Hi

I've been making games as a hobby for a long time, but it was some years since I actually finished a project. This is slightly frustrating, and I guess a pretty common problem for someone who isnt pushed by deadlines and economy to finish projects.

I have typically at least 4 more active projects at any time (and many more games I've started but pretty much never touch any more). My projects are all fairly ambitious (but not impossible to finish, all are 2d for example) as I don't find working on very simple games fun.

I think projects often loose pace after a while and I just gets fed up with that particular project/setting and it's just more rewarding to start a new one. I have too many ideas I want to realise (or sometimes just prototype). Do you have the same experience? Any advice?

Thanks a bunch!
Erik

One fairly straightforward thing that I've found helps is to tell a bunch of people what you're working on and letting them follow along with what you're doing. If people find what you're doing interesting enough, they'll sort of automatically put some pressure on you to finish.

Another thing I've found that works well is to make a short and simple "finished" version of your game, even if you've only been working on it for a week or so. It's a lot less daunting to add features to a game that you know is already good (or at least something) than it is to try to get through a massive list of features before your game be playable at all.

Hmm, one thing I tend to do is work out roughly how long I think it will take, and I tend to only go for projects I feel I can actually achieve, that and I keep everything im working on written on a whiteboard so I always have it in front of my face reminding me to work on it.

But how long are we talking about that it takes before youre losing interest? if its like a week or two then it seems like the issue just may be the project isnt something you want to work on.. if its a few months then yeah, you may just need a break before getting back into it.

I don't do much game development in my free time nowadays, but I've got many other programming related projects going on, and my process is roughly the same. My philosophy is to try to remove or defer as much complexity as possible and get a "complete enough" version of the software as soon as possible.

Usually, my personal projects follow these four stages:

(1) I have a cool idea that I would like to realise, I spend an evening working on it. Many, not to say most, of my projects get abandoned after this stage. Maybe I'm not that interested, they weren't as fun as I expected or I simply don't have the time to keep working on them at the moment. In any case, I accept this as part of the normal process. I've got way more ideas than I'll ever be able to realise.

(2) If I keep working on a project after the first evening, I try to reduce the project to the bare minimum set of core features required to cover the principal idea or use case. Even if I have a lot of cool ideas, I try to push as many as I can to further stages, and have a minimum game/project that I can finish in a few weeks of intermittent work. I know that I will abandon many projects after this stage, so I try to set goals that I can accomplish and have a feeling of completition even if my interest/free time plummets.

(3) Now I have a working version of the game, but it probably feels more like a demo than a complete version. It's time to focus on the features that I need to make it feel like a finished product. Again, I try to focus on the features that are strictly required to make the game feel like a complete working version, and that I can hopefully finish in a few more weeks of work.

(4) At this stage, I consider that my project is "complete" and I add all the features that I wanted to have but weren't important enough to implement in previous stages. Usually, I will have collected a list of them during the previous stages. I keep working on that set of features, one at a time, until I lose interest in the project. It doesn't matter how far I get, because at this point I have something that already feels complete and deliverable.

As somebody once said, "software is never completed, only abandoned", and since chances are that I will abandon it sooner than later, I try to have something that feels complete enough as soon as possible. That doesn't mean that I defer all the cool and interesting features to the end of the project. However, most of the times I can identify one or two interesting ideas that are the core of what I want to do, and defer the rest to later stages.

Easy, work on it every free chance you get. If you are truly passionate about programming do it instead of watching TV or reading. If you work on the project every day you will make progress and motivation will be up. If the project you are making is to share with the world then release screenshots of it here on GameDev as you progress in developing it. Don't let difficulty deter you from the project itself! You need to step back and take a break sometimes. If you are facing difficulty in the project then get help with it.

Good points. And what about starting new projects? That seems to be my nemesis  I don't grow tired of my projects until after half a year or so, so they usually have some meat on them, but i get so inspired to make new games when I play other games!

10 minutes ago, suliman said:

And what about starting new projects?

Don't.

How about keeping a central list of all your projects. That should embarrass you sufficiently whenever you add a new one to it and the list is growing long, because the old ones aren't finished yet.

I have this exact same problem.  Lately, I've decided to look at it as the journey that's important instead of the finished project.  It's like anything, you build it up in your mind that there is so much left to do, etc, and it makes it worse and worse to keep going.  Instead I break it down into a small next goal like getting this part working.  Another thing I've been doing is break it up into main sections and then work on all of them periodically, instead of totally finishing one section before moving on.  It keeps it fresh.  And, like someone else said, just get a basic section working and then add to it.  For me, these are separate projects that will later be joined.  

Personally, when I start to work in a project, I only work on that project. If I have some interesting idea of a new game while I'm working on another, I write the basics to remind it later, but without really working on it until the current one is finished.

On the other hand, I don't do big games. The biggest one I'have made has took me about 8-9 months. And between a game of several months and the next one, I try to do little games that I can achieve in 3-4 weeks. It's really good to gain strength for the next project.

"Little and daily" seems to work well for me.

For those days I really don't feel in the mood, I just give 10 minutes and in some cases that can extend to hours on end( once I put in 15 hours! o_O ) as I quickly settle into the "zone".

At the moment I've got several projects on the go, and this really helps a lot.  If I do one project in the morning and go out for lunch, I then take on another project for the afternoon.  Right now, I'm working on two Android games, a ZX Spectrum game and getting to grips with OpenGLES 2.0.  Oh, and learning to read and write Japanese scripts( or "Kanji" ), for fun...which is done within the first 15 minutes of waking up...

For me the question is never "when will I ever finish this project?" but instead "has the ball stopped rolling?".  If its come to a halt, then I just make a little time to work on a small part of it.  I guess its a case of "the jouney is more important than the destination"...