Any tips on picking up a project back up after being forced to put on pause?

Works been insane and I’ve been putting in 14 hours a day with no days off all month and I’m finally getting it back to normal.

For the first time in a month I was able to open my project and I’m just looking at it blankly.

Part of me wants to push forward and tackle the last few problems I was going to knock out.

The other part wants to start in another portion just so I can get moving again.

What work habits do you exercise in this situation?

 

This is a great time to try your project again with fresh eyes, and make some potential big changes in plans, or "find the fun" by reworking what wasn't as fun as you remembered it.

Make a big move, or make a big plan and act on it. Reevaluate what your free time is like and how much you want to devote to the project and plan accordingly.

If you're 100% locked in and want to move forward as planned, just have at it. Best course of actions will come to you as you go.

 

I call it re-learn adaption, spend some time away from a project and ideas get lost in translation or lose focus (even if you've written it down). Best thing to do IMO is play the game, get back into the "zone" and go from there.

You may realise some things don't gel or mesh like you'd expect but that's a good thing, a fresh pair of eye's can spot improvements.

 

Unfortunately I’m the type to play test 10 minutes for every 1 minute of programming, and I’ve been planning this game for so long I don’t think there’s a single thing about it I’m wanting to change course on.

Lol, Right now I feel like reading through my code is like reading through social media posts I made while blacked out drunk.

I mean I can read it, but it’s taking me some effort to recap my train of thought.

EDIT: I guess a better question is do I want to keep polishing what I’ve done, or do I want to lay down the broad strokes and give it shape?

 

If you're going back into your code and feeling totally out of depth, I think it's a good time to do some soul searching and think of some practices so that this isn't the case in the future, or at least to reduce the chance of this happening.

You really need to put your foot down and start enacting good practices NOW before it consumes your project, or before you get in the habit of not finding solutions to bad habits.

Organize your code better. Is some code better isolated from other code? Are you creating needless spiderwebs that entangle themselves over time? How can you write out your logic so it makes more sense? Are you being too crafty for your own good?

Comment more, don't be afraid to write out more code in more lines with direct variable names if it makes more sense that way. If your code is readable, then it is polishable and it is expandable. A growing FUN factor ultimately hinges on your ability to write readable code u can understand in the future.

Use comments as bookmarks "//rewrite later" that you can use to quickly find problem areas or example code you plan on using often "//template". Write LONG variable names if you have to that explain complex setups. This will also help you differentiate between similar variables in the future.

Take the time to figure out how to do things right NOW, so that you don't poison the very core of your project in the long term. Comment into the sections you want to fix with the habits you want future you to have adopted.

I'd recommend going to the part of your project that confused you most, figure out why, and fix it, comment next to it //I am stronger now because I will no longer do this stupid S*** ever again. You will though, because sometimes doing stupid S*** is the right thing to do. But it isn't ALWAYS the right thing to do.

Don't become entranced by reckless forward progress. Build a bit more discipline. If you're not sure how to improve, seek out a tutorial on the exact subject you're thinking of and put a little time into prevention and learning from people who have already learned the hard way. You may lose an hour or two of time that's not as exciting as coding away yourself, but you will likely save HUNDREDS of times that amount of time in the future, not to mention your sanity which is the ultimate finite resource of gamedev. Most importantly you will be building the habit of creating a strong foundation for your game so you do not find yourself in a fog in the future. It will only get worse as your project goes on.

Ounce of prevention > weeks of development hell burnout.

 

Sounds like any long-term work on the project is going to be a maintenance nightmare anyway. If just reading it is a challenge then how do you imagine you're going to build upon it, change it, or fix future issues you run into?

Does it generally work such that it really just needs "polish", or do you still need to make significant additions or changes? If everything is fundamentally there and you just need to make it shiny and ship it then just do that.

 

shouldn't have polished anything if there is still broad strokes needed.

I'd focus on getting an outline made of the entire project. Identify where the broad strokes needed are, and get back in the mind what the general make-up of work already done is.

Shouldn't require thumbing through individual lines of code. If it does I think you should focus on organization more. Set future self up for success.

 

Visual studio offers neat task tool. It detects in the code every appearance of
// todo
Comment.
So for exqmple
// TODO: Add new feature to this function. Or remove garbage, or improve performance. Etc.

Now if you have such comment tasks, you can navigate in your VS, to find important areas of code, to focus on.

 

I'm in the same situation. Day job has been not stop major projects all behind schedule for at least 2 months. Been working late most days, and haven't had time to work on my game. I've got 2 major bugs in the big update I've been working on, but every time I get a chance to sit down to troubleshoot I feel like I'm starting the process over again.