In a slump

#1 I guess a little.

When I start thinking of all the stuff that I still need to do on my game, it can get a bit daunting. The list seems to grow day by day, and when some of the tasks are quite laborious, working up the enthusiasm for them can be a bit tricky.

If you're suffering a bit at the moment, just try and hammer out some code that does something cool, but will be useful to you in the future. If you can do that a few times, you'll end up with a library of useful code snippets that you can just copy and paste in the future, saving you time on your next project.

Just starting a relatively small project that you can complete might help fire you up. Pick something simple-ish like an asteroids clone and work from there. Try and think of some twists in game play to make it a little different from the norm.

#2 I know exactly what you mean... Right now I'm working on numerous things (some games, some not) and its easy to get in a slump.

As for the gaming end, doing a quick GID (Game in a Day) is a great way to get fired up about an idea... think of something simple and attempt to do it in a day! You learn a whole lot doing this.

As for trudging on while on a project/game when it feels daunting, the best remedy I've found is to break it all down to a task list, think it out well, then when you struggle with the next step just grab the next task (or some other simple task) and attempt it. You really have to take everything a step at a time, don't get ahead or behind yourself :)

Just some way's I keep at it, sometimes its very hard.

Philip has some good suggestions too, the code snippets thing is a great idea, thats basically how my Tutorials began (more or less), working on seperate functionality, nothing directly in a game, just something that would be usefull for a game.

#3 Personally, I get totally overwhelmed really easily, which is why I've not been getting further with my stuff in TGE recently :-(.

What actually got me totally into T2D, and out of a slump, was two things:
1) Having a real project to do work on [jugglemaster torquescript]
2) Getting over my C++ habit, and actually trying to write something in torquescript, since that's The T2D Way(TM)

Overall, if you want to get over a slump, find a project that you genuinely want to work on. Don't just pull something out of your hat as if it might be a good idea, really try to come up with something you'd want to do. Doesn't even have to be a complete game, or complete anything. Just *something*, and *small*


I'd actually argue that "doing something useful in the future" is kinda daft. In retrospect, and with some recently-gathered knowlege, I know how to re-write jugglemaster in torque so it performs a hundredfold faster and more reliably, more easily, and generally *better*. But that doesn't mean that what I learned during the exercise hasn't been INCREDIBLY useful for everything else I've worked on.

I guess it's a personal thing.

Gary (-;

#4 Yea, I'm in a bit of a slump myself, though not due to lack of ideas, more due to lack of motivation at the moment.(happens to me every so often, the fact that my work hours are bouncing all over the place isn't helping)

#5 Happens to all of us. Burn-time. I was in one before I had my back problem and now that I've had a break, I'm full of beans and really back into it. For me, it's just that I need a change of focus onto something completely different than computing. A couple of weeks later I'm missing the old gal and I'm furious back at it trying to catch-up on the ideas.

I'd suggest taking a forced break away from computers in general and that includes email, computer games, surfing etc. Sometimes hard to do but it can be very beneficial in putting things back into perspective. I find that my subconcious just sorts it all out for me whilst I'm away and I come back with solutions and motivation.

Not for all but worth a try. ;)

- Melv.