Feedback I feel like I'm kinda stuck right now and I don't know what to do.

So I have like 2 projects that im working on, 1 is an fps and the other is a 2d platformer. However, I don't feel motivated to work on any of these projects and unity is starting to feel a little boring. What should i do? is it because i'm not focused enough or something else?

 

What is your goal with the projects? Are you just trying to have fun with it, learn to make games, sell for profit, or something else?

 

im trying to make a game all by myself and trying to have fun. all of the games i have made are following tutorials so i wanted to do something alone and test my skill

 

One project at a time is probably better.

There comes a point in every project where it is not fun and it's work. You can't avoid that.

Keep longer term perspective in mind and keep working at a regular schedule and you'll get it through it. When you get the game into other people's hands you'll have a blast watching them play it.

As long as you just don't quit, you'll be ahead of 99% of most in time.

Consider keeping a blog of your development. Try to develop a sense of peer pressure. That helps a lot. And if you get really stuck, get help. It's what humans do.

 

I think two projects is perfectly fine. That is what I often do to keep myself from getting to that "it's not fun, it's just work" feeling. Switching back and forth between them feels refreshing especially if you get hung up on a problem with one of them.

That being said, I don't think it is wise to stop working on one in favor of the other for long periods of time. If you are working every day on a project, I would only recommend having a two days gap at most between work sessions for a particular project. A one day gap would be much more preferable.

 

You must have more brain crenulations than me.

I get so scatter brained just going between different jobs with one project, I couldnt dream of taking on a second on. But I am not a multi tasker by any means. 100% on one thing only, its the only way for me.

OP will have their own personality of course but its always good practice I think to try opposite of what you are doing if there is a problem you don't know how to solve. I dont mean to suggest my way is only way, but its different so trying might help.

 

My usual suggestion is to plan your project. Such as:

• Set out a basic game design document to clearly outline what you want from your game.
  
• Use Trello or similar to break down your tasks. Break them down more if you have to (such as check lists for each task).
• Set yourself goals and deadlines. Sure it's a personal project, but if you tell yourself you want X done by Y date, you can find yourself spurred along.

And as you mentioned, if you're just parroting tutorials then yeah, you won't find yourself stimulated. You will need to challenge yourself to get over that initial skill hump and be able to tackle tasks with your own abilities.

 

If you aren't interested in making a specific game currently, you could look at writing a reusable system for games, or editor scripts to help you in the future.

It is what I do, when I see a part of a game I want to imitate, or am unsure what kind of game I want to make.

Think about something like a Turn management system for any kind of turn based game, or a generic deck of cards manager/shuffler, which can be drawn from.

For me, tasks like that are as exciting as making a game, while small enough it doesn't take too much time and that I don't have much space to feature creep into. Also, making a reusable system like these doesn't involve any of the game development process I am less enthusiastic about.

 

Yep, that's a fair point. OP could just drop one of the projects and see if things improve.

 

Don't do two projects at the same time.
Do one, than use code base to do second when you finished or decided not to continue.

 

How big are the games though? what are the complexity? How specific setting, mechanics, and details are?

If you have a game with ar least 1 level and 1 fully implemented mechanics, wrap it and released it.

 

You most likely spending few hrs a week most, on the project.
Making multi projects is a distraction and you will mostlikely loose focus on any of these.

Stop one, or even stop both. Since these are just tutorial based.
Pick your project goals and start building it from ground up from what you have learned.
Keep it simple as possible. Keep it interesting yet challanging enough.
However, it is easy over think and over do, which can get complicated and out of hand very quick. Hence leading to loosing motivation. So again, keep your focus down on fewer aspects.

 

Dang nobody likes dual wielding projects except me ;-;

 

Two projects of equal importance? No.

But one main project and a second "fooling around" project I think is pretty good practice.

 

Little experimentation is not a project.
We have to make some distinctions here.

 

I think, at most, I have worked on four projects at once. Despite this, two were completed. That being said, one of them was not ever intended to be a full game so I guess that's a "little experimentation" although it took significantly longer than the other project which is a full game.

In around two or three months, I will complete the third. The fourth was dropped because four was too much of a time commitment. The only issue I've seen mentioned with this in this thread is that it can get confusing. I have no issue with keeping track of multiple projects although I am sure this is not the case for everyone.

I don't see why it must be a blanket statement that multiple projects is always bad. As I said in my second post on this thread, it seems to be beneficial for me. I think the OP should just try doing one alone and see if that fixes the issue.

 

Probably everyone assumes that other people's projects is similar level of scope as their own.

I work on my game more than 40 hours most weeks. How could I take on a second? Obviously if you work on one project for 10 hours a week, it may be reasonable to work on another. I didn't think people were making blanket statements, more just assuming the person is working at this full time.

 

It's more like work on the second project when you are stuck on first. My policy is to tackle the second 90% of the project first, basically I dabble and test what's going to be "easy" (ie solveable by any existing mean or has plenty documentation and example) and what's going to be "hard" (solveable by innovation and creativity) and do the hard part first, because you get so happy to do the easy part once you are done with the hard one, while hitting hard after the easy one is soul crushing, it's very easy to feel like progressing by doing trivial stuff, especially when there is no guarantee you will solve the hard part, which might prompt entire redesign to deal with.

For example my project used to be a "simple" caraibean zelda type of game, it's ambitious as in open world "supposedly", turns out the open world part wasn't the hard part at all, that's just "grind", grind is easy. The hard part is "caraibean", the goal was always good representation that mean story and visual, so I spin the project into two project, a cinematic visual novel that takes care of te hard part, and a side project that is a random open world promoted to no man's sky clone. On the paper the former is easy, and the latter is harder, in practice, the former have artistic ambition (Caribbean representation) on domain largely neglected (for example 4c hair rendering), and story is cheap to execute but hard to master (due to same ambition), and realizing that story is core also mean in term of production asset depend on story, changing the story is redoing assets, so I can't do anything concrete until the story is solid. Meanwhile it took me a week to mock a proof of concept for open world planet thingy, so only grind matter in the end, without artistic ambition there isn't much to solve, planet generation and open world gameplay is well covered on internet, time spent is about optimizing ideas into even simpler one when I'm too down to work on main project...

 

Play a game like the one you are working on.

Never fails to reignite my passion for a project.

 

This obviously doesn't work for everyone, but I like to write evocative music for my games early on. When I go back and listen to it later it reminds me of why I was excited about the idea back in the beginning. Of course, I'm not the person to give advice about actually finishing any of your projects, but I do keep working on mine.

One thing you might consider is re-scoping your projects. If your original design had twelve levels and you only have enough content for three, maybe your game just has three levels now. If you're just doing this for a hobby, there's no reason you can't make a short game that only takes 10 minutes to play. I've had a lot of fun with little freeware titles and some of them have been very memorable.

 

It really comes down to two things for me:
1. Available time.
2. Clarity of purpose.

I used to often have multiple projects on the go because I was getting paid by various clients to do them. In those circumstances I was highly productive over multiple projects, for a few reasons.
1. Because a client was paying for my time, that time was not just available but also clearly committed to the project.
2. There was always a clear agreement about what would be delivered, so there was a very clear end point.
3. Because of (2) I could plan with clarity around how to reach the delivery goals, giving me a bunch of mini-goals to kick along the way.
4. I was usually working on these within a team, so (3) was essential, but this also gave me separate motivation from the team environment.

By contrast, working on my own solo projects requires discipline. There's no external force, no commitment to others, nobody waiting on me, no guaranteed paycheck when I get to the end, etc. So what I find is that I'm super keen for the interesting / new / unique bits (eg: trying a new approach to achieve something) but have to push myself through the less engaging bits (eg: testing).

Someone asked about your goal, and that's an important consideration. If you're doing this mostly for fun then if it's not fun, don't do it. If you're also doing it to build a portfolio, or build skills, or to get into game / software development, or to try to make money from it, then some form of commitment is probably important.

I used to commit myself to doing 1 hour of my main project each day. Sometimes I didn't want to start my hour, but I rarely wanted to stop at the end of it.