values and holds sacred. So who did this apocalypse happen to? What's an apocalypse that happens to nobody? Create that world, create that nation, create that town, create those people. Then unleash your apocalypse upon them and see what happens, see what becomes of that world and those people.

Now, your world may very well be modelled entirely on our own, the here and now. In which case, you need to make sure you know your world, this world. Don't be fooled into thinking that it's all been done for you when taking this approach, you still need to put a great deal of effort into making it believable, making it actually feel like our world.

Take an abandoned town for instance. It's not always been abandoned! Who lived there, how did this virus affect people physically and mentally. Think about how your society would break down in the face of inevitable annihilation, think about how different people would face it in their own ways. So, which family in this town was huddled in the basement, who was on the corner of the street selling salvation, who was proposing to that someone who they've admired for years, who was desperately trying to sell their shares off as a raging mob went marauding through the streets outside. Sprinkle your world with these little stories, the ones I've just suggested were a little cliché, although don't just avoid them solely because they're a tad cliché if you believe they would happen. We bleed when we're wounded, call it cliché but it'd be rather silly to avoid including it for that reason alone. But do of course give these little stories you own personal twist. Just don't overstep the line, it'll end up looking like that apocalypse hit a lunatic asylum if in trying to give things a personal twist you eventually warp everything into something truly bizarre.

I could bore the life out of you with more, but I think that'll do for now. Maybe you'll find something useful in there... I don't know...

Is it just coincidence that your post is specifically about a game with an apocalyptic setting, or have I mentioned elsewhere that this is the theme of my current project?

Maybe you both just read the 5th Wave?

Ah, so, that's what my other hand was up to whilst I was speaking on the phone last night... Looking back over what I wrote, it applies to any world mostly. I believe that once a world has history, it almost begins to build itself once you let your imagination run with it. After reading your post regarding the game set in the post-epidemic wasteland, and given that my current project is also set after an apocalyptic event, I did tailor my post to deal quite specifically with a post-apocalyptic theme. As I said however, I believe that such a setting is where it is both easiest to forget, and most devastating when one does forget, that an apocalypse did not create your world, rather, it happened to it.

In my current project, I expect to be dealing with a similar problem to yourself in parts, due to the nature of my setting. To combat this, I'm focusing not so much on making the physical structures themselves as unique as possible, only as necessary, but on the events that took place within them. One memorable location is worth countless bland, forgettable ones. When I say as unique as necessary, there are always boundaries. Although diversity between your locations is fantastic, it has to remain believable... Or they at least must share a somewhat defined theme, it's almost a catch-22, but there is a goldilocks zone. I can't say much more to be honest, the finer details are up to you of course, it's your world. What I am saying though is don't get hung up on having to make everything spectacularly diverse. If each location has it's own little quirks, secrets and stories, people will remember those, not the fact that a few buildings were a little similar in physical appearance and what-not. There's no escaping the latter for most of us.

I've just noticed I mentioned the setting in the post immediately prior to yours.

Ignore me, I'm losing it.