Short ingame gifs help bookend your days work and are great for sharing what you are up to. The response will give you snippets of motivation to carry on.
I make posting GIFS a key part of my working day.
So @moreelen posed the question about "How to stay motivated with side projects". I left a few tips but I wanted to elaborate here.
After 5 years on @Hellscreen_Game , Here is a little thread about how I stay motivated
Short ingame gifs help bookend your days work and are great for sharing what you are up to. The response will give you snippets of motivation to carry on.
I make posting GIFS a key part of my working day.
These just sap time & energy away from the game, so unless you write to relax I would skip this. Instead,use that time on the game itself. I do enjoy super quick feature making of's though (if they take the same time to make as a GIF)
It's is easy to feel like you haven't accomplished much so I like to keep a simple .txt with a list of the things I set out to do & the things I accomplished. It reminds me of my progress & can double as a quick commit message at the end of the day
When you are working on non player facing (or non GIF-able) stuff, its again easy to feel like you haven't done much. When I am bogged down in refactoring or save systems etc, I try and save myself something small and fun to do, like a VFX.
Don't play the game JUST to test features. Play the game to enjoy what it is you are making, even if it means you have to fill in the blanks with some imagination. Try and picture what It will look like and enjoy that!
Scheduling is very important but can also lead to making dev feel like an obligation. Don't be afraid to mix up the plan a little to inject a little fun into your time for a new feature you cant get out of your head.
This can be difficult but keeping a minimum time slot to work on it can help maintain a momentum.
I keep my Saturday mornings free to work on @Hellscreen_Game as a standard. Any more time is a bonus
Don't pack to much into your life that you overwhelm yourself and forgive yourself if you cant manage to get to development. Side projects often have to give way to careers/life and thats ok. Burnout will often Kill your project.
Further to 8, don't be afraid to take breaks. I have taken breaks of up to 3 months on projects and then come back fresh with new ideas and things to try.
Again, your awesome project isn't a obligation.
When I just cant be bothered to work but I'm sat at the computer anyway (on YouTube or reddit etc), I just open Unity as a habit. Without even realising, eventually I will tab into Unity and start fixing things.
(DON'T do this on your day off though!)
Talk to other developers about what you are doing. Once the world starts back up, go to meet ups and events. People will be interested in what you are doing, especially if they saw that GIF you posted last week (See 1. )
Getting involved with people who make similar things will help lead you to your player base and also communities that like what you make. Conversations will start and positive feedback will come your way.
Find the thing that makes your game different and explore and develop it. Its motivating to design around something that only your game does and to expand it to its full potential.
Use the game to push your skill set. Learn to rig or texture or design maps or whatever. Your game should be full of opportunities to learn, not obstacles to completion
Can you change your game to be less work? Could you change the art style or make it shorter? Drop multiplayer?
Small games are easier to finish & mean less chance of demotivation.
@Hellscreen_Game art style helps to avoid texture seams for example.
If spending 5 mins researching a new plugin will save you 3 hours of placing rocks by hand, do it BUT don't spend 3 hours writing something that just needs doing by hand anyway.
Don't take any step of the process for granted
Not every asset/mechanic has to be 10/10 quality.
7/10 will do for most main things & less for background stuff. Focus on the hero objects & just get lesser things done quick unless they get in the way.
Don't spend ages pushing around pixels
Or to be clear, don't be afraid to explore new ideas or games. Your brain will always come up with new stuff. Give it some time or a weekend jam & then bank it for later. If that idea keeps at your, maybe thats the one to focus on
Sometimes your cool idea just isn't working & that's fine. Maybe your skillset isn't there yet, that's ok too!
Abandon it, or maybe retire it till a later date.
Nothing is lost as you learned lots and levelled up and you take that forward
It is ok to not do side project work for a while or at all. Its ok to drop it or not even start it. Just cut yourself some slack. Making games is hard, let alone when you are doing it part time. Make sure its fun!
https://t.co/Phk43He0ju
I'm making this solo so all your support really helps!
More from Game
Considering this year I don't have much in the way of game translation to discuss, publicly, I'd say this was a productive year for writing threads on largely neglected and forgotten Japanese games. So if you're looking to learn about some, here's what I wrote about in 2020!
2020 was another year where I talked a *lot* of shop about dating sim history. Much of it was actual dating sims, like in some threads below, but sometimes I went on adjacent tangents, like for the cool Kojipro-developed Tokimeki Memorial adventure games:
I also went down a whole new rabbit hole for Fuuraiki, an open-ended PS1/PS2 adventure game with a cult following about traveling around the island of Hokkaido that's set to real world photography. It's a unique tangent in galge well worth exploring:
I also took a quick jaunt into Michinoku Hitou Koi Monogatari, a spiritual predecessor to Fuuraiki that's about traveling around Tohoku against a backdrop of mahjong matches. It's a rough draft that would get much more refined later, but still worthwhile:
In terms of actual dating sims that I covered, the focus was mainly post-Amagami games released by Kadokawa such as Photo Kano. While I think these games have MANY flaws, they do offer key insight into the state of the genre during its decade-long decline:
2020 was another year where I talked a *lot* of shop about dating sim history. Much of it was actual dating sims, like in some threads below, but sometimes I went on adjacent tangents, like for the cool Kojipro-developed Tokimeki Memorial adventure games:
I finished the drama CD for Shiori's route of Tokimemo Drama Vol. 3 earlier and it was sweet, but lacking. So, I'm plunging back into the world of Feeling Sad About Shiori! Maybe I'll make this a thread about all the cool ways KojiPro translated a dating sim to an adventure game? pic.twitter.com/SWXLvUwMO1
— Tom James, The Daigo Umehara of Dating Sims (@iiotenki) September 2, 2020
I also went down a whole new rabbit hole for Fuuraiki, an open-ended PS1/PS2 adventure game with a cult following about traveling around the island of Hokkaido that's set to real world photography. It's a unique tangent in galge well worth exploring:
So as I mentioned about a week ago, I've been digging into Fuuraiki, a late PS1 release I've been meaning to check out for years. It's an adventure game where you travel along Hokkaido on motorcycle taking photos of the scenery and writing travelogues and it's pretty rad. pic.twitter.com/uhajPmDrm9
— Tom James, The Daigo Umehara of Dating Sims (@iiotenki) January 27, 2020
I also took a quick jaunt into Michinoku Hitou Koi Monogatari, a spiritual predecessor to Fuuraiki that's about traveling around Tohoku against a backdrop of mahjong matches. It's a rough draft that would get much more refined later, but still worthwhile:
It's neat as a historical curiosity and I'm glad I did it to have context for a Fuuraikai route which sees Yumi (the oneesan in purple) return, but I wouldn't call it at all essential. My main takeaways are I suck real bad at hana-awase and a stupendously dumb swan boat chase. pic.twitter.com/aRe1S4yF6o
— Tom James, The Daigo Umehara of Dating Sims (@iiotenki) October 27, 2020
In terms of actual dating sims that I covered, the focus was mainly post-Amagami games released by Kadokawa such as Photo Kano. While I think these games have MANY flaws, they do offer key insight into the state of the genre during its decade-long decline:
Well.
— Tom James, The Daigo Umehara of Dating Sims (@iiotenki) April 25, 2020
Let's do this again, I guess. pic.twitter.com/pLoef5uHap
